Some of the most brilliant minds in science will be catapulted from academic obscurity next week when the Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and medicine or physiology are announced.

The honors, established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel more than a century ago, represent the pinnacle of scientific achievement, celebrating transformative breakthroughs that are often decades in the making.

In addition to the huge publicity, the prizes also draw their share of flak, sometimes triggering controversy and resentment over who gets chosen and who is left out, said Martin Rees, British cosmologist and physicist and former president of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific society.

Rees said one challenge for the Nobel committees is the increasingly collaborative nature of most scientific research. The image of the lone genius having a eureka moment is long gone, if it ever truly existed. Additionally, discoveries can be made simultaneously by different teams.

However, the Nobel selection committees, according to the rules laid down by Alfred Nobel in 1895, can only honor up to three people per prize. This requirement can prove to be a headache, Rees said.

“It may be a project where several people have done work in parallel, and they single out some and not others. It may be that there’s a team, and it’s not obvious that the ones they’ve singled from the team are the dominant figures,” said Rees, who is the UK’s astronomer royal and author of “If Science Is to Save Us.”

For example, the 2017 Nobel in physics recognized the detection of gravitational waves — “ripples” in space generated by colliding black holes 1 billion or more light-years away. The key papers reporting this discovery had almost 1,000 authors, Rees noted. However, only three were rewarded the prize — Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne.

Similarly, one often discussed candidate for the medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize is the mapping of the human genome, a transformative project that was only fully completed in 2022 and involved hundreds of people.

David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information, who identifies “Nobel worthy” individuals by analyzing how often fellow scientists cite their key scientific papers throughout the years, agrees that the three-person rule is a constraint.  

“It really has become a huge transformation in science that it’s more and more team science — huge groups tackling more difficult problems, international collaborative networks,” Pendlebury said. “This rule of three does seem to be an impediment if they wanted to recognize a team.”

The rule that a prize can only be awarded to three people comes from the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, which is responsible for fulfilling the intentions of Nobel’s will, according to the Nobel Prize website. Peter Brzezinski, the secretary of the committee for the Nobel chemistry prize, said there were no plans to change the rule. However, he said that the committee follows a detailed process once the nominations have been made by the end of January.

“We start the process by asking a number of experts from around the world to write reports describing the field in which the discovery has been made, to outline the main discoveries in this field and also to mention individuals who have made the most important contributions,” he explained via email.

“We read all relevant literature, attend conferences and write reports also within the committee,” Brzezinski added. “With time, we often succeed in identifying a limited number of scientists who have made the discovery. If this is not possible, we are not able to propose a Prize to the Academy.”

Retrospective view

The Nobel committees typically single out work that happened decades earlier — a retrospective view that’s often needed given that it can take time for the significance of some scientific research to become clear.

The Nobels also focus on three scientific disciplines, as designated in the will of Alfred Nobel. Fields including mathematics, computer science, earth and climate science and oceanography are excluded.

Even within the fields of chemistry, physics and medicine and physiology, just five areas out of 114 different scientific subdisciplines account for more than half of Nobel Prizes awarded from 1995 to 2017, according to one 2020 study. These are particle physics, atomic physics, cell biology, neuroscience and molecular chemistry.

Rees, however, noted that taking the long view and giving greater recognition to certain fields can, at times, make the Nobel committees seem out of touch with the scientific priorities of the day.

One example is artificial intelligence, or AI, which is transforming people’s lives at an unprecedented pace.

Two hot names in the field are Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, the Google DeepMind inventors of AlphaFold — an AI program that decodes the 3D structures of proteins from amino acid sequences. They won the $250,000 Lasker Prize this year and the Breakthrough Prize a year earlier.

Since their key paper was published just over two years ago, it has been cited more than 8,500 times, Pendlebury said.

“That is, in my experience, just incredible in terms of the speed at which the citations have accrued, so obviously, it’s a huge, important intellectual discovery,” said Pendlebury, who has been compiling his list of “citation laureates” since 2002.

The Nobel committees have on occasion awarded accolades to recent breakthroughs — such as when the chemistry prize went to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in 2020, less than 10 years after their key 2012 paper on the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique — but Pendlebury thinks a Nobel Prize for AI this year is still a long shot.

