Nobel Prize goes to scientists behind mRNA Covid vaccines

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists who developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.

Professors Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman will share the prize.

The technology was experimental before the pandemic, but has now been given to millions of people around the world to protect them against serious Covid-19.

Bradley Manning deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, not more hard time

Bradley Manning is expected to be sentenced Wednesday. He faces a sentence of up to 90 years in prison, after being found guilty on a number of counts under the Espionage Act.

The headquarters of the Nobel Committee is in downtown Oslo on a street named after Henrik Ibsen, whose play 'An Enemy of the People' has remained as current as dawn light falling on the Nobel building and then, hours later, on a Fort Meade courtroom where Bradley Manning's trial enters a new stage -- defence testimony in the sentencing phase.

Ibsen's play tells of mendacity and greed in high places: dangerous threats to public health. You might call the protagonist a whistleblower. He's a physician who can't pretend that he hasn't seen evidence; he rejects all the pleas and threats to stay quiet, to keep secret what the public has a right to know. He could be content to take an easy way, to let others suffer and die. But he refuses to just follow orders. He will save lives. There will be some dire consequences for him.

Tariq Ali: European Union Awarded Nobel Peace Prize Despite Ties to NATO, Crippling Austerity Cuts

The European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier today for its historic role in uniting the continent. Committee chair Thorbjoern Jagland praised the EU for transforming Europe "from a continent of wars to a continent of peace." The selection surprised many as it comes at a time when much of Europe is facing an economic crisis that threatens the EU’s future. Just this past week, thousands of Greeks protested in Athens against a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has pushed Greece, Spain and Ireland to enact deep austerity measures. For more, we go to London to speak with Tariq Ali, political commentator, historian, activist and editor of the New Left Review. "My initial response was to burst out laughing, because this Nobel Peace Prize committee, basically run by clapped-out former politicians in Norway, never fails to amuse and disappoint," Ali says. "To give the prize to the European Community at a time, effectively, when economically it is promoting unemployment, creating real class divides in virtually every country in Europe, where it has led to enormous violence on the streets of Greece, because of the policies being pushed by the EU ... it’s a complete and utter joke."

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Source: Democracy Now!
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