eveningstandard--2019-12-03--Turner Prize 2019 winner: All four shortlisted artists win after requesting to be considered as a gr

Turner Prize 2019 winner: All four shortlisted artists win after requesting to be considered as a group

For the first time in history, the 2019 Turner Prize has been awarded to all four contenders on the shortlist.  Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani have been given the prize as a group after asking that the jury consider them together, a request the judges agreed to unanimously.  The artists wrote a joint letter saying that each of them “makes art about social and political issues and contexts we believe are of great importance and urgency” adding that they didn’t wish the issues to be “pitted against each other, with the implication that one was more important, significant or more worthy of attention than the others”.  They had not met before the Prize, but found common ground having met in Margate, where the exhibition is being held.  They said in the letter: “At this time of political crisis in Britain and much of the world, when there is already so much that divides and isolates people and communities, we feel strongly motivated to use the occasion of the Prize to make a collective statement in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity – in art as in society.”  Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue, Edward Enniful, presented the award at a ceremony broadcast live on the BBC from Dreamland in Margate.  The jury said: “At our meeting today, we were presented with the letter from the artists and unanimously took the decision to agree to their request. We are honoured to be supporting this bold statement of solidarity and collaboration in these divided times. Their symbolic act reflects the political and social poetics that we admire and value in their work.”  The panel of judges was made up of Alessio Antoniolli, director of Gasworks & Triangle Network, Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of The Showroom Gallery and lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths; Victoria Pomery, director of Turner Contemporary in Margate and writer Charlie Porter, chaired by director of Tate Britain Alex Farquharson.  Farquharson added that requesting to be judged as a group is “very much in the spirit of these artists’ work to challenge convention, to resist polarised world views, and to champion other voices. The jury all felt that this made the collective a worthy winner of the Turner Prize.”  Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s work revolves around earwitness accounts given by oppressed people, including former prisoners of the Syrian Regime. Helen Cammock’s film The Long Note explores the role of women in the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, seen from a variety of perspectives.  Oscar Murillo’s installations explore themes of labour and migration, some of which is influenced by accounts of his father’s early years as an immigrant in the UK. Finally, Tai Shani’s work blurs fact and fiction in work that takes inspiration from a 15th century feminist text, and aims to disrupt the white, male world order.  The decision comes after this year's Booker Prize panel decided to declare Bernandine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood joint winners of the world's most prestigious literary prize.  The Turner Contemporary in Margate hosts the Turner Prize exhibition this year, which is running until January 12.  Last year’s winner was Glasgow-based artist Charlotte Prodger, for her 32 minute film BRIDGIT, created on an iPhone.


eveningstandard--2019-12-09--Nobel Prize winners 2019: The full list from Peace to Literature and Economics

The 2019 Nobel Prize winners will be presented with their awards at ceremonies in Norway and Sweden this week.  Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed will collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on December 10 while the winners of prizes in the other categories head to Stockholm to receive theirs.  The annual ceremonies are held on December 10 to mark the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, who stipulated in his will that Norway was to host the peace prize ceremony and Sweden the other prizes.  With the ceremony taking place on Tuesday, here's the list of winners plus how to keep up to date with all of the action.  Where will the ceremonies be held?  Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and economics will be awarded at the Stockholm Concert Hall in Stockholm, Sweden.  The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded at Oslo City Hall in Oslo, Norway.  Both ceremonies will take place in the afternoon and will be attended by royalty, followed by two banquets held in honour of the laureates.  How to watch the Nobel Prize ceremonies  The ceremonies will be streamed on the Nobel Prize's website and on YouTube.  You can follow all the updates on the online streams. • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Professor William Kaelin Jr, Sir Peter Ratcliffe and Professor Gregg L. Semenza • Nobel Prize in Physics: Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz • Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Scientists John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Chemistry • Nobel Prize in Literature: Austria's Peter Handke won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature, and the postponed 2018 award went to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk  New: Daily podcast from the Evening Standard  Subscribe to The Leader on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or your chosen podcast provider. New episodes every weekday from 4pm.


theguardianuk--2019-11-19--Baillie Gifford prize won by  Jack the Ripper study ‘reclaiming victims' voices’

Social historian Hallie Rubenhold has won the £50,000 Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction for The Five, a book about the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper described by the judges as “a great moral act”.  Dedicated to Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, the five “canonical” victims of Jack the Ripper, The Five sees Rubenhold untangle what she calls the “web of assumptions, rumour and unfounded speculation” that surrounds the women more than century after their deaths.  Rubenhold’s argument – that there is no evidence that three of the women did sex work, despite the established narrative that the serial killer targeted prostitutes – has seen her become the target of online abuse, with some “Ripperologists” even comparing her to the Holocaust denier David Irving.  With so many books focusing on the identity of Jack the Ripper, her intention in writing The Five was not to hunt and name the killer, she says. “I wish instead to retrace the footsteps of five women, to consider their experiences within the context of their era, and to follow their paths through both the gloom and the light. They are worth more to us than the empty human shells we have taken them for … It is for them that I write this book. I do so in the hope that we may now hear their stories clearly and give back to them that which was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.”  Chair of judges and editor of the Times Literary Supplement Stig Abell said that despite the strength of the shortlist – which included from Casey Cep’s investigation into Harper Lee’s abandoned true-crime book, Furious Hours, and Azadeh Moaveni’s book on the women who joined Islamic State, Guest House for Young Widows – the panel was clear that The Five should win.  “It’s brilliantly written and it’s brilliantly researched. It’s a great story and it’s a great moral act, reclaiming the voice of these women,” he said. “And it does speak to our times. I don’t think relevance should ever trump brilliance, but there is already brilliance. And it is so relevant now in terms of how crimes, particularly sex crimes and crimes against women, can be reported and considered and talked about.”  Abell said he was particularly struck by the “utter tragedy” of the women’s stories. “These women … were trapped the circumstance of their gender and the circumstance of their birth; they were poor, neglected, they never really had a shot,” he said.  “The arc of the tragedy is that you know the ending, you know it’s inevitable, but there are just these moments dotted through where you think, ‘Maybe if they could stick in that job, get a place, maybe if that relationship works out, if they can ditch the booze, everything will be all right.’ In the end, they are victims not just of this fetishised man, they’re ultimately victims because they were out on the streets, they were poor, they had no shot.”  Rubenhold, who lives in London, becomes the seventh woman in 21 years to win the Baillie Gifford prize, which was formerly known as the Samuel Johnson award.  She is the author of books including Lady Worsley’s Whim, which was dramatised by the BBC as The Scandalous Lady W, and Covent Garden Ladies, which inspired ITV’s Harlots. The Five has also been optioned for television.  Speaking before she knew of her win, Rubenhold said of her subjects: “These were ordinary people, like you and I, who happened to fall on hard times. There’s so much in their stories that we can take away that tells us about how we live today: everything from homelessness to addiction to domestic violence. And people become victims because society doesn’t care about them.”  Abell was joined on the judging panel by TV producer and journalist Dr Myriam François Oxford University professor of English literature Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, critic and biographer Frances Wilson, novelist Petina Gappah, and doctor and TV presenter Dr Xand van Tulleken.  The remaining titles shortlisted for the prize were Laura Cumming’s On Chapel Sands, William Feaver’s The Lives of Lucian Freud and Julia Lovell’s Maoism: A Global History, which won the Cundhill history prize last week.


theindependent--2019-10-07--Nobel Prize for medicine won by British scientist Sir Peter Ratcliffe

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been won by William Kaelin, Sir Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza.  The three winners were awarded for their discoveries of “how cells sense and adapt to oxygen and availability”, which is one of the most vital processes for sustaining animal life.  “The fundamental importance of oxygen has been understood for centuries, but how cells adapt to changes in levels of oxygen has long been unknown,” the Nobel Committee announced.  “Thanks to the groundbreaking work of these Nobel Laureates, we know much more about how different oxygen levels regulate fundamental physiological processes.”  Discoveries made by the trio of scientists have opened up new routes for researchers to understand and treat a huge range of diseases and conditions, ranging from altitude sickness to cancer.  UK scientist Sir Peter Ratcliffe is the Director of Clinical Research at the Francis Crick Institute in London. His work with the two US scientists make them the 110th, 111th and 112th winners of the prestigious award since 1901.  The announcement was made at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on Monday morning. The prize is awarded each year to the person or group deemed to have made an outstanding discovery within the domains of life sciences and medicine.  Recent winners have included James Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their work on cancer therapy, and Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries of “mechanisms for autophagy” for cell regeneration.  This year’s winners are awarded a gold medal, a diploma and a share of the nine million Swedish kroner (£740,000) prize money.  It is the first Nobel Prize to be awarded in 2019, with prizes for physics, chemistry, literature, peace and economic sciences set to be announced over the next seven days.  Environmental activist Greta Thunberg is widely tipped to win the Nobel Peace Prize after gaining international recognition for campaigning to draw attention to climate change.  The Swedish teen would become the youngest ever recipient of the award.


theindependent--2019-12-03--Turner Prize won by all four shortlisted artists as expression of solidarity amid 'political cr

Turner Prize won by all four shortlisted artists as expression of solidarity amid 'political crisis'

