‘For her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.’ The Nobel Committee has announced Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Maria Corina Machado, a key opposition leader in Venezuela, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 for her struggle to promote democratic rights in her country.
Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer who lives in hiding in Venezuela, was blocked by its courts from running for president against President Nicolas Maduro in the 2024 elections.
“She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela, and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” said the Norwegian Nobel Committee, awarding the prize on Friday at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
Hailing Machado as one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America, it added that Machado had been a “key unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided – an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government”.
Machado ran as the democratic opposition candidate in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election but was disqualified by Maduro’s government and went on to support the opposition’s alternative candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Incumbent Maduro won re-election that year with 51 percent of the vote – his third win since he first took over as president in 2013 after the death of his mentor, former President Hugo Chavez.
But the opposition said the results were rigged, claiming Maduro had only won 30 percent of the vote and that Gonzalez was the real victor.
The opposition received global support when it publicised vote counts collected from the country’s election districts, showing that the opposition had won by a clear margin.
Protests erupted, demanding the release of election results by individual polling stations, and Maduro’s government responded with a brutal crackdown on opposition protesters and leaders.
Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, praised Machado’s decision to remain in her country, having been “forced to live in hiding” after “serious threats against her life”. Her choice, he said, had “inspired millions”.
“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” he said.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) congratulated Machado. “This recognition reflects the clear aspirations of the people of Venezuela for free and fair elections, for civil and political rights and for the rule of law,” said OHCHR spokesperson Thameen al-Kheetan.
‘Brave women and men’
The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish kronor, or about $1.2m, is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
The committee said in its announcement of this year’s winner that it has always “honoured brave women and men who have stood up to repression, who have carried the hope of freedom in prison cells, on the streets and in public squares, and who have shown by their actions that peaceful resistance can change the world”.
Winners in recent history include Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi in 2023, Congolese humanitarian Denis Mukwege in 2018, and former United States President Barack Obama in 2009. Malala Yousafzai became the youngest recipient of the award in 2014 at the age of 17. The oldest laureate is Joseph Rotblat, honoured at 86 for his work against nuclear weapons.
The 2024 award was given to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons”.
The recognition honoured the organisation’s decades-long campaign to abolish nuclear weapons and preserve the testimonies of the survivors of the US atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The lead-up to this year’s award had been dominated by US President Donald Trump’s repeated self-aggrandising public statements that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The committee took its final decision just before an Israel-Hamas ceasefire came into effect in Gaza under the first phase of Trump’s initiative to end the war.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do, really, but I know this: That nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months, and I’ve stopped eight wars,” Trump said on Thursday. “So that’s never happened before, but they’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives.”
The president was alluding to the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, which saw him intervene with bunker buster bombs on Iranian nuclear sites, as well as conflicts and tensions of varying levels of intensity, not all of which classify as wars, between India and Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo.
Before the Nobel announcement, experts on the award had said Trump was very unlikely to win, as his policies were seen as dismantling the international world order that the Nobel committee cherishes.
That did not stop Trump’s cheerleaders from lobbying for a victory. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, said in a post on X that Trump should “undoubtedly” receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on ending the war in Gaza.
Palestinian families have begun returning to Gaza City as Israel continued deadly attacks on the enclave, despite signing the first phase of a ceasefire deal paving the way for fighting to stop in the next 24 hours.
As displaced families from the southern parts of the enclave moved north on Friday, Israel launched a deadly attack from helicopters on a site east of Gaza City and conducted air strikes in the southern Khan Younis area, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
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Sources at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital confirmed to Al Jazeera that the bodies of seven people had been recovered from several areas in Gaza City since Friday morning.
There were no initial reports of casualties in the attacks on Khan Younis, which also included rounds of shelling and heavy tank fire north of the city, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
The attacks are the first to be reported in Gaza since Israel’s government ratified the first phase of a ceasefire deal with Hamas late on Thursday night.
The attacks took place as Al Jazeera’s team on the ground reported Israel had started to pull its troops back behind the line agreed under the Gaza deal.
“What is controversial is that there has been high activity of Israeli drones, fighter jets and even warships from the early hours of this morning,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Nuseirat in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
Abu Azzoum said families had started moving towards the north of the Strip, but were still waiting to enter the areas in the Netzarim Corridor, where the Israeli army used to operate.
“They are waiting for the last Israeli tank to leave the region to enter the territory,” he said.
Gaza’s civil defence warned people to keep away from the border areas of Gaza City until the official announcement of the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Earlier, Israel’s government approved “phase one” of a ceasefire agreement, which will see captives exchanged and Israel withdraw from parts of Gaza, but details of how it fits into a wider plan to bring lasting peace, if at all, remain unclear.
