The signatories include Professor David Harel, who leads the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and received the prestigious 2007 ACM Software System Award; Professor Aaron Ciechanover and Professor Avram Hershko, who jointly won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; and Professor Ada Yonath, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

"We share your deep and genuine concern for the safety and survival of the 76 hostages who remain in Hamas captivity after 495 days, and we fully support your desire to secure the immediate release of all of them – both those who still live and those who do not," the scientists emphasized in their letter, before going on to remind him of the horrific conditions in which the three latest hostages were in upon their release three days earlier as they emerged from Hamas captivity emaciated and weighing dozens of pounds lighter.

The distinguished group explained to Trump that "this unified position naturally stems from the devastating physical and psychological condition of the survivors, and the critical urgency of their situation, which has reached a point where their lives face immediate and tangible danger. Moreover, this issue carries profound moral implications regarding fundamental human values and collective responsibility."

In a remarkable gesture, the scientists offered to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize should he succeed in securing the hostages' freedom. "We wish to add that if you succeed in facilitating the swift release of all hostages, the four of us, along with several other prominent figures, would be honored to enthusiastically submit your nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize," they wrote.

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Imprisoned activist Narges Mohammadi, who has campaigned for women's rights, democracy and against the death penalty in Iran for years, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
Mohammadi, 51, has done her work despite facing numerous arrests and spending years behind bars for her activism.

"This prize is first and foremost a recognition of the very important work of a whole movement in Iran with with its undisputed leader, Nargis Mohammadi," said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who announced the prize in Oslo. "The impact of the prize is not for the Nobel committee to decide upon. We hope that it is an encouragement to continue the work in whichever form this movement finds to be fitting."

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Mohammadi's most recent incarceration began when she was detained in 2021 after she attended a memorial for a person killed in nationwide 2019 protests sparked by an increase in gasoline prices. She's been held at Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, whose inmates include those with Western ties and political prisoners.

Video: Iranians protests gender segregation / Social media

Reiss-Andersen said Mohammadi has been imprisoned 13 times and convicted five times. In total, she has been sentenced to 31 years in prison. She is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman, after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi won the award in 2003. Mohammadi was behind bars for the recent protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. That sparked one of the most intense challenges ever to Iran's theocracy. More than 500 people were killed in a heavy security crackdown while over 22,000 others were arrested.
From behind bars, Mohammadi contributed an opinion piece for The New York Times.

"What the government may not understand is that the more of us they lock up, the stronger we become," she wrote.
There was no immediate reaction from Iranian state television and other state-controlled media. Some semiofficial news agencies acknowledged Mohammadi's win in online messages, citing foreign press reports.

Before being jailed, Mohammadi was vice president of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. She has been close to Ebadi, who founded the center.
In 2018, Mohammadi, an engineer, was awarded the 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prize. PEN America, which advocates for freedom of speech and earlier this year gave Mohammadi its PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, applauded the win. The choice "is a tribute to her courage and that of countless women and girls who have poured out into the streets of Iran and faced down one of the world's most brutal and stubborn regimes, risking their lives to demand their rights," PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement.

The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million). Winners also receive an 18-carat gold medal and diploma at the award ceremonies in December.
The winner of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize is chosen by a panel of experts in Norway from a list of just over 350 nominations. Last year's prize was won by human rights activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, in what was seen as a strong rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart and ally. Other previous winners include Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Aung San Suu Kyi and the United Nations.

Unlike the other Nobel prizes that are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed that the peace prize be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee. The independent panel is appointed by the Norwegian parliament. The peace prize is the fifth of this year's prizes to be announced. A day earlier, the Nobel committee awarded Norwegian writer Jon Fosse the prize for literature. On Wednesday, the chemistry prize went to U.S. scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov.

The physics prize went Tuesday to French-Swedish physicist Anne L'Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz. Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday. Nobels season ends next week with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

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Human rights advocate, Ales Bialiatski, could not be notified of being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in real time – not by the awards committee in Norway and even not by his family. For the past 15 months, Bialiatski has been imprisoned in a detention facility in Minsk, and Belarussian President AleksandrvLukashenko's regime has denied him any contact with the outer world.