He said the Nobel Prize committees, at least for science prizes, are “innately conservative.”  

Diversity

Other criticism leveled at the Nobel Prizes includes the lack of diversity among winners. More female scientists have gotten the call from Stockholm in recent years, but it’s been a trickle rather than a torrent.

Last year, Carolyn Bertozzi, who won the chemistry prize, was the only female winner of a science prize. There were no female science recipients in 2021 or in 2019, when the Nobel committee asked nominators to consider diversity in gender, geography and field. Astrophysicist Andrea Ghez shared the physics prize in 2020, the same year as Doudna and Charpentier’s chemistry win.

Pendlebury said he believes lack of diversity on the Nobel stage is essentially a pipeline problem.

“They’re looking at work typically published 20 or 30 years ago, when the number of women in science at elite levels was not as much as it is today,” he said. “And so I think as time goes forward, you see more and more women being selected.”

Others point to the issue as more evidence of systemic bias in science, with women already less likely to be given credit or named as lead author on scientific papers.

“There are several women who made Nobel-level contributions to science, contributions for which male colleagues were awarded, but they were not,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Henry Charles Lea Professor of the history of science and an affiliated professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University. “These examples prove that even when there were qualified women, they were systematically passed over.”

Rees attributes the diversity problem to a lack of transparency. The Nobel short list is secret, as are the nominators, and documents revealing the details of the selection process are sealed from public view for 50 years.   

Of course, these flaws and gaps only matter because the Nobels are far better known than other science prizes, Rees added. He prefers so-called challenge prizes, such as the XPrize, which incentivize future efforts to tackle an important problem, rather than rewarding past success.

The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine will be announced on Monday, followed by the physics prize on Tuesday and the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday. The Nobel Prize for literature and the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Thursday and Friday, respectively.

The US State Department has condemned the jailing of one of Vietnam’s most prominent environmental activists for tax fraud in a ruling human rights activists claimed was a “total sham.”

Hoang Thi Minh Hong, 51, who has led environmental campaigns in the communist country for at least a decade, was sentenced to three years in prison by a court in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday for evading about $280,000 in taxes, according to her lawyer Nguyen Van Tu.

In a statement, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the United States was “deeply concerned” by her imprisonment and reiterated calls for Vietnam to “release all those unjustly detained” and to “respect the right to freedoms of expression and association.”

“NGO leaders like Hoang Thi Minh Hong play a vital role in tackling global challenges, proposing sustainable solutions in the global fight against the climate crisis, and combating wildlife and timber trafficking,” Miller said.

Vietnam’s opaque legal system has come under increased criticism from Western observers this year, even as the Southeast Asian country draws closer to the United States.

In April during a visit to Hanoi, a delegation of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee of Human Rights expressed “great concern at the worsening human rights situation in the country” calling for the release of “political prisoners” including NGO leaders, journalists and environmental activists, according to Reuters.

The court’s ruling also comes just weeks after US President Joe Biden’s first state visit to Vietnam, in which he elevated diplomatic relations between the two countries – a hugely significant move given Washington’s complicated history with Hanoi.

“Vietnam and the United States are critical partners at what I would argue is a very critical time,” Biden said at the time, referencing climate change. “I’m not saying that to be polite. I’m saying it because I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”

‘Total sham’

Hong was the director of CHANGE, an environmental advocacy group she started in 2013 that “addressed problems of climate change, pollution, and endangered wildlife in Vietnam,” according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

She was also one of 12 international activists who received a grant in 2018 from the first Obama Foundation Scholars Program at Columbia University, HRW said.

Hong “dedicated herself to educating and organizing young leaders in the effort for a greener world,” according to a bio page on the foundation’s website.

The importance of her cause has been underlined by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which lists Vietnam as one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change.

“Typhoons, floods, droughts and landslides frequently threaten a high proportion of the country’s 96 million people and economic assets concentrated along its long, densely populated, coast,” USAID says on its website.

Rights groups said Hong’s trial, which lasted half a day, was the latest example of Vietnam’s government “weaponizing the law for the purpose of political persecution.”

“This verdict is a self inflicted wound on Vietnam’s ability to tackle one of the most seismic issues of our time,” Amnesty International said, adding Hong is the fifth prominent environmentalist to be accused of tax evasion in Vietnam in the past two years.

