Category World News

Protesters at the Broadview Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility near Chicago scuffled with police Friday morning. A day earlier a federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to the state of Illinois, saying the administration was providing “unreliable evidence” on supposed threats to federal agents.

Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition politician who was barred from standing in last year’s presidential election, has been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

In a post on the social media platform X on Friday, the Nobel Committee said it had decided to award the prize to Machado “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”.

Announcing Machado’s win in Oslo, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Nobel Committee, said the award had gone “to a brave and committed champion of peace, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness”.

He added that she meets “all the criteria” laid out by Alfred Nobel for the prize, which states that the prize shall be given to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.

Machado – who is known as the “Iron Lady” in Venezuela and is only the 20th woman out of 143 laureats awarded since the start of the prize in 1901 – said she was “in shock” after she learned she had been awarded the prize, according to a video sent by her press team to the AFP news agency.

“I’m in shock!” she is heard saying by telephone to Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who replaced her as the candidate in the last presidential election after she was barred from running.

“We’re shocked with joy,” said Gonzalez.

Here’s what we know about Maria Corina Machado:

Who is Maria Corina Machado?

Maria Corina Machado Parisca, 58, is the leader of the Venezuelan opposition party, Vente Venezuela. Machado campaigns for transparent democracy, advocates for liberal economic reforms, including the privatisation of state-owned enterprises such as PDVSA, Venezuela’s oil company. She also supports the creation of welfare programmes aimed at aiding the country’s poorest.

Born on October 7, 1967, in Caracas, the eldest of four daughters, she has a degree in industrial engineering and a Master’s degree in finance.

The mother of three entered politics in 2002 as cofounder of the volunteer civil association called Sumate, which seeks to unite people amid polarisation under Nicolas Maduro’s rule.

At Sumate, she also led a referendum in 2002 to recall Hugo Chavez, the country’s president at the time, from office, over what Sumate claimed were his authoritarian policies. For this, Machado was accused of treason and her family received death threats from Chavez supporters, forcing her to send her children to live abroad.

But Machado has remained resilient in her opposition to Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.

In 2023, she won the Venezuelan opposition’s presidential primary after taking a decisive lead, placing her in a prime position to challenge longtime socialist leader Maduro at elections in 2024.

But a year later, Venezuela’s Supreme Justice Tribunal upheld a ban that prevented Machado from holding office. Attorney General Tarek Saab had accused some members of Machado’s Vente Venezuela party of being among 11 people who he said attempted to rob a military weapons arsenal in 2023 before a planned assault on a pro-Maduro state governor. The court also upheld claims that Machado had supported US sanctions, had been involved in corruption, and had lost money for Venezuela’s foreign assets, including United States-based oil refiner Citgo and chemicals company Monomeros, which operates in Colombia.

Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia replaced her as presidential candidate for the opposition bloc. Machado, however, continued campaigning far and wide for her proxy.

Today, she is isolated in Venezuela as nearly all of her senior advisers have been detained or forced to leave the country following threats by Maduro and his supporters, who oppose anyone who challenges his rule. Urrutia is understood to be in exile in Spain but some rumours suggest he is currently touring other countries in Latin America.

Following the July 2024 election, after which Maduro declared victory despite the the result being disputed by the opposition, Machado announced that she would be going into hiding within Venezuela, since she feared for her life under Maduro.

Where is Machado now?

It is not known where she currently is. In August 2024, she briefly emerged from hiding to join her supporters who were protesting in the streets of Caracas against the contested national election results.

“Just as it took us a long time to achieve electoral victory, now comes a stage that we take day by day, but we have never been as strong as today, never,” Machado, who always arrives at protests dressed in white, told her supporters in Caracas.

In January this year, however, when she reappeared from exile to join a protest before Maduro’s presidential inauguration, she was briefly arrested before being released.

“They wanted us to fight each other, but Venezuela is united,” Machado shouted from atop a truck as she waved a Venezuelan flag in front of a few hundred protesters immediately before her arrest.

