Nobel Peace Prize

Finnish mediator Martti Ahtisaari accepted this year's Nobel Peace Prize with a plea to President-elect Barack Obama to press for Middle East peace. Receiving the coveted award in Oslo, the former Finnish president, 71, rejected the notion that "the Middle East knot can never be untied." "Peace is a question of will. All conflicts can be settled, and there are no excuses for allowing them to become eternal," he said.

Can a $70 business loan change the life of someone long entrenched in poverty with little education and less hope? And would that loan ever be repaid? Remarkably, that is exactly what you see in Holly Mosher's affecting "Bonsai People: The Vision of Muhammad Yunus," her yearlong examination of the Nobel Peace Prize winner's microcredit theories put into practice in his homeland of Bangladesh. The documentary filmmaker, whose work tends to focus on social and environmental issues ("Vanishing of the Bees")

President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize here today, acknowledging the irony of winning it as a wartime president and calling his own accomplishments "slight" in comparison to past winners. But in his speech to the Nobel Committee, Obama spoke of the concept of a "just war" and the pursuit of a "just peace," which he said sometimes depends on more than simply refraining from violence. Lauding the commitment of past Nobel laureates to nonviolence, Obama said that -- as a head of state and commander-in-chief of a military at war, sworn to protect and defend his nation -- he cannot follow their examples alone.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf faced a tough challenge to retain power as voters went to the polls Tuesday, with many observers predicting she would be forced into a runoff election against her strongest opponent. Johnson-Sirleaf, who last week was one of three women awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, probably will remain pitted against candidate Winston Tubman, a former United Nations official, after Tuesday's votes are counted, analysts said. Results are expected this month, with a runoff to follow if necessary.

The leading candidates for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, to be awarded in Norway's capital Friday, are not individuals but international organizations, according to informed sources, with the Salvation Army the favorite among 25 nominated groups. Another prime candidate is the French-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). Among 95 individuals nominated for the prize, African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela and South African President Frederik W.

President Obama, who has pledged to place diplomacy ahead of confrontation and reached out to a skeptical world with offers of mutual understanding, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace today for what the Nobel committee called "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." "I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century," Obama said in a White House Rose Garden appearance.

Awarding Gorbachev the Nobel Peace Prize was a "noble" gesture, as he has indeed tried hard to bring peace to the world. Now if only he can bring peace and prosperity to the Soviet Union. KENNETH L. ZIMMERMAN, Cypress

President Reagan has been nominated for the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, Norwegian newspapers reported Friday. They said Reagan was nominated by an American professor of philosophy, an Israeli member of Parliament and a Norwegian university employee. The winner will not be announced until October. A Nobel Peace Prize committee spokesman declined to comment on the matter, saying the list of nominations is always kept secret unless the proposer discloses the name.

Three women from Africa and the Middle East who symbolize nonviolent struggles to improve their nations and advance the role of women's rights were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Sharing the award were Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female head of state; her countrywoman Leymah Gbowee, a peace activist who challenged warlords; and Tawakul Karman, a Yemeni human rights leader seeking to overthrow an autocratic regime as part of the regionwide "Arab Spring" movement.

Reporting from Moscow -- Yelena Bonner, human rights activist and widow of Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, has died. She was 88. Bonner died Saturday afternoon in Boston after a long illness, said her daughter, Tatiana Yankelevich. Bonner had lived in the United States since 2003. "Sakharov and Bonner together had done more for our country than a huge number of politicians," Boris Nemtsov, leader of the Solidarity opposition movement and a former deputy prime minister of Russia, said Sunday.

The struggles of black citizens in South Africa to overcome a brutal government-imposed system of race separation are right out of a history book to a student like Robert Virgen. At 15, the Santee Education Complex sophomore hadn't been born when anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was released from decades in prison or when the country held its first multiracial elections. But when one of the heroes of that time, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, came to this downtown high school for a Black History Month celebration Thursday, Virgen said he felt a kinship that transcended time, geography and race.

China's lost face Re "Peace Prize awarded in absentia," Dec. 11 I find that the empty chair for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo at the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo speaks volumes. Like the picture of a lone man standing in front of a row of tanks in Beijing in 1989, this image will also be forever ingrained in people's minds. China's leaders may think they are strong enough now to flex their sizable economic muscles without having to answer to anyone.

The Nobel Peace Prize was placed Friday on an empty chair in Oslo's city hall, creating a potent new symbol of the struggle for human rights and political reform in China. Laureate Liu Xiaobo would have been sitting in that chair, were he not locked away in an obscure prison in northeastern China. Liu, a poet and essayist, is serving an 11-year sentence for penning a manifesto calling for the end of one-party rule and for greater freedoms in China. He has not been seen in public since he was moved to his current prison in May. An enraged Chinese government dismissed the prize as an "anti-China farce" honoring a "criminal," and successfully lobbied 18 countries to join its boycott of the ceremony.

At 5:15 p.m., soldiers armed with rifles and tear-gas launchers pushed aside the barbed-wire barriers blocking University Avenue, and a swarm of supporters dashed the final 100 yards to the villa's gate. Twenty minutes later, a slight 65-year-old woman popped her head over her red spiked fence. Aung San Suu Kyi was free. The jubilant crowd roared, and chants of "Long Live Suu Kyi" filled the air Saturday night as her supporters greeted the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and democracy activist who had defied Myanmar's military leaders and paid a monumental price that robbed her of her family and a normal life.

The notes from the Chinese Foreign Ministry to European ambassadors posted in Norway referred to the Nobel Peace Prize awarded last month to imprisoned writer Liu Xiaobo. "We strongly hope that your country ? will refrain from attending any activity directed against China," read the notes, according to a diplomatic source who ? like most people involved with the issue ? did not wish to be quoted by name because of fear of Chinese retaliation. Behind the stilted language, the meaning was clear: Beijing was lobbying European governments to not attend the Dec. 10 awards ceremony honoring Liu, a dissident whom Chinese officials have denounced as a criminal.

Increasing the pressure on China, a star-studded group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates have signed an open letter calling for the world's leading economies to lobby Chinese President Hu Jintao for the release of dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, recipient of this year's award. The letter released Monday by Liu's U.S. lawyers was written at the initiative of Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and signed by, among others, former Polish President Lech Walesa, former U.S. President Carter and the Dalai Lama ?