Ben Swanton, co director of The 88 Project, which advocates for human rights in Vietnam, called her trial “a total sham.”

“This is yet another example of the law being weaponized for the purpose of political persecution,” he said.

Asked last week if she will run to become the United Nations’ next Secretary General, Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados gave a thumbs up, smiled, and walked away. Unofficially, however, UN insiders say she’s a likely front-runner.

The 2026 selection process is still far off, but talk of who is best-positioned to win the powerful job has already begun.

Historically, there has been a geographical rotation for the position, so it seems likely the next UN leader will be from the Latin America and the Caribbean region – and many advocates say it is time for a female candidate, after 78 years of only male leaders.

In the hallways and backrooms of the United Nations headquarters in New York, Mottley is one of several names being floated as likely contenders. Two sources said former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos – a Nobel peace Prize laureate – will launch a campaign soon, though a representative for Santos denies it.

Among others, Argentinian diplomat Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is also a recurring name in discussions of who might succeed current UN Secretary-General António Guterres, as are Alicia Bárcena, Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary; Rebeca Grynspan, a high-level UN official and former vice president of Costa Rica; and Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, a former president of the UN General Assembly and former minister of Ecuador.

But it is the charismatic and outspoken Mottley whose name often generates the most excitement. Though Mottley has not yet said she will run, one UN diplomat said “I would jump up and down” with excitement if she did.

Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a neighboring island, said she would have his vote if she chose to campaign.

“I think she would make a great Secretary-General,” he said, “Whatever she does, I will support her.”

Could Mottley run?

Mottley became prime minister of Barbados in 2018 and won a second term in a landslide election four years later.

Internationally, she has been noticed for cutting her country’s post-colonial ties to the British monarchy, and for her powerful rhetoric on slavery reparations, climate change, and the need to reform global financial institutions through the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral banks.

Mottley does not mince her words when it comes to big powers, either. In her address to the General Assembly in last week, she asked: “How is it possible for Chevron and the European Union to access the oil and gas of Venezuela, but the people of the Carribean cannot access it at the 35 percent discount offered by the people of Venezuela?”

In 2022, Mottley spearheaded the Bridgetown Initiative, a political plan to reform the global financial architecture and development finance to be more equitable, particularly in the face of climate crisis. The initiative would change the way money is loaned to developing countries and set up a special emergency fund for climate disasters.

In April, Mottley also joined forces with current UN chief Guterres and announced a revamping of her venture, called Bridgetown 2.0, putting forward six development priorities for development finance that will be discussed on the world stage at the annual meeting of the IMF-World Bank group in October, COP28 in November and the Summit of the Future in 2024.

Many diplomats in New York City and outside said they believe in Mottley’s potential to represent issues affecting the developing world as leader of the UN – but also in her capacity to bring her unique style of leadership to the role.

”I don’t think I recall another leader in recent history other than Obama that had the attention of the international community like she does,” a UN diplomat said.

Still, some warn that that she is taking political risks. Considering the initiative significantly challenges the status quo for international finance, UN expert Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group says that Mottley has to carefully plan her next steps.

Other observers point out that trying to upend existing systems risks angering at least one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, who hold a final word on the Secretary-General selection process.

Mottley’s office did not respond to multiple interview requests.

Fighting for a woman at the helm

The UN’s next Secretary General would take office in January 2027. Is four years too early to start talking about who the next leader of the organization will be? For some, it’s a necessary discussion to have for an institution that is at its turning point, as it grapples with criticism and geopolitical paralysis in the powerful Security Council.

“I don’t think it’s early at all,” Elina Valtonen, Finland’s foreign minister, said, “It’s very important to start discussing that because I think it’s also very much a question of what the future should look like for the UN and the Security Council.”

Valtonen and others also say that the time for the organization to have its first woman leader was yesterday. “This position should very much be merit-based,” she said, “but I think it’d be very remarkable if again, it’s not a woman who is chosen.”

The selection process has long been secretive, but opened up a bit in 2016. To be considered, candidates need to first be nominated by a country, usually their own, and then recommended by the Security Council to the General Assembly.