The Turner Prize 2019 has been awarded to all four of the shortlisted artists, in a shake-up similar to that of this year’s Booker Prize.  Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani made a joint request that the jury consider awarding them as a collective.  A letter to the jury from the artists said: “At this time of political crisis in Britain and much of the world, when there is already so much that divides and isolates people and communities, we feel very strongly motivated to use the occasion of the Prize to make a collective statement in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity – in art as in society.”  In recognition of the artists’ shared commitment to pressing social and political causes, the judges made the unanimous decision to honour the request and praised them for their commitment to “the collective power of art”.  The jury’s statement said: “At our meeting today, we were presented with the letter from the artists and unanimously took the decision to agree to their request. We are honoured to be supporting this bold statement of solidarity and collaboration in these divided times.  “Their symbolic act reflects the political and social poetics that we admire and value in their work.”  The work of the four artists ranges from explorations of oppression to pieces that blur the line between fact and fiction.  Beirut-based, British artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan describes himself as an “audio investigator” who gives performative lectures based on earwitness (as opposed to eyewitness) accounts from oppressed individuals.  Helen Cammock, who also works with visual media and spoken-word performances, looks at how historic and past events can be perceived differently when recounted by different people reading a variety of texts.  London-based artist Tai Shani organises performances and installations that offer a door into her gothic, surrealist worlds that blur truth and myth, with the intent of disrupting the white, western male perspective.  Her largest work to date, Semiramis, is a city of women built by women. It was formed of 12 characters inspired by Christine de Pizan’s 1405 proto-feminist text The Book of the City of Ladies, in which an allegorical city is inhabited by real and mythical women who are not distinguished from one another.  Colombian-British artist Oscar Murillo first caused a stir on the contemporary art scene six years ago, when one of his paintings fetched $401,000 at Phillips auction house in New York after being given an original estimate of $30,000. His work explores issues such as migration, community and exchange in a globalised world, drawing on his own personal history.  His canvases are often made with recycled materials, and Murillo has often involved his family and friends in his performances.  This year’s Turner Prize was presented by Edward Enninful, editor-in-chief of British Vogue, at a ceremony at Dreamland in Margate. The exhibition of the shortlisted artists at the Turner Contemporary continues until 12 January 2020. Entry is free.


thesun--2019-04-24--What is the London Marathon 2019 prize money what does the winner get and who has won the race in p

What is the London Marathon 2019 prize money, what does the winner get and who has won the race in previous years?

ONCE again, thousands of runners will take to the streets to test their physical endurance and raise money for charity in the London Marathon.  But for the professional athletes, there's a huge prize available for the first to cross the finish line of the gruelling 26 mile race. We reveal all...  THE prize for finishing in first place of either the male or female race at this year’s marathon is £39,000.  Second place receives £22,000 and third gets £16,000.  Overall, there is £121,000 on offer for the elite runners.  ANY runner in the men's race who runs a sub-2:05:00 time can get a share of  £70,000.  The same also goes for women who run sub 2:18:00.  A further £17,600 is awarded to anyone who wins the race in a record time.  And a total of £17,600 is awarded to first prize winners of the wheelchair races.  There is also now £100,260 on offer to placing wheelchair competitors overall.  THE London Marathon has been won by 20 runners representing the UK a total of 40 times.  But a number of athletes from around the world have also claimed victory.


thesun--2019-08-13--Who won The Greatest Dancer series 1 what is the prize and is there still time to apply for next ye

Who won The Greatest Dancer series 1, what is the prize and is there still time to apply for next year?

THE Greatest Dancer became an instant hit on BBC ONE when it premiered in January, providing a new form of Saturday entertainment for viewers across the nation.  And with the news that the show is expecting to return for a second series, you’re probably curious to know more. Here’s all that we know.  Ellie Ferguson is the 14-year-old contemporary dancer who was crowned the first winner of The Greatest Dancer.  Winning the first series has given her the chance to appear on Strictly Come Dancing as part of her prize, according to the Daily Mail.  And if that wasn’t enough, Ellie also won £50,000 for winning the series, but she reportedly planned on giving half of the amount to her dance teacher Jenni Inglis for helping her come so far.  “I want to give half of it to my dance teacher and I want to use it to help me get to dance school”, Ellie gushed.  Earlier in the series, Ellie had openly shared: “Dancing is everything to me. It takes up most of my life which I love because when I’m there I feel free and I enjoy it so much.  “I love all my dancing friends and teachers, we are more like a family. Dancing is my future.”  The winner of The Greatest Dancer is crowned with a trophy, £50,000 and a chance to perform on the forthcoming series of Strictly Come Dancing.  It’s strongly believed that this could potentially even lead to a full-time position as a Strictly pro - depending on the winner’s age.  Of course, that’s just a rumour, so we’ll see how far Ellie will go after she makes her Strictly debut.  Ellie has already said she will give half of her prize money to her dance teacher for all her support and encouragement, which ultimately helped her to win the show.  Unfortunately, if you planned to apply for the forthcoming series, you’re too late.  Applications were open until August 4, 2019, according to Telly Mix, which saw thousands of fans send in their auditions in the form of a YouTube video clip.  Soloists, groups and duos were all encouraged to apply as producers were on the hunt for even bigger and better talent for 2020.  The second series has already started filming its first scenes, with Curtis Pritchard joining the show as its new receptionist.


thesun--2019-10-10--Nobel Peace Prize winners – who won in 2018 and who else has taken the prize?

THE Nobel Peace Prize has been won by some of history's most famous and iconic figures like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and Barack Obama.  The award is one of five - including Chemistry, Literature, Physics and Medicine - set up by Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel.  Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018?  Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad have won the 2018 Nobel peace prize.  They were recognised for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon in war.  The committee said Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege had been “the foremost, most unifying symbol both nationally and internationally of the struggle to end sexual violence in war and armed conflict”.  Nadia Murad of the Yazidi minority in Iraq was captured by Isis, raped and subjected to other abuses. The committee said she showed “uncounted courage in recounting her own suffering”.  The winners are receiving their award today, December 10 in Oslo, Norway.  Who was in the running to win it?  Trump was second favourite to win the award at 5-2 following his historic handshake with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.  Jong-un was fancied at 4/6 to take the prize, sharing it with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in.  Others in the running for the prestigious peace prize included the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) at 16/1, Catalan politician Carles Puigdemont at 16/1, Angela Merkel at 9/4 and Pope Francis, also at 50/1.  Vladimir Putin would have landed you with 50/1 with Ladbrokes.  Ladbrokes odds for 2018 were as follows:  What is the Nobel Peace Prize?  According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".  Nobel, who died in 1896, never said why he chose peace as a category, but it is believed he was trying to compensate for his arms manufacture past.  The Nobel laureate receives a diploma, a medal, and about $1.5million.  This year's winner will be presented with the award in Oslo, Norway, in December.  It was given to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in 2017.  Who has won the Nobel Peace Prize?  The last 10 winners are:  2013: The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)  We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.


thetelegraph--2019-10-11--Ethiopia's Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize with a 'bridge of love' and an unorthodox approach

The Nobel Committee’s decision to award its Peace Prize to Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, marks a return to tradition.  Mr Abiy is a peacemaker of the old school. For starters, he has actually signed a peace deal, agreeing a treaty last year to end Ethiopia’s long-running border conflict with its neighbour Eritrea.  The war was a vicious one. Tens of thousands were killed, mostly in trench warfare, during the active phase of hostilities from 1998 to 2000.  Although the war subsequently evolved into a frozen conflict, fighting along the border flared up periodically and the animosity between the two states spread instability across the Horn of Africa.


eveningstandard--2019-11-13--Sexiest Man Alive winners: The 32 men who have won the People award from Mel Gibson to John Legend

Congratulations are in order for Chrissy Teigen's husband, John Legend, who has been named People's Sexiest Man Alive.  Teigen has already celebrated accordingly by changing her Twitter bio to "currently sleeping with People's sexiest man alive" and promptly tweeted, "the sexiest man alive just made me a ham sandwich."  To celebrate Legend's legendary win (he's already an EGOT winner, so now his awards shelf truly is complete), we've rounded up some of the most memorable - sexy is for you to decide, dear reader - winners from over the years, from the first ever (spoiler alert: it was a real doozy) to Legend's fellow Voice coaches.  Who could forget People's first ever Sexiest Man Alive? While the publication probably wishes they could, the cover lasts forever. In 1985, a 29-year-old Mel Gibson received the honor. Of course, this was many years before he was accused of going on anti-Semitic and misogynist rants. In fact, it was so long ago, he had yet to star in Braveheart, which came out a decade later. Back in the 80s, he was mostly known for Mad Max.  JFK Jr. was possibly the most deserving winner of the award. Sorry to Blake Shelton.  In the extremely 1980s article, which features plenty of thirst traps of the political progeny, a neighbor describes JFK Jr. by saying "He’s got an extremely good body."  This was before the Mission Impossible star was most famous for jumping on couches.  The Dirty Dancing star deserved the honor - I mean, have you seen him lift up Baby?  While this might seem like a surprising choice now, it made sense back in the day, according to People at least. The magazine explained his charm by describing him as a "big-lug Adonis with the heart of gold."  He won twice. Armie Hammer has never won at all.  Anyone who has seen Channing Tatum dance to 'Pony' would certainly agree. Unsurprisingly, Magic Mike, his movie about a male stripper with a heart of gold who just wants to do woodworking, came out the same year he won.  The Maroon 5 lead singer made the list back in 2013, proving that starring on The Voice is a surefire way to be deemed sexy by American women. Perhaps the show's host Carson Daley should win next year.  When Legend's fellow Voice judge Blake Shelton was voted People Magazine‘s Sexiest Man Alive, he told the magazine, “Y’all must be running out of people." It is a suitable reaction from an Oklahoma fellow who finds it acceptable behavior to wear jeans on the red carpet alongside his real stunner of a GF, Gwen Stefani.  In a well-deserved win, Elba took the award home last year. He described his journey to sexiness to the mag, saying, "I got picked on a little bit. But as soon as I could grow a mustache, I was the coolest kid on the block. Grew a mustache, had some muscles, bonkers.” Of course, the Cats trailer had yet to come out when this was announced...