Maduro’s government, which has also accused Machado of leading a “conspiracy” against Maduro, quickly denounced the incident as an attempt to dent the administration’s reputation.

“The tactic of media distraction is not new, so no one should be surprised. Less so coming from fascists who are the architects of deception,” Information Minister Freddy Nanez wrote on the social media messaging platform, Telegram.

While Machado has returned to hiding, she remains in touch with her supporters through social media platforms.

In May this year, she claimed victory in the country’s parliamentary elections, even though Maduro’s ruling coalition was officially declared the winner. Machado wrote on X that the election was an “enormous farce that the regime is trying to stage to bury its defeat” in last year’s election.

Last year, the European Union awarded its top human rights prize to Machado along with Urrutia.

The European Parliament said the winners of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought were “representing the people of Venezuela fighting to restore freedom and democracy”.

What did the Nobel Peace Prize committee say about her?

In its announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said 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”.

“In the past year, Ms Machado has been forced to live in hiding despite serious threats against her life,” the committee noted.

“She has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions.”

The committee said it was “crucial” to recognise “courageous defenders of freedom” and democracy.

“Maria Corina Machado meets all the three criteria stated in Alfred Nobel’s will for the selection of a peace prize,” the committee stated.

“She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarisation of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy,” it added.

The Nobel Committee also said it is hoping that Machado’s win “will support her cause and not limit it”.

“This is the discussion we have every year for all candidates, particularly when the person who receives the prize is, in fact, in hiding because of serious threats to her life,” Frydne said, when asked by reporters about the considerations the committee made for Machado’s safety and security in awarding her the prize.

Frydnes also added that through this award, the committee wishes to let the world know that in a world in which the number of democracies is decreasing, “democracy is a precondition for peace”.

The decision to award Venezuela’s Machado is a “prize for democracy”, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) director, Nina Graeger, said on X.

“At a moment when authoritarianism is on the rise across the world, this award highlights the courage of those who defend freedom with ballots, not bullets,” she noted.

She added: “This year, PRIO’s own shortlist for the Nobel Peace Prize emphasised the crucial role of election observers – the very work Machado has long contributed to – underscoring that credible elections remain the cornerstone of democracy and peace.”

Has Donald Trump reacted to the announcement?

There has been no reaction from US President Donald Trump, who made no secret of the fact he was hoping for the prize, as yet.

Since the start of his second term as president Trump has made it clear that he believes he should win the coveted prize as he claims to have ended “seven wars”.

On Wednesday, he looked set to claim credit for the possible end to an eighth war, after Israel and Hamas agreed to the first stage of a ceasefire deal that is rooted in Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which he had unveiled last week.

Even though Trump has yet to say anything on the matter, White House spokesperson Steven Cheung condemned the Nobel Committee for not selecting Trump for the prize.

“[Trump] has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” Cheung wrote on X.

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” he said.

When asked by reporters about Trump’s very public desire to win the peace prize, the Nobel Committee’s chairman, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, told reporters that the committee bases its decision strictly according to “the work and the will of Alfred Nobel”.

“We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say, what for them leads to peace. This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity,” he said.

Hebron, occupied West Bank – Among the more than 67,190 Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, there has been a particularly heavy toll on journalists and media workers. More than 184 journalists have been killed by Israel in the war, including 10 Al Jazeera staff members, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Palestinian journalists in the occupied West Bank were only able to look on at their colleagues’ sacrifice in Gaza from afar. But they have also faced their own challenges, as Israel continues its near-daily practice of raids throughout the Palestinian territory.

As Palestinians in Gaza expressed relief at the news of the ceasefire deal, journalists in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, were documenting how Palestinians were being restricted from moving around large parts of the city because of the influx of Jewish Israelis as a result of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Among the areas where Palestinians’ movement has been restricted is the Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, in central Hebron.