During the last selection process in 2016, a group of countries pledged to only bring forward women candidates – an initiative is currently being revived for the next selection process. In 2016, thirteen candidates ran, seven of whom were women. But Guterres – a Portuguese diplomat long considered the frontrunner for the role – was ultimately elected.

“There’s always lots of men that want to run,” said Ben Donaldson, head of campaigns at the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom.

This year, he said, “I’m hoping the message is coming through loud and clear from the majority of states and from civil society that no state should be putting forward male candidates. We are all working to increase the stigma around this, hopefully we can nip it in the bud.”

Susana Malcorra, a former candidate in the 2016 Secretary General elections, and cofounder and president of advocacy group Global Women Leaders Voices, is also working to make sure the political pressure will bring female candidates forward in the next cycle.

“It’s not so much about talking about a Julie or Anne, or Mary, it is more about talking about a Madame Secretary General as a general proposition, and then making sure that we pave the way to get there,” she said.

But not everyone agrees with the effort.

Dennis Francis, the president of the 78th UN General Assembly who is from Trinidad and Tobago, doesn’t believe men should refrain from running. “I believe that men should run next time around as I believe women should run in their numbers,” he said.

“Because what I would want to happen is for a woman to win in those circumstances, not from a field of women. That would be the wrong message.”

And with the powerful Security Council is already frozen on a number of issues since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine its members ultimately finding a consensus on any single candidate.

”All I have to say is grab your popcorn,” Julia Maciel, a diplomat from Paraguay, said.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he will meet the national army and police chiefs on Friday to combat a surge in gang violence, as the country reels from record shooting deaths this month.

“Tomorrow I will meet the national police chief and the commander in chief to see how the defense force can help the police in their work against the criminal gangs,” Kristersson said in an address to the nation on Thursday.

“I hope all parties in the Swedish parliament can come together in support of those strong and pattern-breaking actions that need to be taken.”

The Scandinavian nation has been rocked by a record number of shootings this month, amid a spread of gang violence from larger urban areas to smaller towns, Reuters reported.

There were 11 gun killings in September, making it the deadliest month since December 2019. Police said about 30,000 people in Sweden are directly involved with or have links to gang crime, according to the news agency.

Children and innocent people are affected by the serious violence, Kristersson added.

“I can’t emphasize enough how serious the situation is. Sweden has never seen anything like it, no other country in Europe is experiencing anything like this,” the Swedish prime minister said.

“We will hunt the gangs, and we will defeat the gangs. We will take them to court. If they’re Swedish citizens they will be locked up for a long time in prison and if they are foreign citizens, they will also be expelled.”

Maritime disputes across the vast South China Sea have ratcheted up in recent years as an increasingly assertive China militarizes disputed islands and confronts its regional rivals over their competing claims in the strategically important and resource-rich waterway.

Bracketed by China and several Southeast Asian nations, parts of the vital economic passage are claimed by multiple governments, with Beijing asserting ownership over almost all of the waterway in defiance of an international court ruling.

Over the past two decades, China has occupied a number of obscure reefs and atolls far from its shoreline across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports.

Competing claimants, such as the Philippines, say such actions infringe on their sovereignty and violate maritime law.

And the United States agrees, regularly sending its Navy destroyers on freedom of navigation operations close to contested islands, leading to fears that the South China Sea could become a flashpoint between the two superpowers.

Here’s what you should know.

Why does the South China Sea matter?

The 1.3-million-square-mile waterway is vital to international trade, with an estimated third of global shipping worth trillions of dollars passing through each year.

It’s also home to vast fertile fishing grounds upon which many lives and livelihoods depend.

Much of its economic value remains untapped, however. According to the US Energy Information Agency, the waterway holds at least 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil.

Who controls those resources and how they are exploited could have a huge impact on the environment. The South China Sea is home to hundreds of largely uninhabited islands and coral atolls and diverse wildlife at risk from climate change and marine pollution.

Who claims what?

Beijing claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all of the South China Sea, and most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles from mainland China. The Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan also hold competing claims.

In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.

China has ignored the ruling: Manila says Beijing continues to send its maritime militia to Mischief Reef and Scarborough Shoal in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

In the southern portion of the sea is the Spratly Island chain, which Beijing calls the Nansha islands. The archipelago consists of 100 islets and reefs of which 45 are occupied by China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam or the Philippines.