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"Until his trial begins, we can only send letters by mail – and even these go through a censorship process," Bialiatski's wife, Natalia Pinchuk, told Israel Hayom after the Norwegian Nobel Committee named him among the three recipients of the prize. "He also censors himself. The letters' importance is in their actual sending: I see that it is his handwriting and I know that he is alive. We could not tell him [about his award]."

In the conversation with Israel Hayom, Pinchuk says that she was totally surprised by the announcement. "I am still trying to digest this. Ales' candidacy has been submitted several times already and it involved work, conversations, and meetings. This was very surprising news and it is difficult even to gather one's thoughts." According to Pinchuk, several hours after the announcement, Bialiatski had already received the message, "probably by watching television." She asked not to talk politics; the fear of the government's revenge is too great.

Bialiatski, 60, is one of the most prominent and veteran figures in the battle for civil autonomy in Belarus. He embarked on his activities for Belarussian revival already during the days of the USSR: He was one of the founders of the Belarusian Popular Front, fighting for Belarus exiting the Soviet Union and was one of the founders of the Union of Belarusian Writers. His next stop was the management of the literary museum in Minsk, but in 1996 he delved into the political unrest in the country: The new president, Lukashenko, began to turn the state into a dictatorship and Bialiatski took leadership of Viasna ("Spring"), an organization caring for the many detainees from demonstrations around the country.

Bialiatski was arrested in 2011, first for "tax evasions" and during his three years in a penal colony, he authored two books. After his release, he returned to his legal civil activities. In an interview he gave then, he said that he does not plan to leave Belarus. "I am comfortable here, even at the penal colony. The atmosphere in the Belarussian society is important to me."

"No moral right to leave"

After the start of the protests against Lukashenko's forging of election results in August 2020, Bialiatski joined the United Democratic Forces of Belarus' Coordination Council, which later dismantled and most of its members were arrested or deported. Bialiatski was arrested in July 2021.

Q: You tried to convince him to leave anyway?

"Yes, I spoke to him. It was clear during the protests that he would be arrested. It was obvious. But he refused because his peers had already been arrested and he said, 'I have no moral right to leave while my peers are sitting in jail. This would mean that I have deserted them. So I have to stay. This is always what he believed in.'

Q: How do you think the prize will affect his fate? Do you think it will give him an early release? Or actually, worsen his situation?

"I am even too scared to think about it; one way or the other. I am scared that something will go wrong. Scared that something that might be good, will go wrong. So under these circumstances, we are very, very careful. We are just too scared to talk."

Q: What would you like to wish him?

"I am really too scared to say. Let's see how things develop. I send wishes to the other winners and wish them a lot of mental strength."

Bialiatski, who won the Lech Wałęsa, Vaclav Havel, and US State Department Prizes, is the second Belarussian to win the Nobel Peace Prize in seven years. Preceded him authoress Svetlana Alexievich, who was also forced to leave Belarus after she dared protest against the regime.

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Nobel Peace Prize laureate and education activist Malala Yousafzai has announced her marriage  on social media Tuesday.

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The 24-year-old Pakistani human rights campaigner who was shot in 2012 by the Taliban for daring to want an education posted images on Twitter of her celebration with Asser Malik and her family.

Today marks a precious day in my life.
Asser and I tied the knot to be partners for life. We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead.
: @malinfezehai pic.twitter.com/SNRgm3ufWP

— Malala (@Malala) November 9, 2021

"Today marks a precious day in my life,'' Yousafzai wrote. "Asser and I tied the knot to be partners for life. We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead.''

Yousafzai became the youngest Nobel laureate when she shared the 2014 Peace Prize with Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi for their work on behalf of children and education rights.

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Israeli American economist Joshua Angrist was awarded Monday the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Canadian and Dutch American economists David Card and Guido Imbens, "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships."

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Angrist worked as a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem between 1995-1996 and 2004-2005. He is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Angrist is the third Israeli to ever win a Nobel Prize in Economics. The first one was Daniel Kahneman in 2002, and the second - Robert Aumann in 2005.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences – the body that awards the prize – said the three have "completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences."

BREAKING NEWS:
The 2021 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded with one half to David Card and the other half jointly to Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens.#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/nkMjWai4Gn

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 11, 2021

Unlike the other Nobel prizes, the economics award was not established in the will of Alfred Nobel but by the Swedish central bank in his memory in 1968, with the first winner selected a year later. It is the last prize announced each year.