Khalil al-Hayya, the head of Hamas’s negotiating team, said the group has received guarantees from the United States and mediators that an agreement on a first phase of the ceasefire agreement means the war in Gaza “has ended completely”.
The Israeli government’s ratification of the peace plan, which was confirmed in the early hours of Friday morning, paves the way for fighting in Gaza to stop within 24 hours, while Hamas has been given a 72-hour timeline to free Israeli captives.
Palestine’s Quds News Network reported that Gaza residents who left the Strip from Egypt will be allowed to return home through the Rafah crossing for the first time since October 7, 2023. Gaza residents will also be allowed to exit to Egypt.
Taiwan’s President William Lai Ching-te pledged to accelerate the building of a “T-Dome” air defence system in the face of military threats and overall increased defence spending.
Lai on Friday said his government would establish a rigorous defence system with high-level detection and effective interception.
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“The increase in defence spending has a purpose; it is a clear necessity to counter enemy threats and a driving force for developing our defence industries,” he said in his National Day address, to applause from the crowd.
“We will accelerate our building of the T-Dome, establish a rigorous air defence system in Taiwan with multi-layered defence, high-level detection, and effective interception, and weave a safety net for Taiwan to protect the lives and property of citizens.”
Lai also pledged to increase defence spending to more than 3 percent of gross domestic product and to reach 5 percent by 2030.
Much of Taiwan’s existing air defence systems are primarily based on the United States-made Patriot and the Taiwan-developed Sky Bow missiles.
Taiwan is a self-governing island off China’s east coast that the Chinese government claims as its territory and says must come under its rule.
Lai called Taiwan a “hub of peace and stability” in the Asia Pacific region, drawing a distinction with China’s one-party state.
“Democratic Taiwan … will strive to maintain the status quo, protect peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, and promote regional prosperity and development,” Lai said.
China and Taiwan split during a civil war that brought the Communist Party to power in China in 1949. The defeated Nationalist Party forces fled to Taiwan, where they set up their own government.
The Chinese military regularly sends fighter jets and warships into the skies and waters off Taiwan and has staged major military exercises in the area in recent years.
A magnitude 7.4 earthquake has struck off the coast of the southern Philippines, killing at least two people and prompting a tsunami warning for the country and some regions of Indonesia, according to local authorities. The tsumani alert has since been lifted.
The earthquake comes just 10 days after another deadly earthquake hit the central Philippines, killing at least 79 people and injuring hundreds.
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Here is more about what has happened and why the country is so vulnerable to earthquakes and natural disasters.
The earthquake struck at a depth of 43 kilometres (27 miles) at 9:43am local time (01:43 GMT) on Friday, off the coast of Manay town in Davao Oriental in the Mindanao region of the southern Philippines, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs).
Phivolcs said the earthquake had been caused by movement in the Philippine Trench at a depth of 23 kilometres (14 miles). The Philippine Trench is a long, narrow depression in the ocean. It is located to the east of the Philippines.
Phivolcs also warned of aftershocks and issued a tsunami warning for the surrounding region, saying it expected waves larger than 1 metre (3.3ft). Coastal residents have been “strongly advised to immediately evacuate to higher grounds or move farther inland”, the agency said soon after the earthquake struck.
The United States National Tsunami Warning Center also issued tsunami warnings to parts of Indonesia and Palau, expecting waves of 0.3 to 1 metre (1-3.3ft) above tide level in these regions.
However, at about noon in the Philippines (04:00 GMT), the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu said the tsunami threat had passed, according to the Reuters News Agency.
Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said it had detected small tsunami waves in North Sulawesi province with heights ranging from 3.5 to 17 centimetres (1.3 to 6.7 inches) in Melonguane, Beo, Essang and Ganalo in the Talaud Islands districts. The agency has since lifted its tsunami warning.
Davao Oriental governor Nelson Dayanghirang told the Philippines’ ABS-CBN news channel that at least two people had died as a result of the earthquake.
“So far, we have recorded two casualties, and we have evacuated the patients to our hospital, provincial and district hospitals,” he said. At least 250 patients were also evacuated from a damaged hospital and are to be housed in tents, he added.
Richie Diuyen, a disaster official in Manay, close to the epicentre, said the quake lasted for 30-40 seconds and some houses, the facade of a church, roads and bridges were damaged.
“We couldn’t stand earlier. I am 46 years old now, and this is the strongest earthquake I ever felt,” Diuyen told the Reuters news agency.
“The damage is quite big,” she added.
The governor of Davao Del Norte told Philippines’ radio station DZMM that people and employees in the region’s capital Tagum “are really panicking”.
“And there are also buildings with damage that have been reported [to us],” he added.