In the northwestern part of the sea, the Paracels – known as the Xisha islands in China – have been controlled by Beijing since 1974 despite claims from Vietnam and Taiwan.

China’s ruling Communist Party also claims self-governing Taiwan as its own territory, despite having never controlled it.

What does China’s naval build up mean for the sea?

China has built the world’s largest naval fleet, more than 340 warships, and until recently it has been regarded as a green-water navy, operating mostly near the country’s shores.

But Beijing’s shipbuilding reveals blue-water ambitions. In recent years it has launched large guided-missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships and aircraft carriers with the ability to operate in the open ocean and project power thousands of miles from Beijing.

In addition, Western marine security experts – along with the Philippines and the United States – claim China controls a maritime militia that is hundreds of vessels strong and acts as an unofficial – and officially deniable – force that Beijing uses to push its territorial claims both in the South China Sea and beyond.

The US is not a claimant to the South China Sea, but says the waters are crucial to its national interest of guaranteeing freedom of the seas worldwide.

The US Navy regularly conducts freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea, saying the US is “defending every nation’s right to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows.”

Beijing denounces such operations as illegal.

What has China built in the sea?

Most of Beijing’s military buildup is concentrated along the Spratly and Paracel island chains, where sustained land reclamation saw reefs being destroyed first and then built on.

Chinese vessels have been known to encircle various atolls and islets, sending dredgers to build artificial islands large enough to harbor tankers and warships.

“Over the past decade, the PRC has added more than 3,200 acres of land to its seven occupied outposts in the Spratly Islands, which now feature airfields, berthing areas, and resupply facilities to support persistent PRC military and paramilitary presence in the region,” US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Lindsey Ford told a House subcommittee earlier this week, referring to China by its official acronym, the People’s Republic of China.

Beijing’s military construction sped up in 2014 as it quietly began massive dredging operations on seven reefs in the Spratlys.

Since then, Beijing has constructed military bases on Subi Reef, Johnson Reef, Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross Reef, fortifying its claims on the chain, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Those facilities, according to Ford, are now bristling with some of China’s most advanced weaponry, including stealth fighters.

“Since early 2018, we have seen the PRC steadily equip its Spratly Island outposts — including Mischief Reef, Subi Reef, and Fiery Cross — with an increasing array of military capabilities, including advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, long-range surface-to-air missile systems, J-20 stealth fighter jets, laser and jamming equipment, and military radar and signals intelligence capabilities,” she said in a prepared statement.

China installed exploratory oil rigs in the Paracels in 2014 that sparked anti-China riots in Vietnam, a competing claimant.

More recently, cruise ships have taken Chinese tourists to the militarized reefs.

Why are tensions rising again?

Under President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the Philippines has taken increasingly assertive steps to protect its claim to shoals in the South China Sea, leading to several confrontations with Chinese vessels in waters off the Philippine islands.

They include standoffs between Chinese coast guard and what Manila says are shadowy Chinese maritime militia boats and tiny wooden Philippine fishing vessels; Chinese water cannons blocking the resupply of a shipwrecked Philippine military outpost; and a lone Filipino diver using a knife to sever a massive floating Chinese barrier.

“These recent incidents in the past year shows that China has become increasingly aggressive and confident in its actions against smaller countries like the Philippines. They’re beginning to cross certain lines,” said Jay Batongbacal, a maritime expert at the University of the Philippines.

The Philippine Coast Guard says it remains “committed to upholding international law, safeguarding the welfare of Filipino fisherfolk, and protecting the rights of the Philippines in its territorial waters.”

China’s Foreign Ministry has defended the behavior of its vessels in the waterway and said Beijing will “firmly safeguard” what it views as its territorial sovereignty.

What are the global implications?

Since taking office in 2022, Philippine President Marcos Jr. has taken a stronger stance over the South China Sea than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, amid the wider power struggle that has been playing out in the region for years.

The South China Sea is widely seen as a potential flashpoint for global conflict, and the recent confrontations between Manila and Beijing have raised concerns among Western observers of potentially developing into an international incident if China, a global power, decides to act more forcefully against the Philippines, a US treaty ally.

Washington and Manila are bound by a mutual defense treaty signed in 1951 that remains in force, stipulating that both sides would help defend each other if either were attacked by a third party.