theguardianuk--2019-11-24--Writing is tough. My book went so unnoticed I won an award for it | Ilka Tampke

Only standing naked under floodlights in the middle of a football stadium would feel more exposing than publishing a novel. In those first crucial weeks after the release date, the author is poised in nail-biting suspense, waiting to see if their creative baby will sink or swim. With sales data notoriously slow to arrive, how can you tell that your novel is not quite setting the world on fire?  The realisation usually comes slowly. First there is the conspicuous absence of reviews, publicity spots and invitations to literary festivals. Then there is the all-too-swift removal of your title from the glamorous New Release section of the bookstore, and its relegation to the densely packed Australian fiction shelves in the bowels of the shop. Lastly and most humiliatingly, you see that the single copy of your book has been turned perpendicular to the wall, now only visible by its spine. At this point you know your novel has lived its short, inglorious life and there will be only a few more spluttering sales before it passes into the annals of the entirely ignored.  Fiction writers are a sensitive bunch, and the porousness of our imaginations is often close cousin to a fragile ego. When people ask how our books are going, those of us who are not Trent Dalton affect a casual insouciance, shrug our shoulders and say, “I’m not sure really,” or “haven’t seen any figures yet”. Anything to avoid the awkward truth, which is: “The book to which I gave three years of my life and a small chunk of my soul has become the literary equivalent of a bespectacled girl sitting longingly on the bench at the school dance.”  So imagine my consternation when I was nominated for an award that broadcast to all the world (well, at least my modest number of followers on social media) that my book had been so unnoticed that it was worthy contender for the Most Underrated Book of 2019. How embarrassing. And not only for me. I avoided tweeting too loudly about it, in case my publicist felt bad, and thought she hadn’t done an awesome job (she had).  The reactions of my family and friends did nothing to bolster my spirits when I told them I’d been shortlisted. Responses ranged from, “Wait, is that a joke?” to my mother’s hushed silence, followed by, “I’m so sorry, darling.” Witty quips followed like, “better than being overrated” or “don’t underrate being underrated”. Then the mental cogs would slowly turn and they would say, “hey, that’s actually a good thing!”  And it is indeed a good thing. Because, jokes aside, this award is saying that my novel is worthy of more attention than it received. And that’s not embarrassing at all. In fact, it is one of the most heartening and galvanising things that a writer can hear.  Very few writers are motivated solely by the desire for recognition. It is lovely if it happens, but it cannot be the reason we sit down every day to stare at a screen and be immersed for hours in the soup of our thoughts. Most of us are motivated by the power of an idea, an image, a character, a world, a moral conundrum. This engages our imagination so deeply that we are willing to stay with it for the years it may take to find its most artful expression. In my case, the idea was about the powerful, animistic tribes of ancient Britain and their passionate war against Roman invasion.  The completion of a novel brings an end to the creative relationship we have with our idea, but publication gives it a chance to be sustained in the imagination of readers. This is what fuels a fiction writer: the ongoing life of the ideas we love. The saddest thing about a book failing to reach an audience is not the wound to the ego, but the ending of the conversation.  The gift of the Most Underrated Book Award is that it gives my idea a second life. It says that the conversation begun by my book is worth continuing. It is a quietly handsome, yet sensitive man, walking over and finally asking my bespectacled girl to dance.  I have read my fellow shortlistees and am delighted to have had their work brought to my attention. In an industry that is fiercely competitive, it is a reminder to practice mindfulness, to make the time to notice what has fallen through the cracks of publishing hype. To remind ourselves that listening to the quiet voices can be deeply rewarding.  I’m not sure whether being officially underrated will mean my book gets turned cover-out on bookshelves. But it does mean that I sit down at my desk each day with renewed motivation and a willingness to don my taffeta ball dress all over again. Don’t underrate being underrated. • Ilka Tampke’s novel Songwoman came out last year through Text Publishing and won the Most Underrated Book Award at this year’s SPN Independent Publishing Conference


theindependent--2019-01-31--Diana Athill literary editor and novelist whose memoir won the Costa Award for biography aged 91

Diana Athill: literary editor and novelist whose memoir won the Costa Award for biography aged 91

The renowned literary editor Diana Athill worked with some of the finest writers of the 20th century, including Margaret Atwood and John Updike – before establishing herself as an award-winning memoirist of love, sex, childhood and ageing.  Athill, who has died aged 101, was very much the grande dame of British letters. She spent much of her career as a literary midwife, working with writers to turn rough drafts into bound books. Raised in privilege on a Georgian estate in the Norfolk countryside, she worked at the BBC during the Second World War before helping her friend and former lover André Deutsch, a Hungarian emigrant, establish the independent publishing house that bore his name.  Originally known as Allan Wingate, the firm came to prominence in 1949 publishing Norman Mailer’s expletive-filled novel The Naked and the Dead, which rendered a certain four-letter word as “fug” and was briefly held up by a court injunction. Re-christened André Deutsch Ltd, the publishing house went on to release works by Brian Moore, VS Naipaul and Mordecai Richler before anyone else, and was the first British publisher of Atwood, Philip Roth and Updike.  Its editorial decisions were guided in large part by Athill, who was known for her deft touch with manuscripts and authors who also included Jack Kerouac, Molly Keane and Jean Rhys, who was struggling with alcoholism and debt when Athill helped her complete her 1966 masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea.  But her disciplined approach to editing was matched by an unconventional personal life, in which Athill maintained a slew of romantic relationships with married men and some of her own writers. Being “the other woman”, she said, “was what I was best at” – a state of being that offered her “love with all the plums and none of the pudding”.  Athill’s romantic life and celebrated editing career served as twin threads in her eight memoirs, works of unsentimental, crystalline prose that earned her a devoted audience in recent years, even as they shocked some readers who expected more demure material from a nonagenarian writer.  Romance, she wrote, had been at the centre of her life since the age of four, when she spied the brown-eyed “gardener’s boy” from a bathroom window and, in a childish effort to draw his attention, spat on his head. “He felt it, looked up, those beautiful brown eyes met mine – and I shot out of the lavatory, scarlet and breathless with excitement,” Athill later wrote. “After which I was never, so far as I can remember, out of love.”  Her first memoir, Instead of a Letter (1962), centred on her engagement to Tony Irvine, an Oxford student she met aged 15 when he was tutoring her younger brother. The two later became engaged, but after he was posted to Egypt as a pilot during the war, Tony – dubbed “Paul” in the book – went two years without answering her letters. Eventually he told her he was marrying someone else, and he died when his plane crashed in Greece.  “My soul shrank to the size of a pea,” Athill wrote. For two decades, she said, she felt unworthy of love, devoid of joy even as her editing career took off. “If at any time during those 20 years someone had stopped me and said, ‘What is the truth about your life?,’ I would have said, ‘It’s a failure’,” she told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.  She bolstered her confidence by writing after work, following Rhys’s suggestion that writers had to be totally honest about their experiences. After a few short stories she completed Instead of a Letter in a rush that left her invigorated, even as it scandalised her button-down mother.  “The reader feels that what he is reading is as true a portrait of the writer and her experience as any words on paper can achieve,” journalist and literary editor Ian Jack later wrote in The Guardian. Athill, he added, “opened up what could have been a narrow story of injury and self-absorption into a book that takes pleasure in the world.”  Athill’s subsequent memoirs drew similar praise but generally attained only a cult following. That changed in her early nineties, when she received a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Costa Award for biography for 2009’s Somewhere Towards the End.  A frank memoir of old age, it was a bestseller and made the elegant, white-haired Athill a literary star. The book was inspired by a realisation that memoirs, including several of her own, tended to focus on youth; there were few books, she said, about growing old.  “There are no lessons to be learned, no discoveries to be made, no solutions to offer,” she concluded. “I find myself left with nothing but a few random thoughts. One of them is that from up here I can look back and see that although a human life is less than the blink of an eyelid in terms of the universe, within its own framework it is amazingly capacious so that it can contain many opposites. One life can contain serenity and tumult, heartbreak and happiness, coldness and warmth, grabbing and giving – and also more particular opposites such as a neurotic conviction that one is a flop and a consciousness of success amounting to smugness.”  The oldest of five children, Diana Athill was born in London in 1917, during a Zeppelin raid. Her father served in the army, and her mother was a homemaker who suffered a nervous breakdown after having an affair, Athill said.  Raised at Ditchingham Hall, her grandmother’s estate in Norfolk, she went on to read English at Oxford, graduating in 1939. She met Deutsch at a party after the war, and they worked together for nearly 50 years. The publishing company they built together is now an imprint of Carlton Publishing Group.  Athill’s other books included a novel and story collection, as well as two memoirs: After a Funeral (1986), about her friendship and love affair with Egyptian writer Waguih Ghali, who committed suicide in her apartment in 1969; and Make Believe: A True Story (1993), about her relationship with African-American writer Hakim Jamal, a disciple of Malcolm X who was murdered in 1973.  After retiring from editing, she wrote Stet: An Editor’s Life (2000), Yesterday Morning (2002), a recollection of her childhood, and Alive, Alive Oh! (2015), which described a miscarriage that nearly killed her when she was 43, as well as her painful decision to move into an old people’s home at 91.  She never married, but spent four decades living with, and eventually caring for, Barry Reckord, a Jamaican playwright she often described as her lodger. He died in 2011.


theverge--2019-01-08--A womens sex toy won an award from CES until they stole it back