ABS-CBN reported that students at Bukidnon State University in Malaybalay City rushed out of their classrooms when the quake struck. Schools were also closed in many areas.
Jun Saavedra, a disaster-mitigation officer of Governor Generoso town in Davao Oriental, told The Associated Press that power was cut after the earthquake.
“I was driving my car when it suddenly swayed and I saw powerlines swaying wildly. People darted out of houses and buildings as the ground shook and electricity came off,” he said.
Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said a search and rescue mission has been deployed to affected regions.
He warned people to “follow all instructions” from local disaster authorities. “Your safety is our top priority,” he said.
The president added that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) plans to send food and other aid items to affected areas, and said that the Department of Health (DOH) will provide medical help.
The Office of the Vice President said its Mindanao satellite offices are ready to assist people and also provide psychological help to people and young children who are scared or anxious after the earthquake.
The Philippines lies in the Pacific Ring of Fire, a tectonic belt of volcanic arcs and oceanic trenches in the Pacific Ocean.
John Dale B Dianala, assistant professor at the National Institute of Geological Sciences, the University of the Philippines in Diliman, told Al Jazeera that just by virtue of the geographic and geologic setting of the country, the Philippines is home to many onshore and offshore tectonic faults.
“The whole length of the Philippines, around 1,800km, is right along the boundary of two major tectonic plates – the Philippine Sea plate and Eurasian plate – part of the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire. These two plates, thousands of kilometres wide, have been pushing against each other for millions of years at two to three times the rate of fingernail growth,” he said.
“Each earthquake is a manifestation of the periodic release of the stress along long fractures on these plates – what geologists call ‘faults’ – which rupture several metres of movement along a fault in large earthquakes.
“When the displacement involves vertical uplift of the seafloor from an offshore fault, like in the Philippine Trench to the east of the country, the movement displaces the water column from the depths of the ocean that then propagate to the surface and coasts in the form of tsunamis. Strong shaking can also cause submarine landslides that can also trigger tsunamis,” he added.
According to Dianala, another big issue the country faces is the cascading effect of different natural hazards.
“The week after the earthquake in Cebu, we had floods and another earthquake in Mindanao. At some point, resources can get spread thinly,” he said.
Indonesia, New Zealand, Japan, the United States, Canada, Russia, Guatemala, Peru and Chile are also countries located within the Ring of Fire.
While Phivolcs and the United Nations have been building systems to alert people about upcoming natural disasters, some politicians in the country say the president should be doing more.
According to ABS-CBN, after Friday’s earthquake, Jose Alvarez, a Filipino businessman and member of the country’s House of Representatives, said that if the government has extra income, it should be put into the “2025 budget” so that President Marcos Jr could access it and respond to natural disasters effectively.
“So that’s important in 2026, if we still have more earthquakes, more typhoons, more floods,” he said.
However, Dianala said the preparedness and resilience of the country to earthquakes has improved since the 1990s. Prior to that, an earthquake would have caused many more casualties and damage to infrastructure than has been caused this time.
“Earthquakes happen in the country relatively frequently, and that has led to disasters, unfortunately, but has also forced us to make sure we have proper laws and policies from lessons learned,” he said.
Non-European Union citizens travelling to countries in Europe’s Schengen area – within which physical borders between member countries have been removed – will soon have to use a new automated biometric system that is set to replace usual passport procedures.
The EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) will be rolled out on Sunday, October 12 and will apply to 29 countries in the Schengen area. The EU expects EES to be fully functional by April 10 next year.
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Here’s what we know about the EES and who it is going to affect:
The EES is a digital border check system which will keep track of non-EU citizens who enter and exit Europe’s Schengen zone – an area composed of 25 EU members and four non-EU nations which guarantees freedom of movement with no internal border checks.
According to the EU, the EES will apply to those making short-stay journeys into the Schengen zone. A non-EU traveller is someone who does not hold EU nationality or the nationality of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or Switzerland.
Short-stay Schengen visas are issued to people staying in the zone for up to 90 days within a 180-day period.
Citizens from the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and others who normally do not need a visa for short stays in the Schengen zone will, however, also be subject to EES.
The EES will not apply to:
A non-EU traveller entering any of the Schengen countries will be directed to an immigration booth or a kiosk in the airport, train or bus station they have arrived at. There, their personal data from their passport, including full name, nationality and biometric data such as a facial image and fingerprints, will be recorded. Children below the age of 12 will not have to provide fingerprints.
Bram Frouws, director of the Mixed Migration Centre, a Geneva-based knowledge centre, told Al Jazeera that the EES will not be used for internal border controls.
“Free movement within Schengen remains in place,” he said. Therefore, once travellers are inside the Schengen area, they will not have to undergo checks to travel between Schengen countries.
The EES system will also record the traveller’s exit from the Schengen zone.