As the journalists navigated the Israeli road closures, they sent their own messages to their colleagues in Gaza – who were forced to endure two years of war marked by displacement, hunger, and loss.

Mamoun Wazwaz, photojournalist

“A thousand blessings to all of you – those who work with the international agencies, TV channels, websites, radio stations, and in the field. You gave everything and sacrificed immensely. I pray that your suffering ends after two years of hell, and that you never live through another war. Your message was the most sacred and powerful in history. You shook the world – because you conveyed the truth. No one could have done what you did.

“The psychological and emotional impact of those who died will never fade. [I remember when Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief] Wael Dahdouh stood over his son’s body and said, ‘They took revenge on us through our children,’ – I felt those words cut deep into my heart. I saw the footage on television and broke down crying. Imagine how his colleagues, who live it with him, must have felt.

“We live here in Hebron in constant contact with the Israeli occupation forces – there are frequent incursions and military checkpoints. After the war began, following October 7, 2023, the confrontations and clashes were intense.

“They treated us as part of the war, not as neutral observers, and used every possible means to fight us. Many times, I would say goodbye to my family as if it were the last time.”

“You journalists in Gaza sacrificed your lives for your people and homeland. You risked everything to convey the truth, the suffering, and the crimes against Gaza’s people. Whenever one of you is killed, I feel as it I’ve lost someone myself – as if I were the one wounded or arrested.

“You carried the message until your last breath, and you never stopped. You inspire us to continue the path you and the generations before you began. Thank you for every photo, every shot, every moment you captured for the world to see the many, many faces of war.

“War meant displacement. War meant famine. War meant being targeted by the military. War meant stopping education. Through your work, you made the world see it all.”

Raed al-Sharif, journalist

“My feelings are conflicted today after the ceasefire was announced. We in the West Bank followed everything happening in Gaza, where hundreds of journalists were killed or wounded, some losing limbs. What happened was a real crime, a genocide. Journalists [were especially targeted] because the occupation doesn’t want reports to come out of Gaza.

“Honestly, I feel ashamed as a Palestinian journalist. Despite our sacrifices in the West Bank, they don’t amount to even a drop in the sea of what our colleagues in Gaza experienced. They offered their lives and bodies – the most precious sacrifice of all.

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump announced that the United States, working with Egypt, Turkiye and Qatar, had finally reached a ceasefire deal for Gaza. For a moment, it seemed as if Gaza’s long nightmare was coming to an end.

But the ceasefire didn’t bring peace; it only shifted the suffering into a quieter, more insidious form, where the real damage from the rubble began to settle into Gaza’s weary soul. Years of relentless shelling had built up fear and heartbreak that no outsider could erase.

During those two brutal years of bombing and near-total destruction, everyone in Gaza was focused on one thing: Staying alive. We were fighting for every minute, trying not to break down, starve, or get killed. Life became an endless loop of terror and waiting for the next strike. No one had the luxury to dream about tomorrow or even to mourn the people we’d lost. If there was any kind of shelter, and that was a big if, the goal was simply to move from one shattered refuge to another, holding on by a thread. That constant awareness that death could come at any moment turned every day into an act of survival.

Then, when the explosions finally eased, a quieter kind of pain crept in: All the grief we had buried to get through the chaos. Almost everyone had someone torn away, and those pushed-aside memories came rushing back with a force that took the breath out of us. As soon as the rockets fell quiet, another fight began inside people’s chests, one full of mourning, flashbacks and relentless mental anguish. On the surface, it looked like the war was over, but it wasn’t. It was far messier than that. Even when the shelling eased, the emotional wounds kept bleeding.

When the noise finally faded, people began to ask the questions they had forced themselves to ignore. They already knew the answers – who was gone, who would not be coming back – but saying the words out loud made it real. The silence that followed was heavier than any explosion they had survived. That silence made the truth impossible to avoid. It revealed the permanence of loss and the scale of what had vanished. There were holes everywhere, in homes, in streets, in hearts, and there was no way to fill them.