A women’s sex toy won an award from CES, until they stole it back

The sex toy company Lora DiCarlo had planned to present its debut product at CES this week alongside a plaque for winning one of the show’s Innovation Awards. But neither of those things happened — the organizers behind CES revoked the award and the company’s ability to exhibit at the show, then gave a bunch of ridiculous reasons for why it happened.  Lora DiCarlo’s first product, the Osé Robotic Massager, won the “honoree” designation in the robotics and drones category of the CES Innovation Awards, according to the company’s founder, Lora Haddock. The awards are supposed to be determined by an independent panel that ranks a series of products, with any product that gets a high enough score becoming an honoree.  Sex tech has been at CES for years  But after ranking high enough and winning the designation, Lora DiCarlo was apparently told that its product didn’t comply with the rules. The show’s and award’s organizer, the Consumer Technology Association, allegedly cited rules saying products that are “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image will be disqualified.” It then backtracked and said the product simply didn’t fit in the robotics and drones category.  CES has long failed to include and represent women. While organizers have slowly come around to prohibiting companies from hiring “booth babes,” the show didn’t feature any women as keynote speakers during its past two years (two were later added in 2018 after criticism) and just one-fifth of 2018’s attendees were women. Mashable wrote last January that “CES still fuels the sexist narratives so many have worked to change over the last year.”  Having Lora DiCarlo at the show would have helped. The company is founded by and almost exclusively run by women. Its massager is also designed for women.  CTA spokesperson Sarah Brown said in an email that the award was revoked because “the product does not fit into any of our existing product categories and should not have been accepted for the Innovation Awards Program.” Brown also told TechCrunch that the company isn’t allowed to exhibit “because they don’t fit a product category.” We’ve asked for clarification on why other sex tech companies are allowed to exhibit, but haven’t received a response.  This controversy is absurd for a handful of reasons. For one, sex toys and sex tech have regularly been featured at CES. One CES event in 2016 featured an oral sex simulating device, the company OhMiBod has shown its sex toys for years, and the film producer Naughty America has even been able to show private VR demoes. On top of that, CES’s Innovation Awards are borderline meaningless — walking around the show floor, it can seem like every exhibitor has one, and it’s surprising to hear that the CTA takes any real oversight whatsoever when distributing the awards.  But most of all, it’s just a foolish move for an association that ought to be promoting inclusivity in tech. This morning, the Consumer Technology Association even opened a $10 million venture fund focused on “women, people of color, and other underrepresented startups and entrepreneurs” to help improve representation. The CTA ought to take a harder look at its flagship trade show, too.


eveningstandard--2019-01-14--TS Eliot Prize awarded to Hannah Sullivan for aposastonishing debutapos Three Poems

TS Eliot Prize awarded to Hannah Sullivan for 'astonishing debut' Three Poems

Hannah Sullivan has been named the winner of the 2018 TS Eliot Prize.  She picked up the £25,000 prize for her debut collection, Three Poems, which was described by the judges as “astonishing”.  Sinead Morrissey, who was this year’s Chair of the Judges, said that the collection “[challenges] the parameters of what poetry can do.”  “Her collection stood out even amongst this year’s outstanding and diverse shortlist. Rarely has such a significant poet arrived so fully-formed,” she said.  Morrissey, who won the TS Eliot Prize herself in 2013, announced the winner at a special ceremony at the Wallace Collection. It followed from a night of readings at the Southbank Centre, where all ten poets read from their work in the Royal Festival Hall.  Sullivan’s collection consists of three long-form poems that manage to feel both epic and intimate, with youth, motherhood, death and philosophy among in its themes.  She also works as a Professor of English at the University of Oxford, where she has won awards for her academic research into modernist approaches to literary style.  Of the ten collections shortlisted for this year’s prize, five were for debuts; as well as Sullivan, these were Richard Scott’s Soho, Zaffar Kunial’s Us, Fiona Moore’s The Distal Point and Phoebe Power’s Shrines of Upper Austria.  Also shortlisted were Nick Laird’s Feel Free, Sean O’Brien’s Europa, Tracy K Smith’s Wade in the Water, Terrance Hayes’ American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin and Ailbhe Darcy’s Insistence.  Each shortlisted poet receives £1,500 in recognition for their achievement. This, as well as the winner’s prize money, is award by the TS Eliot Foundation.  Sullivan’s win marks the second year in a row that a debut collection has won the prize; last year it went to Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong for his first collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds.


channel4uk--2019-04-09--D-Day switchboard operator to be awarded Legion dhonneur at 92

D-Day switchboard operator to be awarded Legion d’honneur at 92

In June it will be 75 years since the D-Day landings. As part of the commemorations in Normandy, one 92-year-old Londoner will be given France’s highest military order of merit for her role in the communications HQ that co-ordinated the invasion to liberate western Europe from the Nazis.  We went to meet her at her south London home, and started by asking what exactly her role was.


democracynow--2019-10-14--Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed, Awarded Nobel Prize, Celebrated for "Remarkable Change" in Horn of Africa

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the 100th Nobel Peace Prize in an announcement Friday morning. The prime minister last year helped broker a historic peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea, where leaders of the neighboring countries signed a “Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship” and declared an end to nearly two decades of a “state of war” that lasted from 1998 to 2000 and killed 70,000 people. Soon after the peace declaration was signed, the first direct flights between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 20 years took off from Addis Ababa, headed to Eritrea’s capital Asmara. Ahmed has also lifted the state of emergency, released thousands of political dissidents from prison and appointed women to a record 50% of cabinet positions. We speak with Awol Allo, an associate professor at the Keele University School of Law in the U.K. His recent article for Al Jazeera is titled “Why I nominated Abiy Ahmed for the Nobel Peace Prize.”


eveningstandard--2019-04-06--Parsons Green Tube bomb Army hero awarded Queenaposs honour for bravery after rushing into afterm

Parsons Green Tube bomb: Army hero awarded Queen's honour for bravery after rushing into aftermath of attack

An Army officer who rushed into the aftermath of the Parsons Green tube bombing has been awarded an honour for bravery.  Lieutenant Colonel Craig Palmer, 50, ran towards the explosion on the District Line train in London on September 15 2017 and his bravery helped bring the terrorist attacker to justice.  The married father-of-three, who was awarded a Queen's Commendation for Bravery, is among several soldiers to be handed honours, the Ministry of Defence has announced.  Lt Col Palmer, originally from Fairfield, Stockton-on-Tees, was two carriages from the bomb planted by Iraqi asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan, 18, who has since been jailed for life.  He said: "As the train came in to Parson's Green there was a flash and a commotion and lots of screams and people came charging down the platform running for the exits, but my instinct was to stand-fast."  The Royal Regiment of Artillery officer, who has been in the forces for more than 26 years, said previous terror attacks, including at Westminster Bridge, combined with his military experience, had "conditioned" him to act.  He said: "I couldn't see a terrorist, but I could see what I thought was a burning bomb and realised the terrorist must be on the run.  "I saw horrified people, school children, all running past me - and from my previous operational experience I knew that the first few moments after any incidents are crucial to gathering evidence.  "So I went into the carriage, there was no one else there, and I could see that there was a bomb in a Lidl carrier bag on the floor, so I took three pictures of it on my phone and left the carriage straight away to let the police know what I'd seen.  "It was still venting fumes and could have gone off at any moment. It was a calculated risk - army officers are in the business of taking such risks, and I thought there's a 50/50 chance that if it goes off I die."  Lt Col Palmer, whose award is for non-operation gallantry, later gave evidence at the trial which led to Hassan's conviction.  Others honoured include Acting Lance Corporal Jacob Francis Campbell Fisher, who was given a Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service.  He saved the lives of several Somali soldiers after an open-backed truck accident on February 25 2018, when he was part of an operation to train troops in the African country.  The then "inexperienced" Combat Medical Technician, from the Royal Army Medical Corps, "took ownership" of the situation as nine Somali troops received life-saving treatment, and there were no fatalities.  Lance Corporal Lewis Staton, 30, who also served in Somalia, was awarded an MBE for his work in a team training the Ethiopian National Defence Force and other soldiers from the African United Mission.  The father-of-two, from Wirral, Merseyside, who is in the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, said receiving the honour "still hasn't sunk in".  Staff Sergeant Patrick Robert Jean Lia, from the Corps of Royal Engineers, and Colonel Sion Duncan Walker, a Reservist, were both given a Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service.


eveningstandard--2019-12-10--Richard Curtis and Sting to be awarded first Global Citizen Prizes at Royal Albert Hall

Richard Curtis and Sting are to be awarded the first Global Citizen Prizes at a huge event featuring stars from Stormzy to John Legend at the Royal Albert Hall.  Global Citizen is an international advocacy group on a mission to end world poverty by 2030. It supports sustainable development goals set by the United Nations.  Love Actually director Richard Curtis will be named “Global Citizen of the Year”, in recognition of his “exceptional and sustained impact towards the goal of ending extreme poverty” through his work with charity Comic Relief and Live 8. Sting will be awarded the “Artist of the Year” prize for his long-term work championing saving the rainforest through his Rainforest Foundation, co-founded by the 17-time Grammy-award winner in 1989.  They will be presented their awards - cash prizes of $150,000, which will be donated to charity - on Friday evening by a host of stars including Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, 12 Years A Slave star Chiwetel Ejiofor, Yesterday actor Himesh Patel, Connie Britton, Leona Lewis, and Kal Penn.  The evening, to be filmed and televised before Christmas, will feature headline performances from John Legend and Stormzy, and appearances from acts including Jorja Smith, Chris Martin and Jennifer Hudson.  With these prizes Global Citizen, which was founded in New York in 2012, wants to recognise the world leaders, business leaders, artists and youth activists who have made a real impact on tackling worldwide poverty through their work.  Director and producer Curtis, who lives in London, told the Standard young people today inspire him to believe Global Citizens’ aims can be achieved.  He said: “Now the younger people are setting up movements, starting things… There are brilliant things going on all around.”  The World Leader winner will be Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Amina J. Mohammed, and “Business Leader” Hamdi Ulukaya, Founder and CEO of Choban.  The evening will be broadcast on SKY at 7pm on Saturday 21 December.