A person’s details will be recorded the first time he or she uses the system. The next time the person travels into the Schengen area, their personal details will be verified against those held on file. As long as the system does not flag any new issues, the traveller will be allowed to enter the Schengen country.
Biometric data is held on file for three years following any entry to the area, as long as travellers comply with short-stay visa rules. If you overstay, your details will be held for five years.
The EU Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (eu-LISA) will manage the EES.
The bloc’s border agency, Frontex, has also announced the launch of an EES app through which travellers will be able to pre-register their biometric details.
Chris Borowski, spokesperson for Frontex, told Al Jazeera: “The EES app will help travellers register their details more easily before they reach the border, saving time and reducing queues. Each country decides how and where to use the app – for example at airports or land borders – and must ensure it meets their national requirements before going live.”
So far, five countries have indicated they may wish to use the app: Sweden, Portugal, Italy, Hungary and Greece. Sweden is the first to have confirmed it will use the app at selected border points, including Arlanda Airport, once EES starts operating.
Frontex said it is also also working with France, Germany and the Netherlands to organise pilot tests at key travel hubs next year.
The European Council announced the EES border management system in July, with a view to “improving the effectiveness and efficiency of controls at the EU’s external borders”, it said.
It added that the system will help to ensure people do not overstay their visas, will reduce identity fraud and will reduce irregular migration to the Schengen zone.
“Strong protection of our external borders is vital for the European Union. The new Entry/Exit system will help us ensure that non-EU nationals travelling to Europe comply with our rules. That will make our borders safer and border checks more efficient,” Kaare Dybvad Bek, the EU’s minister for immigration and integration, said in a statement in July.
Frouws added that the system is designed to identify non-EU travellers who “enter the EU legally, but then overstay [their short stay visa or permit] and try to stay and work in the EU irregularly”.
“They will be flagged automatically and, for example, then face a ban on re-entry in the future. In principle, those with a short-term visa, whether migrants or refugees, can still move through the Schengen zone,” he said.
Frouws pointed out that EES should not initially present difficulties for asylum seekers, as their biometric data is recorded via a different system, called the Eurodac. However, he warned that there could be problems if the EES is used for asylum seekers in the future.
“A refusal to provide biometric details into the EES could be a reason to be denied entry,” Frouws said.
Taking biometric data enables the EU to track where an asylum seeker first entered the bloc. Under the EU’s Dublin regulation, the country of arrival is responsible for processing an asylum claim.
But Frouws explained that some refugees do not necessarily want to claim asylum in their country of arrival because they may have family connections in a different EU country.
The introduction of EES has raised a number of questions relating to asylum seekers and whether it will make them more vulnerable, therefore.
“Will this [EES] always be properly handled at external borders? Could this be used as a way to deny asylum seekers entry? And will asylum seekers know about all their rights and obligations in relation to these systems? These will be important things to watch in the coming months if it is used for asylum seekers,” Frouws said.
“Like with all such [biometric-data] systems, there is a risk of over-use or abuse,” Frouws said. “For example, you could imagine a future where cameras on streets will be linked with the facial recognition information in EES, and there will be more automated crackdowns on migrant overstayers. Right now, this is not allowed. But it’s possible technologically, there is a risk that this will change in the future.”
According to the EU, however, “Travellers’ data will be collected and stored in full compliance with EU data protection rules and rights.”
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in 2018, safeguards the privacy of individuals by levying fines on individuals or organisations violating privacy and other security standards.
The EU has also highlighted that a traveller’s details collected from EES will only be accessible by border, visa and immigration authorities, law enforcement authorities, Europol and transport companies such as airlines, which are required to report if they are alerted that people have overstayed their short-stay visas.
In unspecified “special circumstances”, the EU said, it could transfer a traveller’s data to an international organisation or country outside the EU, however.
Yes, but not immediately. Once the EES comes into force properly in 2026, the EU will roll out a new visa waiver system called the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) for citizens of countries exempt from short-stay visas, including the UK, the US, Israel, Albania, Japan, Canada, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, among others.
British nationals living in the EU and family members who are already beneficiaries of the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU following its withdrawal in 2020 will be exempt from the system altogether. They will travel on their EU or UK passport alongside their EU resident card, which shows they are beneficiaries of the withdrawal agreement.
Those who do need to apply for ETIAS will have to pay a fee of 20 euros ($23.48). Applicants who are aged below 18 years or more than 70, family members of EU citizens or of non-EU nationals who have the right to free movement in the EU, will be exempt from paying this fee.
Once an application is made, an ETIAS waiver will be issued within minutes for many travellers. It may take longer if border check authorities require more information. It will be digitally linked to a person’s travel document and will be valid for three years or until the travel document expires.