People in Gaza breathed a fragile sigh of relief when the news of a ceasefire arrived, but they knew the days ahead could hurt even more than the fighting itself. After 733 days of feeling erased from the map, the tears locked behind their eyes finally began to fall, carrying with them every ounce of buried pain. Each tear was proof of what they had endured. It was a reminder that a ceasefire does not end suffering; it only opens the door to a different kind of torment.
As the guns fell quiet, people in Gaza were left to confront the full scale of the devastation. You could see it in their faces – the shock, the fury, the grief – the weight of years under fire.

Roads that once hummed with life had fallen silent. Homes that had sheltered families were reduced to dust, and children wandered through the ruins, trying to recognise the streets they had grown up on. The whole place felt like a void that seemed to swallow everything, as bottled-up grief burst open and left everyone floundering in powerlessness. During the onslaught, the occupiers had made sure Palestinians could not even stop to mourn. But with the ceasefire came the unbearable realisation of how much had truly been lost, how ordinary life had been erased. Coming face to face with the absence of loved ones left scars that would not fade, and the tears finally came. Those tears ran down exhausted faces and broken hearts, carrying the full weight of everything remembered.

It was not only the mind that suffered. The physical and social world of Palestinians lay in ruins. When the bombing eased, people crawled out of their makeshift tents to find their homes and towns reduced to rubble. Places that had once meant comfort were gone, and streets that had once been full of life were now heaps of debris.

Families dug desperately through the rubble for traces of their old lives, for roads and signs that had vanished, for relatives still trapped beneath the debris. Amid the wreckage, the questions came: How do we rebuild from this? Where can we find any spark of hope? When an entire world has been destroyed, where does one even begin? Israel’s strategy was clear, and its results unmistakable. This was not chaos; it was a deliberate effort to turn Gaza into a wasteland. By striking hospitals, schools and water systems – the foundations of survival – the aim was to shatter what makes life itself possible. Those strikes sowed a despair that seeps into everything, fraying the bonds of community, eroding trust and forcing families to wonder whether they can endure a system built to erase them.

The destruction went deeper than bricks and bodies. The constant shadow of death, the bombs that could fall anywhere, and the psychological toll made fear feel ordinary, hope seem foolish, and society begin to unravel. Children stopped learning, money disappeared, health collapsed, and the fragile glue holding communities together came undone. Palestinians were not only struggling to survive each day; they were also fighting the slow decay of their future, a damage etched into minds and spirits that will last for generations.

When the fighting subsided, new forms of pain emerged. Surrounded by ruins and with no clear path forward, people in Gaza faced an impossible choice: Leave their homeland and risk never returning, or stay in a place without roads, schools, doctors or roofs. Either choice ensured the same outcome – the continuation of suffering by making Gaza unlivable. Endless negotiations and bureaucratic deadlocks only deepened the despair, allowing the wounds to fester even as the world spoke of “peace”.

The ceasefire may have stopped the shooting, but it ignited new battles: Restoring power and water, reopening schools, rebuilding healthcare, and trying to reclaim a sense of dignity. Yet the larger question remains: Will the world settle for symbolic aid and empty speeches, or finally commit to helping Palestinians rebuild their lives? Wars carve deep wounds, and healing them takes more than talk. It demands sustained, tangible support.

After two years under siege, Gaza is crying out for more than quiet guns. It needs courage, vision and real action to restore dignity and a sense of future. The ceasefire is not a finish line. It marks the start of a harder struggle against heartbreak, memory and pain that refuses to fade. If the world does not act decisively, Palestinian life itself could collapse. Rebuilding communities, routines and a measure of normalcy will be slow and difficult, but it has to happen if Gaza is to keep going. Outwardly, the war may have paused, but here it has only changed shape. What comes next will demand everything we have left: Endurance, stubborn hope, the will to stay standing.

We look at Palestinian children’s right to play in war-ravaged Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.