newsweek--2019-01-09--Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Awarded Jewish Nobel Prize Vows to Step up Fight Against Anti-Semitis

Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Awarded 'Jewish Nobel' Prize, Vows to Step up Fight Against Anti-Semitism

Robert Kraft has vowed to step up his fight against anti-Semitism after winning the Genesis Prize. The $1 million award, colloquially referred to as the "Jewish Nobel prize," was awarded to the New England Patriots owner for his charitable efforts and donations towards the Jewish community.  “This award amplifies my ability to raise both awareness and additional funds to fight anti-Semitism, attempts to de-legitimize Israel and other forms of prejudices,” the 77-year-old said in an acceptance speech, as reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.  Launched in 2013 by The Genesis Prize Foundation, the award is granted each year to a person recognized as an inspiration to the next generation of Jews “through their outstanding professional achievement along with their commitment to Jewish values and the Jewish people.”  It has previously been awarded to artist Anish Kapoor, violinist Itzhak Perlman, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Hollywood star Michael Douglas.  "I am honored to receive the Genesis Prize and thank the Genesis Prize Foundation for its recognition and willingness to direct my prize money to such worthy causes," said Kraft, as reported by The Boston Globe.  "It is important that we continue to support organizations that focus on combating prejudices by building bridges and uniting people of different backgrounds."  The 77-year-old, who will receive the award at a gala in Jerusalem in June, was described as “one of the world’s most generous philanthropists” by Genesis Prize chairman and co-founder Stan Polovets.  The Patriots owner grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Brookline, Massachusetts, before developing into one of the most successful businessmen in the world. Last year, Kraft ranked 79th on the Forbes list of the wealthiest men in America, with a fortune of approximately $6.6 billion.  A long-time supporter of Israel, Kraft has donated to various causes in the country and is close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to personally hand him the award later this year.  A Patriots season ticket holder since 1971, Kraft bought the franchise in 1994 for $172 million, six years after his first bid for the organization had been turned down.  Under his ownership, the Patriots have developed into one of the most successful and recognizable teams in the world and are now worth $3.7 billion.  On the field, the Patriots have built one of the most famous NFL dynasties, winning five Super Bowls since Bill Belichick was appointed head coach in 2000.  Tom Brady was drafted in the same season and the duo have masterminded an era of almost unprecedented dominance. Last month, the Patriots won a 10th consecutive AFC East title. On Sunday they face the Los Angeles Chargers in the AFC Divisional Round looking to reach the AFC Championship game for the eight consecutive season.


newyorkpost--2019-10-10--Peter Handke, Olga Tokarczuk awarded Nobel Prizes in Literature

The 2018 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life,” while the 2019 prize went to Austrian author Peter Handke.  Mats Malm, the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, says Handke was honored “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.”  The shortlist was made of eight names of which two were picked for the 2018 and 2019 awards, said Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy.  With the glory comes a 9-million kronor ($918,000) cash award to be shared a gold medal and a diploma. The laureates receive them at an elegant ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10 the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896 together with five other Nobel winners. The sixth one, the peace prize, is handed out in Oslo, Norway on the same day.


newyorkpost--2019-10-11--Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed awarded 2019 Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway — The 2019 Nobel Peace has been awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.  Ahmed was cited for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea.  Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chairwoman of the five-member Norwegian Nobel Institute that awards the Nobel Peace Prize said Ahmed was named for his moves to end his country’s conflict with next door Eritrea within months of coming to office in 2018. He signed a “Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship,” with Eritrean Prime Minister Isaias Afwerki.  Within the Nobel Peace Prize there is a long history of prizes going to statesmen associated with ending conflicts, most recently Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos who was awarded the prize in 2016 for helping to bring his country’s 50-year civil war to an end.


newyorkpost--2019-12-27--Sam Mendes will be awarded knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II

That’s “Sir Sam,” if you please.  Director Sam Mendes, whose World War I film “1917” is causing serious Oscar buzz, is being awarded a knighthood in the latest round of honors handed out by Queen Elizabeth II. Mendes is being recognized for “services to drama” in the annual New Year’s Honors List.  The knighthood means that Mendes should formally be addressed as “Sir Sam,” following the feudal protocol that still remains part of British pomp and pageantry.  Mendes won an Academy Award in 2000 for his direction of “American Beauty.” More recently, he helmed the two recent James Bond outings “Skyfall” and “Spectre,” both of which were blockbusters at the global box office.  His new film, “1917,” was inspired by stories told him of the Great War by his grandfather. In a piece of bravura filmmaking, the movie appears to follow its protagonists, two young soldiers in the trenches, in one continuous take. The film stars Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay.  Mendes is also an accomplished theater director. “The Lehman Trilogy” and “The Ferryman” both transferred from London to New York.  Another Oscar winner receiving a knighthood in the New Year’s Honors List, which was unveiled Friday, is playwright Christopher Hampton, best known for his theatrical adaptation of the novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” He also adapted it into the movie “Dangerous Liaisons,” starring Glenn Close, which garnered Hampton the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay in 1989. He was also nominated for best adapted screenplay in 2008 for “Atonement,” based on the novel by Ian McEwan.  Singer Olivia Newton-John was awarded a damehood, the equivalent of a knighthood for women, for her services to charity. The “Grease” star has been active in campaigning for a cure for breast cancer.


powerlineblog--2019-11-18--Claremont Awarded National Humanities Medal

The White House announced today the forthcoming recipients of the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal, and one recipient stands out:  The Claremont Institute for championing the Nation’s founding principles and enriching American minds. Its publications and public events have deepened our understanding and appreciation of American freedom, democracy, justice, and rule of law.  The Claremont Institute is only the second think tank ever awarded the National Humanities Medal, and it is much deserved. The Institute issued a statement of appreciation this afternoon:  “We are humbled by this honor and grateful to President Trump and NEH Chairman Peede,” said Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams. “The medal is more than anything a testament to 40 years of teaching and writing about the history and intellectual traditions of the American founding and their application to our politics today—and to our teachers, students, staff, and supporters whose dedication these past four decades has been essential to our work, success, and most importantly, to promoting and defending American greatness.”  Congratulations to our friends out in Claremont.


npr--2019-06-25--Medal Of Honor Awarded To Iraq War Veteran

President Donald Trump presents the Medal of Honor to retired Army Staff Sgt. David Bellavia in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday. Bellavia received the award for conspicuous gallantry while serving in support of Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004. **Alex Brandon/AP** ****hide caption****  ****toggle caption****  Alex Brandon/AP  President Donald Trump presents the Medal of Honor to retired Army Staff Sgt. David Bellavia in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday. Bellavia received the award for conspicuous gallantry while serving in support of Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004.  Alex Brandon/AP  In 2004, on the day he turned 29, then-Army Staff Sgt. David Bellavia charged into a darkened house in Fallujah, Iraq and fired his weapon at lurking insurgents as the squad he led scrambled outside.  "Staff Sgt. Bellavia single-handedly saved an entire squad, risking his own life to allow his fellow soldiers to break contact and reorganize when trapped by overwhelming insurgent fire."  So reads the U.S. Army [official narrative](https://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/bellavia/?oc) of the battle that first earned Bellavia a Silver Star medal, the military's third most distinguished decoration.  On Tuesday, at a White House ceremony, that distinction was upgraded to the nation's highest military award for valor, the [Medal of Honor](https://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/).  Before draping the medal around Bellavia's neck, President Trump praised him for defying almost certain death to free squad members trapped by enemy fire.  "Alone in the dark, David killed four insurgents and seriously wounded the fifth," Trump declared, "saving his soldiers and facing down the enemies of civilization."  The medal was a turn of events Bellavia says he had no role in bringing about.  "Fifteen years goes by and you move on with your life, you put the war behind you," says the 43-year-old resident of western New York state. "You focus on your family, you focus on work, and, you know, my life was 100 percent perfect without a valor award of any type."  "Honestly," he adds, "I always considered my award just being able to come home."  Bellavia's company commander, Army Col. Doug Walter, says it was he who pushed since 2005 for the upgrade of Bellavia's Silver Star.  "I'm not sure why or how or what the reasoning was that it was looked at again," Walter says of the decision to boost Bellavia's battle award to the Medal of Honor. "I'm glad that it was and I think it demonstrates, at least in this case, the system works."  Bellavia's award upgrade to the Medal of Honor is the fifth of its kind to be made under a three-year [Pentagon review](https://www.ngaus.org/about- ngaus/newsroom/review-valor-awards-become-automatic) of valor awards involving post-9/11 conflicts. He is also the first living Iraq war veteran to receive the prestigious medal; [five others](https://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/citations29.html) who also fought there were awarded theirs posthumously.  The battle in which Bellavia's actions won him the military's top decoration was part of [Operation Phantom Fury](https://www.army.mil/article/178601/november_2004_into_the_hot_zone_at_the_second_battle_of_fallujah), popularly known as the Second Battle of Fallujah. It was a second attempt by U.S., British and Iraqi forces to seize control of the city of 360,000 that was an insurgent stronghold.  **The battle**  Bellavia and his squad had been searching an abandoned block of houses for a half-dozen or more insurgents believed to be hiding out in the area.  The first nine houses they entered produced only stashed weapons. Inside the tenth house, they were met by a blast of machine gun fire from two insurgents hiding under the stairwell.  Bellavia's troops were trapped inside the house and in mortal peril. He heard their screams as they were hit by bullets and shattered glass.  "A light switch went off," Bellavia said. "I wanted that revenge. I wanted to be that leader that I promised I would be."  Because his own gun had been disabled by an enemy bullet, Bellavia grabbed a heavier weapon - an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon gun, which he fired at the insurgents, giving cover to his troops as they escaped to the street.  "I just want to tell you that were it not for David Bellavia, I wouldn't be sitting here today," says now-retired Sgt. 1st Class Colin Fitts. "We couldn't get out. We couldn't do anything. We were stuck there and I had to ask David to help me out, and he did that - he put himself in the line of that fire and laid down a base of fire, overwhelmed the enemy long enough for me to get myself and the members of my squad out."  Bellavia too left the house. But when he noticed an insurgent inside with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, he went back in to prevent it from being used.  "To protect the platoon and members of his squad, David Bellavia had to go back in to a darkened nightmare of a house where he knew there was at least five or six jihadis waiting," says [Michael Ware](http://www.mickware.info/), an Australian journalist who embedded with Bellavia's squad in Fallujuah.  "I had the privilege to actually witness a Medal of Honor moment," Ware adds. "To see a man perform such an act of valor that it was humbling to behold."  Ware filmed that moment, which appears in _[Only the Dead](https://www.netflix.com/title/80075824)_ , his acclaimed 2015 documentary about reporting from war-torn Iraq.  Bellavia says that episode changed his views on war journalists, whom he'd previously considered "100 percent a nuisance and without any purpose on the battlefield."  "Without men and women who do this job, America will never know what we do. It will go unremarked," he says. "Our families would never know, our citizens would never know the sacrifice that goes on. I never saw that as a soldier and as a civilian I see it."  After six years in the Army, Bellavia retired in 2005. In 2007, he published a book about the Fallujah battle, titled _[House to House](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/House-to-House/David- Bellavia/9781416546979)_. Bellavia now has his own daily talk show on [WBEN News Radio](https://www.facebook.com/WBEN930/) in Buffalo, N.Y., sharing its airwaves with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity.  Bellavia speaks with pride and a touch of defiance about having fought in what was possibly the bloodiest battle of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.  "We have nothing to apologize for. We serve our country. We do what our leaders tell us to do," he says. "The narrative on the Iraq War has long been written. I'm not here to change anyone's mind. I'm here to tell you that there are men and women who have served their country in Iraq, and...it is one of the honors of my life to be a part of that."