Marcos has strengthened US relations that had frayed under his predecessor, with the two allies touting potential future joint patrols in the South China Sea.

As the partners held their largest military exercise in April 2023, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that US-Philippine military cooperation “must not interfere in South China Sea disputes.”

The US, however, has condemned China’s recent actions in the contested sea and threatened to intervene under its mutual defense treaty obligations if Philippine vessels came under armed attack there.

“The increasingly frequent run-ins between China and the Philippines speak to the new Marcos government’s willingness to stand up to Chinese bullying and coercion,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

“Part of that is certainly attributable to the closer US-Philippines alliance which helps given Manila the confidence that Beijing will be deterred from overt military force lest it invoke the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.”

“I want to tell you that, yes, you can. You can dream and you can achieve your dreams,” he said.

Growing up with cerebral palsy in one of the poorest areas of Cali, Colombia, Aristizábal pushed himself to defy society’s expectations. He has dedicated his life to bringing therapy, education, and support to other young people with disabilities in his community so they can realize their potential.

Since 2016, his organization, Asodisvalle, has expanded in big ways, opening even more doors of opportunity for those he helps.

With his prize money and donations, Aristizábal and his organization purchased the land where they built a much larger rehabilitation center equipped with new technology and more medical tools for all the children’s needs. They’ve grown from helping some 400 young people to more than 1,000 today, he said.

Along with specialized therapies, his center provides students with free education and a host of programs, including dance, sports, and music. Older students can also learn job skills.

Not only has Aristizábal expanded his nonprofit, he was inspired to become a lawyer and graduated from law school three years ago.

“I realized that the world needs more people to defend the rights of those with disabilities,” he said. “My goal is to help change the laws of this country so that those with disabilities will have more opportunities.”

This year, he and his foundation realized yet another big dream: Building a university. Inspired by a group of older students from the program, the organization began construction two years ago.

“Today we have the first university for young people with disabilities in Latin America,” he said.

Now in its first year, with 300 students enrolled, the university offers a range of classes, including computer programming, 3D technology, graphic design, and languages. Students can also learn skills in culinary arts, carpentry, music, and tailoring.

“It has all the equipment so that people with disabilities can study in an accessible way,” Aristizábal said. “We have ocular technology, for example. Those who can’t move their hands or feet are operating computers with their eyes.”

Aristizábal says the focus is not only to help students attain their college education but to prepare them for employment so they can join the workforce, become providers in their families, and contribute to a variety of fields.

“The foundation is changing the concept of the word ‘disability,’ understanding that they can, that they’re capable,” he said.

The young people who inspired the idea for the university, Aristizábal says, started out learning to be bakers at the foundation. Now, they are employed at a local food production plant.

“Before, their families saw them as though they were not going to be able to do much,” he said. “Today, they have a job, they have a salary. They’re the ones who put food on the table.”

Ultimately, Aristizábal wants to show the world what anybody can achieve if given the chance.

“Jeison is a role model for us,” said Ayleen, who started at the foundation when she was 4 and plans to enroll at the university next year to become a teacher. “He’s shown us that there is no limitation, no disability, no nothing stopping us from achieving our dreams.”

At least 52 people were killed and dozens more wounded in what authorities believe was a suicide attack at a religious procession in southwest Pakistan Friday.

Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by area, has seen a decades-long insurgency by separatists who demand independence from the country, citing what they say is the state’s monopoly and exploitation of the region’s mineral resources.

Meanwhile, a separate blast took place during Friday prayers at a mosque near Peshawar City in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing at least two people and injuring 11.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the explosion in Mastung.

Ul Munim claimed a senior police officer, who was killed in the explosion, was the target of the attack.

The critically injured have been transferred to hospitals in Quetta, the province’s capital, while others are being treated in a local hospital in Mastung, he said.

Achakzai said the bodies of the victims have also been moved to a hospital but that he expected the number of casualties to rise.

Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar strongly condemned the blast in a statement.

“The Prime Minister expressed his condolences to the families of those who died in the blast,” a statement from his office said. “Prime Minister’s prayers for forgiveness for the deceased and patience for the families.”

Police in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city some 600 kilometers (370 miles) from Mastung, have been instructed to tighten security and remain on “high alert” in wake of the blast, a statement from the inspector general said.

