Politics
Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado dedicates peace prize to Trump
OSLO: Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting dictatorship in the country and dedicated the award in part to US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly insisted he deserved it.
Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer who lives in hiding, was blocked in 2024 by Venezuela’s courts from running for president and thus challenging President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.
“Oh my God … I have no words,” Machado told the secretary of the award body, Kristian Berg Harpviken, in a phone call which the Nobel Committee posted on social media.
“I thank you so much, but I hope you understand this is a movement, this is an achievement of a whole society. I am just one person. I certainly do not deserve it,” she added.
Laureate praises Trump’s ‘decisive support for our cause’
She later said, in an X post in English: “I dedicate the prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!”
Trump is a fierce critic of Maduro and the US is one of a number of countries that does not recognise his government’s legitimacy.
The White House had earlier criticised the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to focus on Venezuela just days after Trump announced a breakthrough in talks to halt the fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives… The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a post on X.
Maduro, whose 12 years in office have been marked by deep economic and social crisis, was sworn in for a third term in January this year, despite a six-month-long election dispute, international calls for him to stand aside and an increase in the US reward offered for his capture.
“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the Nobel Committee said in its citation.
Marco Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state, nominated Machado for the Peace Prize together with a group of US members of Congress in August 2024, when he was still a senator.
Will she be able to attend ceremony?
It was not immediately clear whether she would be able to attend the award ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
Should she not attend, she would join the list of Peace Prize laureates prevented from doing so in the award’s 124-year history, including Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1975, Poland’s Lech Walesa in 1983 and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991.
Machado is the first Venezuelan to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the sixth from Latin America. Her three adult children are living abroad for safety reasons.
The United Nations human rights office welcomed the award to Machado as a recognition of “the clear aspirations of the people of Venezuela for free and fair elections”.
The head of the award committee, Joergen Watne Frydnes, said he hoped it would spur the Venezuelan opposition’s work.
“We hope that the entire opposition will have renewed energy to continue the work for a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” Frydnes told Reuters after the announcement.
US has been strong supporter of Venezuelan opposition
The lead-up to this year’s prize announcement was dominated by Trump’s repeated public statements that he deserved to win the award.
“The democratic opposition of Venezuela is something that the US has been eager to support. So, in that sense, it would be hard for anyone to constitute this as an insult to Trump,” said Halvard Leira, research director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
The United States has struck several vessels allegedly carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks.
Trump has determined that the US is engaged in “a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, according to a document notifying Congress of its legal justification for deadly US strikes on boats off Venezuela.
Machado has publicly supported the US military operation, telling Fox Noticias last month the operation was “aimed at saving lives” in both nations.
Gaza deal too late for Trump, this year
Frydnes, the Nobel committee leader, declined to say what it would take for Trump or others to win the prize in the future, or if efforts to end the fighting in Gaza could lead to an award in 2026.
“It’s not our task to tell other people or other countries what to do, our task is to give out the peace prize…. So we’ll have to see next year,” Frydnes said.
- Cairo “studying” request for Sisi to join board, says FM.
- Canadian PM intends to accept Trump’s invitation: aide.
- Argentine president says it will be an ‘honour’ to join initiative.
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” for postwar Gaza began to take shape Saturday, with the leaders of Egypt, Turkey, Argentina and Canada asked to join.
The announcements from those leaders came after the US president named his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and senior negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to the panel.
Trump had already declared himself the chair of the body, as he promotes a controversial vision of economic development in the Palestinian territory, which lies in rubble after two-plus years of relentless Israeli bombardment.
The moves came after a Palestinian committee of technocrats meant to govern Gaza held its first meeting in Cairo which was attended by Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who has partnered with Witkoff for months on the issue.
In Canada, a senior aide to Prime Minister Mark Carney said he intended to accept Trump’s invitation, while in Turkey, a spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had been asked to become a “founding member” of the board.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said Cairo was “studying” a request for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to join.
Sharing an image of the invitation letter, Argentine President Javier Milei wrote on X that it would be “an honour” to participate in the initiative.
In a statement sent to AFP, Blair said: “I thank President Trump for his leadership in establishing the Board of Peace and am honoured to be appointed to its Executive Board.”
Blair is a controversial figure in the Middle East because of his role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Trump himself said last year that he wanted to make sure Blair was an “acceptable choice to everybody.”
Blair spent years focused on the Israeli-Palestinian issue as representative of the “Middle East Quartet” – the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia – after leaving Downing Street in 2007.
The White House said the Board of Peace will take on issues such as “governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding and capital mobilisation.”