slate--2019-10-11--Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali. The 43-year-old former intelligence officer came to power in April 2018 and undertook ambitious democratic reforms, including lifting bans on opposition political parties and media outlets, releasing thousands of political prisoners, and bringing to an end the country’s state of emergency. Abiy is seen as having a unique ability to traverse the country’s ethnic and religious divides because of his mixed Christian and Muslim background and fluency in three of the country’s primary languages. The changes made under Abiy’s regime have set the stage for the country, Africa’s second most populous, to hold its first free, multiparty elections next year. The committee acknowledged the strides made domestically during Abiy’s short tenure, but stressed the importance of his leadership in ending a decades-long standoff with neighbor Eritrea following a bloody 1998-2000 border war.  “When Abiy Ahmed became Prime Minister in April 2018, he made it clear that he wished to resume peace talks with Eritrea,” the committee said in a statement. “In close cooperation with Isaias Afwerki, the President of Eritrea, Abiy Ahmed quickly worked out the principles of a peace agreement to end the long ‘no peace, no war’ stalemate between the two countries… An important premise for the breakthrough was Abiy Ahmed’s unconditional willingness to accept the arbitration ruling of an international boundary commission in 2002.”  The peace deal reestablished diplomatic ties between the two countries, as well as everyday bonds, like phone lines and flights between the two sides that share ethnic and cultural bonds. “In the days that followed this breakthrough, some Ethiopians called Eritrean numbers randomly, and vice versa, just to speak to someone on the other side, simply because they could. Others tracked down parents, siblings and friends,” the New York Times notes. “When the first commercial Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to the Eritrean capital, Asmara, landed on July 18 last year, passengers stepping off the plane fell to their knees and kissed the ground. Two sisters separated from their father in the war, stuck on opposite sides of the border, embraced him for the first time after 20 years of growing up without him.”  Some other contenders for the 2019 prize were 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, the pro-Democracy activists in Hong Kong, and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for her response to the Christchurch shooting.


sputnik--2019-12-20--First Black Hole Image Awarded ‘Breakthrough of the Year’ by Science Journal

The first image of a black hole, which astronomers captured earlier this year, was awarded the “Breakthrough of the Year” award by the prestigious Science journal.  In order to capture the image, astronomers rigged the Event Horizon Telescope – a ‘virtual telescope,’ or a network of multiple satellites and the cooperation of some 200 scientists around the world, the Daily Mail said. The image of the black hole, located 55 million light-years from Earth, at the center of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy, was published on 10 April this year.  While it is impossible to make a photo of a black hole itself - because light does not escape its gravity well - a black hole is surrounded by a disc of matter which emits very strong electromagnetic energy as it is consumed by black hole’s gravitational pull. This disc, known as an accretion disk, shines brightly in a radio telescopic spectrum, allowing us to ‘see’ the black hole.  The amazing part about the image of a black hole and the accretion disk is that the massive object’s gravitational pull is so strong that it bends and distorts the space around it in wild ways, so that we see both the front and the back of the black hole and the accretion disk at the same time.  Ahead of the photo’s publication, science- and technology-focused YouTube channel Veritasium provided a simple model of a black hole and explained how gravity bends the space around the black hole and why the image looks like it does: with lower part of the accretion disk significantly thicker and brighter than the upper.  The scientific significance of the image lies in the fact that before this photo was taken, black holes remained a theoretical possibility predicted solely by Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. What was discovered initially as a solution to equations has been captured as a real physical object for the first time.  Roger Blandford, a Stanford University astrophysicist, said that while the image was indeed a major breakthrough, astronomers will push forward to procure more images with vastly increased resolution.


tass--2019-01-29--Suntech Awarded Top Brand PV Seal in Europe from EuPD Research

Suntech Awarded "Top Brand PV" Seal in Europe from EuPD Research

WUXI, China, Jan. 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently, EuPD Research announced that Suntech has been awarded the "Top Brand PV" honor in Europe.  Since the expiry of the "MIP" in the EU, the competition of the PV industry in Europe has increased. Suntech was awarded the "Top Brand PV,"  which is not only the recognition of top market performance in 2018, but also the brand satisfaction and loyalty in Europe.  EuPD Research plays an important role in the PV industry, and the company is known for providing authoritative market intelligence for the new-energy industry. Therefore, many new-energy enterprises regard its analysis as a weather vane for business development. The winner of the "Top Brand PV" honor is chosen through two steps: firstly, a multilevel process of surveys and scientific analysis among mainstream installers and intermediaries for PV power stations is conducted; and secondly, manufacturers with outstanding performance in multiple dimensions, including brand satisfaction, brand loyalty, product quality and distribution, are chosen.  In recent years, Suntech was awarded "Top Brand PV" seals in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. At the beginning of 2019, Suntech was awarded the "Top Brand PV" seals again in Switzerland, Italy, Netherlands, France and Australia. All of the survey respondents are installers and distributors from mature markets, a testament to Suntech's reliable product quality and strong market reputation.  In 2018, Suntech had good performance in global markets including India, Australia, and Mexico. In Eastern Europe and Western Asia, implementing the "Global & Local" market-development strategy, Suntech also worked closely with local partners and gradually established local distribution systems and achieved good performance. Compared to 2017, Suntech's overseas shipments in 2018 grew by 100%. Based on the good performance in overseas markets in 2018, Suntech will further optimize overseas distribution and expand its overseas markets in 2019.  The "Top Brand PV" honor means a lot to Suntech. It not only affirms Suntech's continuous efforts in overseas markets over 18 years, but also sets a foundation for Suntech's future development in overseas markets.    CONTACT: Chen Tianheng, +86-135-8509-7646


tass--2019-05-18--Five Russian defense industry companies awarded at MILEX 2019 arms show

MINSK, May 18 /TASS/. Five Russian defense industrial companies led by Russia’s state arms exporter Rosoboronexport have received awards at the MILEX 2019 international arms show in Minsk, Belarus.  The award ceremony took place on Saturday at the closing ceremony of the exhibition at the Minsk-Arena.  "We award our partners from Rosoboronexport company, Russian Federation, for the uniqueness of their exhibits presented at the show," the event organizers announced.  Alongside with Rosoboronexport diplomas and honorary marks were awarded to the High-Precision Systems (Vysokotochniye Komplesky), Almaz-Antey, Uralvagonzavod and Techmash companies.  The MILEX 2019 international arms show was held in Minsk from May 15 to May 18.  In other media


tass--2019-06-25--Infortrends EonStor GSc Hybrid Cloud Storage Is Awarded Product of the Year

Infortrend's EonStor GSc Hybrid Cloud Storage Is Awarded "Product of the Year"