Last week, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia for their fight for freedom of expression in countries where reporters have faced persistent attacks, harassment and even murder. Ressa was the only woman honored this year in any category.

The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Britain-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was recognized for his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee."

The prize for physiology or medicine went to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch.

Three scientists – Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi – won the physics prize for work that found order in seeming disorder, helping to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change.

Benjamin List and David MacMillan won the chemistry prize for finding an easier and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that can be used to make compounds, including medicines and pesticides.

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Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for his uncompromising portrayal of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee, the award-giving body said Thursday.

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Based in Britain and writing in English, Gurnah joins Nigeria's Wole Soyinka as the only two non-white writers from sub-Saharan Africa ever to win the prestigious literary award. His novels include Paradise – set in colonial East Africa during World War I and short-listed for the Booker Prize for Fiction – and Desertion.

"I dedicate this Nobel Prize to Africa and Africans and to all my readers. Thanks!" Gurnah tweeted after the announcement.

Gurnah left Africa as a refugee in the 1960s amid the persecution of citizens of Arab origin on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar, which would unite with the mainland territory Tanganyika to form Tanzania. He was able to return only in 1984, seeing his father shortly before his death.

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The Swedish Academy which chooses the literature laureate said it had recognized Handke, 76, for a body of work including novels, essays and drama "that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience."

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Tokarczuk, 57, won for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life," it said.

Both have courted controversy – Handke for his portrayal of Serbia as a victim during the Balkan wars and for attending its leader's funeral, and Tokarczuk for touching on dark areas of Poland's past that contrast with the version of history promoted by the country's ruling nationalist party.

While Tokarczuk's agent said the award should not be seen in the context of a parliamentary election Poland will hold on Sunday, the author called on Poles to "vote in a right way for democracy."

"The prize goes to eastern Europe, which is unusual, incredible," Tokarczuk told a press conference in the German town of Bielefeld.

"It shows that despite all those problems with democracy in my country we still have something to say to the world."

On winning a Polish literary award in 2015 for "The Book of Jacob," which deals with Poland's relations with its Jewish minority and neighboring Ukraine, she outraged nationalists with her comments and received death threats.

Two prizes were awarded this year after last year's award was postponed over the scandal that led to the husband of an Academy member being convicted of rape.

Since then, the organization has appointed new members and reformed some of its more arcane rules after a rare intervention by its royal patron, the king of Sweden.

Handke, a native of the Austrian province of Carinthia, which borders Slovenia, established himself as one of the most influential writers in Europe after World War II, the Academy said. He also co-wrote the script of the critically-acclaimed 1987 film "Wings of Desire."

The author of books such as "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick" and "Slow Homecoming," he attracted widespread criticism after he attended the funeral of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević in 2006.

An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed in Kosovo and almost one million were put to flight during a brutal war waged by forces under Milošević in 1998-1999.

Kosovo's ambassador to Washington reacted angrily to Handke's win.

"Have we become so numb to racism, so emotionally desensitized to violence, so comfortable with appeasement that we can overlook one's subscription&service to the twisted agenda of a genocidal maniac?" Vlora Çitaku wrote on Twitter.

"We must not support or normalize those who spew hatred. We can do better!#Nobel."

Albania's acting Foreign Minister Gent Cakaj called the award ignoble and shameful on Twitter.

Tokarczuk trained as a psychologist before publishing her first novel in 1993. Since then, she has produced a steady and varied stream of works and her novel "Flights" won her the high-profile Man Booker International Prize last year. She was the first Polish author to do so.

"Nobel Prize for Literature! Joy and emotion took my speech away. Thank you very much for all your congratulations!" she wrote on Facebook.

She later told Polish broadcaster TVN she was proud that her books covering small towns in Poland can be read universally and be important for people elsewhere in the world.

"I believe in the novel. I think the novel is something incredible. This is a deep way of communication, above the borders, above languages, cultures. It refers to the in-depth similarity between people, teaches us empathy," she said.

Poland's culture minister, Piotr Gliński, said the award to Tokarczuk was a success for Polish culture. Earlier this week, Gliński said he had started reading Tokarczuk's books many times but never finished any of them, a failing that he said on Twitter he would now seek to correct.

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