Balochistan has witnessed a spate of attacks in recent months.

Last month, an attack on Chinese engineers in Balochistan was thwarted by Pakistan’s military, leaving two militants dead and the Chinese workers unharmed, according to police.

In March this year, at least nine police officers were killed and 11 others injured in a suspected suicide blast.

Just hours after the blast in Balochistan, attackers targeted a mosque in the northwest of the country. Local police said two men on bikes had started shooting at their officers outside the Hangu mosque in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

“I cannot think of any clearer case of bullying than this,” said Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. “It’s not the question of stealing your lunch money, but it’s really a question of stealing your lunch bag, your chair and even enrollment in school.”

His comments follow increasingly assertive moves by the Philippines to protect its claim to shoals in the South China Sea during more than a month of high-stakes maritime drama.

While tensions between China and the Philippines over the highly-contested and strategic waterway have festered for years, confrontations have spiked this summer, renewing regional fears that a mistake or miscalculation at sea could trigger a wider conflict, including with the United States.

The region is widely seen as a potential flashpoint for global conflagration and the recent confrontations have raised concerns among Western observers of potentially developing into an international incident if China, a global power, decides to act more forcefully against the Philippines, a US treaty ally.

Recent incidents have involved stand offs between China’s coast guard, what Manila says are shadowy Chinese “maritime militia” boats and tiny wooden Philippine fishing vessels, Chinese water cannons blocking the resupply of a shipwrecked Philippine military outpost, and a lone Filipino diver cutting through a floating Chinese barrier.

Teodoro characterized the Philippines’ refusal to back down in the waters within its 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone as a fight for the very existence of the Philippines.

“We’re fighting for our fisherfolk, we’re fighting for our resources. We’re fighting for our integrity as an archipelagic state… Our existence as the Republic of the Philippines is vital to this fight,” Teodoro said in a sit down interview at the Department of National Defense in Manila. “It’s not for us, it’s for the future generations too.”

“And if we don’t stop, China is going to creep and creep into what is within our sovereign jurisdiction, our sovereign rights and within our territory,” he said, adding that Beijing wont stop until it controls “the whole South China Sea.”

Beijing says it is safeguarding its sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea and warned the Philippines this week “not to make provocations or seek troubles.” It accused Philippine fishing and coast guard vessels of illegal entry into the area.

China claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, and most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles from mainland China. Along with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan also hold competing claims.

Over the past two decades China has occupied a number of reefs and atolls across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports, which the Philippines says challenges its sovereignty and fishing rights as well as endangering marine biodiversity in the resource-rich waterway.

In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.

But Beijing has ignored the decision and continues to expand its presence in the waterway.

What’s at stake

In his first sit-down TV interview with an international news outlet since he took the position in June, Teodoro was keen to stress whatever happens in the South China Sea impacts the globe.

Crucially, the waterway is vital to international trade with trillions of dollars in global shipping passing through it each year. It’s also home to vast fertile fishing grounds upon which many lives and livelihoods depend, and beneath the waves lie huge reserves of natural gas and oil that competing claimants are vying for.

With nations already suffering from inflation brought about by Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are concerns that any slow-down in travel and transporting of goods in the South China Sea would result in significant impact to the global economy.

“It will choke one of the most vital supply chain waterways in the whole world, it will choke international trade, and it will subject the world economy, particularly in supply chains to their whim,” Teodoro said, adding that if this were to happen, “the whole world will react.”

The defense secretary warned that smaller nations, including regional partners, rely on international law for their survival.

“Though they need China, they need Russia, they see that they too may become a victim of bullying. If they (China) close off the South China Sea, perhaps the next target may be the Straits of Malacca and then the Indian Ocean,” Teodoro said.

Risk of conflict

Only a few years ago the Philippines was treading a much more cautious path with its huge neighbor China.

But since taking office last year, Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr has taken a stronger stance over the South China Sea than his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.

On Friday, he defended the Philippine Coast Guard’s removal earlier this week of a floating barrier installed by China in the southeast portion of Bajo de Masinloc, also known as the Scarborough Shoal. A disputed area, the shoal a small but strategic reef and fertile fishing ground 130 miles (200 kilometers) west of the Philippine island of Luzon.