NEW TAIPEI CITY, Taiwan, June 25, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Infortrend® Technology, Inc. (TWSE: 2495) is honored to announce that EonStor GSc hybrid cloud storage has been awarded with "Storage Product of the Year" and "Cloud Enabler of the Year" of 2019 by Storage Magazine in UK, beating off competition from other tier 1 suppliers.  "We saw an unprecedented amount of support for the EonStor GSc in the build up to the event. Its unified approach and always-on features really resonated with our audience. I would like to congratulate all at Infortrend for their win," said Stuart Leigh, Director of Storage Awards. Held in London, UK, the Storage Awards is a premier ceremony that attracts over 300 storage industry professionals.  This great win comes after being named as one of the"Top 10 Cloud Solution Providers" by CIO Applications Europe, proving Infortrend's cloud innovation are once again recognized by industry professionals.  The winning product, EonStor GSc family, is an enterprise-level storage system designed to streamline cloud deployment and access by moving and managing data between local and cloud. EonStor GSc's superior performance and easy-to-deploy features have made it as the fastest growing product in the European market.  Victor Chiang, General Manager of Infortrend Europe Ltd explains: "We are thrilled to receive not just one, but two prestigious awards, and we're privileged to be one of very few vendors to be given such recognition on the night. Both awards are proof of our potential in the storage industry and are a testament to the hard work that we have all been putting in over the last 12 months. Our team throughout the EU should be proud of themselves and we'll all continue to focus and thrive on becoming the go-to vendor for storage."  Infortrend (TWSE: 2495) has been developing and manufacturing storage solutions since 1993. With a strong emphasis on in-house design, testing, and manufacturing, Infortrend storage delivers performance and scalability with the latest standards, user friendly data services, personal after-sales support, and unrivaled value. For more Information, please visit www.infortrend.com  Infortrend® and EonStor® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Infortrend Technology, Inc., other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


tass--2019-08-08--Kindergarten staff to be awarded for saving preschoolers during Siberian arms depot blasts

KRASNOYARSK, August 8. /TASS/. Russia’s First Deputy Emergencies Minister Alexander Chupriyan will award a kindergarten director and a teacher who saved kids while explosions rocked a military storage facility near the Kamenka settlement in the Krasnoyarsk Region, a spokesperson for the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s regional branch told reporters on Thursday.  "Russian First Deputy Emergencies Minister Alexander Chupriyan will present awards to two women, a kindergarten director and a teacher, who risked their lives to save kids from a kindergarten in Kamenka during the ammo depot explosions. The kindergarten is located close to the depot," the spokesperson said.  A fire that caused numerous explosions broke out at an ammo depot on August 5. A state of emergency was declared in the Achinsky District. Roughly 16,500 people were evacuated from communities located within a 20-km radius of the facility. The calamity’s flames were finally extinguished on August 6 and people started returning to their homes. According to medical sources, the explosions killed one and left 13 injured.


tass--2019-10-07--Nobel Prize in medicine awarded for how cells adapt to oxygen availability

STOCKHOLM, October 7. /TASS/. The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr (US), Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe (UK) and Gregg L. Semenza (US) for their studies of how cells adapt to lack or absence of oxygen, the Nobel Assembly at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute on Monday.  The prize was awarded "for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability," secretary of the Nobel Assembly Thomas Perlmann said.


tass--2019-10-08--Nobel Prize in Physics 2019 awarded for contribution to study of the universe

STOCKHOLM, October 8. /TASS/. The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Canadian scientist James Peebles "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology" and Swiss researchers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star", the Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences informed on Tuesday.  "This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics rewards new understanding of the universe’s structure and history, and the first discovery of a planet orbiting a solar-type star outside our solar system," the press release informs. "This year’s Laureates have transformed our ideas about the cosmos."


tass--2019-10-09--Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded for development of lithium-ion batteries

STOCKHOLM, October 9. /TASS/. The 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to John Goodenough from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, Stanley Whittingham from Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA, and Akira Yoshino from the Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan, for the development of lithium-ion batteries, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday.  "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 rewards the development of the lithium-ion battery. This lightweight, rechargeable and powerful battery is now used in everything from mobile phones to laptops and electric vehicles. It can also store significant amounts of energy from solar and wind power, making possible a fossil fuel-free society," the Academy said in a statement.


tass--2019-10-11--Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed

STOCKHOLM, October 11. /TASS/. The Nobel Peace Prize for 2019 was awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed "for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea." Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen said about it on Friday.  "The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2019 to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea," Reiss-Andersen said. "The prize is also meant to recognize all the stakeholders working for peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and in the East and Northeast African regions," she added.  Abiy Ahmed became Ethiopia’s Prime Minister in April 2018. He declared that he wants to renew peace talks with Eritrea. In close cooperation with Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki, Ahmed worked out principles of peace treaty to bring the two countries from the dead-end of "neither peace nor war," the Norwegian Nobel Committee explained. These principles are enshrined in the declarations that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias Afwerki signed in July and September last year. "An important premise for the breakthrough was Abiy Ahmed’s unconditional willingness to accept the arbitration ruling of an international boundary commission in 2002," the committee’s decision reads.  "Peace does not arise from the actions of one party alone. When Prime Minister Abiy reached out his hand, President Afwerki grasped it, and helped to formalize the peace process between the two countries. The Norwegian Nobel Committee hopes the peace agreement will help to bring about positive change for the entire populations of Ethiopia and Eritrea," the statement says.


tass--2019-10-14--Prize in Economic Sciences awarded for research to alleviate global poverty

STOCKHOLM, October 14. /TASS/. The 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019 has been awarded to Indian American economist Abhijit Banerjee, French-American economist Esther Duflo and American economist Michael Kremer.  The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Monday that they were awarded the prize "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."


tass--2019-12-03--Alisson Becker of Brazil awarded first-ever Lev Yashin trophy for best goalkeeper

PARIS, December 2. /TASS/. Alisson Becker of Brazil, who plays as a goalkeeper for Premier League club Liverpool, has become the first to be awarded a trophy for the best goalkeeper of the year named after legendary Lev Yashin.  The ceremony, part of 2019 Ballon d’Or, or the Golden Ball, was held at Paris’ Theatre du Chatelet on Monday.  The Lev Yashin prize was established by the France Football magazine in September.  Along with Becker, commonly known as Alisson, shortlist of the candidates included Kepa Arrizabalaga (Spain), Ederson Moraes (Brazil), Samir Handanovic (Slovenia), Hugo Lloris (France), Manuel Neuer (Germany), Jan Oblak (Slovenia), Andr· Onana (Cameroon), Wojciech Szczesny (Poland) and Marc-Andre ter Stegen (Germany), with Marc-Andre ter Stegen, playing for Spain’s Barcelona, and Ederson Moraes, playing for Manchester City, taking the second and third places, respectively.  Lev Yashin (October 22, 1929 - March 20, 1990) was a goalkeeper for Dynamo Moscow FC and the Soviet national team. He is considered as the greatest goalkeeper in history of football and had an iconic status for revolutionizing the game of a goalkeeper. He remains the only goalkeeper in the history of football to win the Ballon d’Or.  Throughout his career, he stopped a total of over 150 penalty kicks, by far more than any other goalkeeper in history and has a record of over 270 clean sheets, which means that he never conceded a goal in over 270 matches. He played in three World Cups in 1958, 1962 and 1966 and has a record of four clean sheets in an overall of 12 matches in World Cup finals.  He also appeared at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, but in the capacity of the third-choice backup and assistant coach.  He made an unforgettable impression on the world community, when he first appeared at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, which was the first to be broadcast internationally. Always dressed in black from head to toe he earned his international nicknames of the ‘Black Spider’ and ‘Black Panther.’.


thechaser--2019-12-19--Best Drama of 2019 awarded to Star Wars fanbase

The Academy Awards have this week pre-emptively announced the nominations for Best Drama after what they say is an almost unbeatable offering from the creators of Star Wars ‘Episode 9’. “Fans have spoken,” said the academy today, “and I think we can all agree that the meltdown currently happening in the Star Wars fanbase is probably the most entertaining drama we’ve seen all year. We haven’t been able to put the popcorn down.”  “Admittedly there’s a lot of competition,” explained the head of the academy John Felch, “from the great drama House of Cards trying to complete the final series without mentioning the main character, to the amazing work of the Game of Thrones creators when they managed to piss off every fan by making Bran the king, there’s been some amazing drama from so many fanbases, but none have come even close to the level of hot mess served up by the creators of the latest Star Wars trilogy with their attempt to remake Episode Six and pass it off as a new movie to one of the most detail oriented fan-bases in the history of cinema, that is some master-level pot stirring.”  “I can barely even put into words how expert the level of drama creation here is,” read one review from Time magazine. “We thought we were good at creating drama by naming Greta Thunberg person of the year, but not even we could top the genius of using two completely different writers with two completely different visions to tell a story over the span of three films, but to not have any pre-planned overarching story before you start actually shooting. I don’t think we’ve seen that kind of mastery at creating drama in a fanbase since Ghostbusters decided to cast three confident women in a movie franchise exclusively enjoyed by undersexed film nerds. Five stars.”  Praise has also been heaped on director J.J. Abrams, who has consistently managed to churn out the same quality of film again and again, almost to the point where they can’t be distinguished from their predecessors. “It takes a lot of skill to be so predictable,” said one fan exiting the cinema today. “One or two movies we could put down to luck, but clearly this is a skill he’s had to work on very hard. Well, just hard enough to be passable at least.”  Asked how they could ever hope to follow up such a successful dramatic masterpiece, Disney said they have no plans for any future Star Wars movies, and filming starts on the next movie tomorrow.


theguardianuk--2019-06-19--Ralph Lauren awarded honorary knighthood for services to fashion