The other members of the board so far are World Bank President Ajay Banga, an Indian-born American businessman; billionaire US financier Marc Rowan; and Robert Gabriel, a loyal Trump aide who serves on the US National Security Council.
Trump has created a second “Gaza executive board” that appears designed to have a more advisory role.
It was not immediately clear which world leaders were asked to be on each board.
The White House, which said Friday that additional members would be named to both entities, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Israel strikes
Washington has said the Gaza plan had gone on to a second phase – from implementing the ceasefire to disarming Hamas, whose October 2023 attack on Israel prompted the massive Israeli offensive.
On Friday, Trump named US Major General Jasper Jeffers to head the International Stabilization Force, which will be tasked with providing security in Gaza and training a new police force to succeed Hamas.
Jeffers, from special operations in US Central Command, in late 2024 was put in charge of monitoring a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, which has continued periodic strikes aimed at Hezbollah.
Gaza native and former Palestinian Authority deputy minister Ali Shaath was earlier tapped to head the governing committee.
Trump, a real estate developer, has previously mused about turning devastated Gaza into a Riviera-style area of resorts, although he has backed away from calls to forcibly displace the population.
- Private carrier admits misjudgement, planning gaps.
- Regulator orders IndiGo to relieve senior office bearers.
- Operational meltdown linked to new policy of pilot rest.
India’s civil aviation regulator on Saturday imposed a fine of $2.45 million on IndiGo, the country’s biggest airline, for poor roster planning that led to large-scale flight cancellations in December.
Airports across India were thrown into disarray late last year, with the private carrier admitting “misjudgement and planning gaps” in adapting to a new policy of pilot rest.
Over 4,000 mostly domestic flights were either cancelled or delayed for over a week across the country, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers.
The operational meltdown came even though IndiGo had two years to prepare for the new rules aimed at giving pilots more rest periods in between flights to enhance passenger safety.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said it was levying the penalty for several lapses, including “failure to strike (a) balance between commercial imperatives and crew members’ ability to work effectively”.
The regulator ordered IndiGo to relieve its senior vice president of its operations control centre of his responsibilities, according to a statement released on Saturday.
It also issued warnings to senior officials at the company, including CEO Pieter Elbers “for inadequate overall oversight of flight operations and crisis management”.
There was no immediate response from IndiGo to the fine.
IndiGo, which commands 60% of India’s domestic market, operates more than 2,000 flights a day.
The crisis was one of the biggest challenges faced by the no-frills airline that has built its reputation on punctuality.
India is one of the world’s fastest growing aviation markets. In November 2024, IndiGo reached a daily level of 500,000 passengers for the first time.
- Protesters chant, “Greenland is not for sale.”
- Over “20,000 people” attend protest in Copenhagen.
- Trump says Greenland vital to US security.
COPENHAGEN: Protesters in Denmark and Greenland demonstrated on Saturday against President Donald Trump’s demand that the Arctic island be ceded to the US and called for it to be left to determine its own future.
Trump says Greenland is vital to US security because of its strategic location and large mineraldeposits, and has not ruled out using force to take it. European nations this week sent military personnel to the island at Denmark’s request.
In Copenhagen, demonstrators chanted “Greenland is not for sale” and held up slogans such as “No means No” and “Hands off Greenland” alongside the territory’s red-and-white flag as they marched to the US embassy.
Some wore red baseball caps resembling the “Make America Great Again” caps of Trump supporters, but with the slogan “Make America Go Away”.
In Greenland’s capital Nuuk, hundreds of protesters led by Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen carried flags and similar banners as they headed for the US consulate.
They passed a newly built block where Washington plans to move its consulate – currently a red wooden building with four staff.
Organisers estimated over 20,000 people attended the protest in Copenhagen – akin to the entire population of Nuuk – though police did not provide an official figure. Other protests were held across Denmark.
“I am very grateful for the huge support we as Greenlanders receive … we are also sending a message to the world that you all must wake up,” said Julie Rademacher, chair of Uagut, an organisation for Greenlanders in Denmark.
Trump triggers diplomatic rift
Trump’s repeated statements about the island have triggered a diplomatic crisis between the US and Denmark, both founding members of the NATO military alliance, and have been widely condemned in Europe.
The territory of 57,000 people, governed for centuries from Copenhagen, has carved out significant autonomy since 1979 but remains part of Denmark, which controls defence and foreign policy, and funds much of the administration.
Some 17,000 Greenlanders live in Denmark, according to Danish authorities.
All five parties elected to Greenland’s parliament ultimately favour independence, but they disagree on the timing and have recently said they would rather remain part of Denmark than join the US
Only 17% of Americans approve of Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland, and large majorities of Democrats and Republicans oppose using military force to annex it, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found. Trump called the poll “fake”.
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