China is awarding its own peace prize to counter the Nobel that recognised imprisoned democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo.

CHINA and 18 other countries will boycott this week’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in protest at the award going to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

China and 18 other countries will boycott this week's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in protest at the award going to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Only one of about 140 Chinese activists invited by the wife of jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo has confirmed he will attend the prize ceremony in Oslo, according to an organiser of the guest list.

SEVERAL Western diplomats said China is pressuring European governments to shun the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony next month for imprisoned democracy activist Liu Xiaobo and not to make any statements in support of him.

A GUY walks into a bar and shouts: “Drinks all around: my wife’s next in line for the Nobel Peace Prize!”

China today blocked European diplomats from meeting the wife of the jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner and cut off her phone in anger over the award.

An imprisoned Chinese dissident who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize was allowed to meet with his wife and told her in tears that he was dedicating the award to victims of a 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, his wife and a close friend said.

The guest of honour was an ocean away, but the show went on.

PRESIDENT Barack Obama entered the pantheon of Nobel Peace Prize winners yesterday with humble words, acknowledging his own few accomplishments while delivering a robust defence of war and promising to use the prestigious award to “reach for the world that ought to be”.

IT IS far too early to say whether Barack Obama’s election was a victory for promise over substance. He freely acknowledged as much yesterday when he accepted the Noble Peace Prize in Oslo.

FORMER Taoiseach Bertie Ahern says giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama “doesn’t make any sense” and that the US President is “probably embarrassed himself” over the decision.

THE award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama is arguably one of the most absurd the Nobel committee has ever made.

THE awarding of the Nobel Peace Price to President Barack Obama landed with a shock on darkened, still-asleep Washington. He won! For what?

Nobel Prize-winning agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug died in Texas aged 95.

BURMA’S South East Asian neighbours expressed grave concern over the trial of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but China said it would not interfere in the regime’s affairs.

Nobel Prize jurors who accepted all-expenses-paid trips to China to discuss the awards are being investigated on suspicion of bribery, it emerged today.

President Mary McAleese has paid tribute to Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari for his work in verifying that IRA arms were put beyond use.

Al Gore and the UN climate panel’s chief scientist will accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway today for sounding the alarm over what the former US vice president called the “planetary emergency” of global warming.

The industrial world is hurling more carbon into the atmosphere than ever before and governments have just a few years to avert calamitous climate change, the UN climate secretariat said today.

Dulux paint maker ICI was today confirmed as a takeover target of Dutch chemicals firm Akzo Nobel, the owner of rival paints brand Crown.

Hollywood film star Sharon Stone will co-host this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Concert in the Norwegian capital Oslo, the prize committee confirmed today.

I AM originally from Iran but have been living in Cork for the past 20 years. However, I am not a Muslim but a Baha’i and I came out of Iran just two months before the revolution in 1979.

IRANIAN writer Shirin Ebadi, a female human rights and democracy activist, was awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday.

POPE JOHN PAUL II, approaching the 25th anniversary of his reign, is favourite to win the Nobel Peace Prize to be announced in Oslo today.

THE irony of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to former US Democrat president Jimmy Carter will not be lost on the party’s current representatives in Congress, who have shifted their position on Iraq to now row in behind President Bush.