Ralph Lauren has received an honorary knighthood for services to fashion, becoming the first American designer to be awarded with the UK’s highest honour.  Prince Charles presented the 79-year-old with the insignia in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday attended by Lauren’s family.  The designer’s iconic brand – which often features clothes reminiscent of classic English styles – have been worn by a number of royals including Princess Diana and the duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex.  Estimated to be worth more than £5.2bn according to Forbes, Lauren stepped down from his position as CEO of Ralph Lauren in 2015, almost 50 years after he started the business in a small office at the Empire State Building.  “To have the honorary KBE conferred on me by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and presented to me personally by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales is an honour I have humbly accepted,” Lauren, who remains chief creative officer and executive chairman of the company, said in a statement reported by People.  “I have always been inspired by the history, traditions and culture of Great Britain and the historic relationship our two countries have shared. This is one of the most meaningful honours bestowed at this very special moment in my 50th anniversary.”  In a statement when the award was announced in November last year, the British consul general to New York and Her Majesty’s trade commissioner for North America, Antony Phillipson, congratulated Lauren for a storied career that has seen him play a key role in forging transatlantic cultural and economic connections.  “As creator and visionary of the Ralph Lauren brand worldwide, Mr. Lauren has been a vanguard for the global fashion industry and American style for nearly half a century,” he said.  “In addition, monumental philanthropic efforts, especially in the realm of public health, cancer research and treatment in both the US and the UK, have led to benefits felt by citizens around the world.”  Other Americans who have received honorary knighthoods or damehoods include presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George HW Bush, as well as Angelina Jolie, Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg.


theguardianuk--2019-09-05--Scientists behind first image of black hole awarded 3m prize

Scientists behind first image of black hole awarded $3m prize

An international collaboration that captured the first image of a black hole, a cosmic plughole from which nothing that enters can ever escape, has won the most lucrative prize in physics.  Hundreds of researchers on the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team will share the $3m Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics for their image of the monster black hole at the heart of Messier 87, a galaxy 55m light years from Earth.  The remarkable shot of one of the most mysterious types of object in the universe required astronomers to coordinate observations from eight telescopes on four continents from Antarctica to Arizona to create an Earth-sized instrument sensitive enough to spot a bagel on the moon.  The picture’s unveiling in April marked the moment that scientists saw what was once considered unseeable: the bottomless wells of gravity that Albert Einstein loathed even as his general theory of relativity predicted their existence.  “We’ve known for a long time that this was an amazing scientific result, an amazing result for astronomy, but to get the recognition on the world stage with a prize like this is vindication of all the hard work, all the sacrifice by the team,” said Shep Doeleman, the director of the EHT project at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The 347 members of the team will each receive about $8,600 (£7,000).  The prize is the latest in what has become an annual flurry of awards from the Breakthrough Foundation, an organisation sponsored by Silicon Valley billionaires including the investor Yuri Milner and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Last month, three theoretical physicists won the $3m Special Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics for marrying Einstein’s description of gravity with quantum mechanics in a speculative theory called supergravity.  In an announcement on Thursday, six other researchers were named as Breakthrough prize winners for their work in the life sciences and mathematics. Among them are David Julius at the University of California, San Francisco, who discovered mechanisms of pain sensation; and Alex Eskin at the University of Chicago who proved a mathematical proposition called the “magic wand theorem” with Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the prestigious Fields Medal, who died aged 40 in 2017.  The Messier 87 photograph gave scientists their first glimpse of the ring of dust and gas that hurtles at near the speed of light around a black hole before it plunges into the abyss. The ring encloses the round silhouette of the black hole’s event horizon – the point of no return, after which the gravitational pull is so intense that not even light can escape.  “This is only the beginning,” said Doeleman. “We’re launching into a new era of precision imaging of black holes.”  The EHT team is working on an image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Unlike Messier 87’s supermassive black hole, which is 6.5bn times more massive than the sun, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way is a mere 4m times as massive. Matter and light lap the smaller black hole faster and its appearance in the sky changes minute by minute, making it a tougher beast to photograph.  The next major goal is to record video of black holes, a feat that may require the use of orbiting telescopes that capture rapid sequences of images. Footage of black holes will help scientists uncover how they consume what falls inside, how intense fields around them propel jets of subatomic particles into space, and how black holes can shine brighter than all the stars in their galaxy combined.  “Prizes like this acknowledge the deep, meaningful tradition of learning, of us wanting to understand our place in the cosmos,” said Doeleman. “It makes us stop for a moment, frankly. It gives us a moment to stop and appreciate that the universe is an amazing place.”


theguardianuk--2019-10-08--Nobel prize in physics awarded to cosmology and exoplanet researchers

Three scientists have been awarded the 2019 Nobel prize in physics for groundbreaking discoveries about the evolution of the Universe and the Earth’s place within it.  The Canadian scientist James Peebles has been awarded half of the 9m Swedish kronor (£740,000) prize for his theoretical discoveries about the evolution of the universe. A Swiss duo of astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, will share the other half of the prize for their discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system.  James Peebles was rewarded for laying a foundation for modern cosmology, including his realisation that the faint microwave radiation that filled the cosmos just 400,000 years after the Big Bang contains crucial clues to what the universe looked like at this primitive stage and how it has evolved over the subsequent 13bn years.  Mayor and Queloz have been recognised for their joint discovery in 1995 of the first exoplanet 50 light years away in the constellation of Pegasus. The planet, 51 Pegasi b, is a gaseous ball about 150 times more massive than the Earth and with a scorching surface temperature of 1000C.  The discovery heralded a new era of astronomy, with astronomers having since found more than 4,000 exoplanets, with an incredible range of sizes, forms and orbits. Learning about these strange and varied world’s beyond our solar system has transformed our understanding of how planets formed and given new focus to the question of whether there could be alien life is out there somewhere.  Peebles is also credited with developing the theoretical tools that allowed scientists to perform a cosmic inventory of what the universe is made from, showing that ordinary matter makes up just 5% of its known contents, with the rest being dark matter and dark energy.  “We still must admit that the dark matter and dark energy are mysterious,” Peebles told the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday. “There are still many open questions...What in the world is this dark matter?”  Looking back over his career spanning half a century, Peebles, who is Albert Einstein professor emeritus of science at Princeton University, said that he never set out with a grand plan. “I could think of one or two things to do in cosmology. I just did them and kept going,” he said. “The prizes and awards, they are charming, much appreciated, but that’s not part of your plans. You should enter science because you are fascinated by it.”  Prof Goran Hansson, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that chooses the laureates, said the three had made “contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe, and Earth’s place in the cosmos.”  Prof Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer Royal, described Peebles as the world’s “most   influential and respected leader of empirical cosmology with a sustained   record of achievement spanning half a century”.  “The study of exoplanets is perhaps the most vibrant field of astronomy. We   now know that most stars are orbited by retinues of planets; there may be a   billion planets in our galaxy resembling the Earth (similar in size and at   a distance from their parent star where liquid water can exist),” Rees added. “This takes us a step towards the fascinating question of detecting evidence for life   on the nearest of these exoplanets.”  On Monday, Americans William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza and Britain’s Peter Ratcliffe won the Nobel prize for physiology or medicine for discovering details of how the body’s cells sense and react to low oxygen levels, providing a foothold for developing new treatments for anaemia, cancer and other diseases.  The Nobel prize for chemistry will be announced on Wednesday, two literature prizes will be awarded on Thursday, and the peace prize comes on Friday. This year will see two literature prizes handed out because the one last year was suspended after a scandal rocked the Swedish Academy.


thehill--2019-03-19--American professor becomes first woman to be awarded top prize for math

Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck, a mathematician and professor at the University of Texas, has become the first woman in history to receive the Abel Prize, one of the most prestigious mathematics awards in the world.  The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced that Uhlenbeck was the award’s newest recipient on Tuesday.  The body said it chose Uhlenbeck for the award because of “her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics.”  The King of Norway will present the award to Uhlenbeck at an award ceremony in Oslo on May 21.  The Norwegian academy said Uhlenbeck has built a reputation developing tools and methods in global analysis, which it said are now "in the toolbox of every geometer and analyst.”  Paul Goldbart, the dean of the University of Texas's College of Natural Sciences, said in a release that "Uhlenbeck's research has led to revolutionary advances at the intersection of mathematics and physics.”  "Her pioneering insights have applications across a range of fascinating subjects, from string theory, which may help explain the nature of reality, to the geometry of space-time,” he added.  The prize amount for the award is 6 million Norwegian kroner, approximately $700,000.


theindependent--2019-10-08--Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to trio for 'groundbreaking discoveries' about the universe

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics has been won by James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz.  The scientists won for “contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos”, which the Nobel Committee described as “groundbreaking discoveries”.  The announcement was made at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday morning, with the winners of the prestigious prize awarded a share of the nine million Swedish kroner (£750,000) prize money.  “This year’s Laureates have contributed to answering fundamental questions about our existence,” the Nobel Committee stated.  “This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics rewards new understanding of the universe’s structure and history, and the first discovery of a planet orbiting a solar-type star outside our solar system.”  One half of the prize goes to Professor Peebles for “theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology” and the other half is jointly awarded to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for the discovery of an exoplanet.  Recent winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics include Peter Higgs and Francois Englert for their discovery of the Higgs boson particle, and researchers at Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo) for detecting gravitational waves.  Last year’s winner was Arthur Ashkin, who at 96 was the oldest Laureate since the awards began in 1901. Only three women have ever been awarded the physics prize, the equivalent of one every 60 years.  It is the second Nobel Prize winner to be revealed this year, after British scientist Sir Peter Ratcliffe and US scientists William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  The trio of scientists were awarded for their discoveries of “how cells sense and adapt to oxygen and availability”, which is one of the most fundamental processes for sustaining human life.  Winners of the Nobel Prizes for Chemistry, Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences are set to be announced over the next seven days.  Greta Thunberg is one of the favourites for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, which will be unveiled on Friday. The teen activist has gained international recognition for campaigning against climate change.