Marcos said his administration will not allow foreign entities to put up a barrier “that is within the Philippines,” according to the official Philippine News Agency (PNA).

“We are not looking for trouble. What we will do is continue defending the Philippines, the maritime territory of the Philippines, the rights of our fishermen who have been fishing there for hundreds of years,” Marcos said in an interview, while visiting the island of Siargao.

“We avoid trouble, we avoid heated exchange but our defense of Philippine territory is strong,” Marcos added, according to PNA.

Marcos has also strengthened US relations that had frayed under Duterte, with the two allies touting increased cooperation and joint patrols in the South China Sea in the future.

In April, the Philippines identified the locations of four new military bases the US will gain access to, as part of an expanded defense agreement analysts say is aimed at combating China.

Washington has condemned Beijing’s recent actions in the contested sea and threatened to intervene under its mutual defense treaty obligations if Philippine vessels came under armed attack there.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Lindsey Ford reiterated Washington’s commitment to the mutual defense treaty in testimony before a US House subcommittee on Tuesday.

She said the treaty covers not only the Philippine armed forces, but also its coast guard and civilian vessels and aircraft.

“We have said repeatedly and continue to say that we stand by those commitments absolutely,” Ford said.

Defense secretary Teodoro has concerns about a possible escalation “because of the dangerous and reckless maneuvering of Chinese vessels” but he was clear that any incident – accidental or otherwise – the blame would lie with China “squarely on their shoulders.”

And he called global powers to help pressure Beijing over its moves in the South China Sea.

“Peace and stability in that one place in the world will generate some relief and comfort to everyone,” he said.

As part of the Marcos administration’s commitment to boost the Philippines defense and monitoring capabilities in the South China Sea, Teodoro said further “air and naval assets” have been ordered.

“There will be more patrol craft coming in, more rotary aircraft and we are studying the possibility to acquiring multi-role fighters,” he said, adding that would “make a difference in our air defense capabilities.”

Preferring cooler heads to prevail, Teodoro said that diplomacy would provide a way forward providing Chinese leader Xi Jinping complies with international law.

“Filipinos I believe are always willing to talk, just as long that talk does not mean whispers in a back room, or shouting at each other, meaning to say there must be substantial talks, open, transparent and on a rules-based basis,” he said, while also adding that talks cannot be used as a delaying tactic by Beijing.

The Philippines, he said, has “no choice” but to stand up to China because otherwise “we lose our identity and integrity as a nation.”

But conflict, he added, was not the answer or desired outcome.

“Standing up doesn’t mean really going to war with China, heavens no. We don’t want that. But we have to stand our ground when our ground is intruded into.”

The self-declared republic of Nagorno-Karabakh will cease to exist from next year after its president signed a decree dissolving state institutions following its defeat by Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani victory last week triggered a huge exodus of ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh and marked the end of decades of conflict – and potentially the end of centuries of Armenian presence in the region.

President Samvel Shahramanyan’s decree called for all institutions and organizations of the Republic of Artsakh – which is not recognized internationally – to dissolve from January 1 2024. “The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) ceases its existence,” read the decree.

Azerbaijan reclaimed control of the breakaway region last week after an offensive lasting just 24 hours.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan’s borders but has for decades operated autonomously with a de facto government of its own.

Azerbaijan has long been clear about the choice confronting Karabakh Armenians: Stay and accept Azerbaijani citizenship, or leave. The majority of the population has already voted with its feet: Tens of thousands have fled their ancestral home rather than submitting to rule by Baku.

How did this happen?

After generations of intermittent wars and brittle ceasefires, the suddenness with which Nagorno-Karabakh fell to Azerbaijani troops – and with which its ethnic Armenian population has scrambled to evacuate – has been startling.

Azerbaijan launched its offensive on September 19, firing missile and drones at the regional capital of Stepanakert in what marked the start of a third war fought for control of the region in as many decades.

Under the Soviet Union, of which Azerbaijan and Armenia are both former members, Nagorno-Karabakh became an autonomous region within the republic of Azerbaijan.

Karabakh officials passed a resolution in 1988 declaring its intention to join the republic of Armenia, causing fighting to break out as the Soviet Union began to crumble, in what became the First Karabakh War. About 30,000 people were killed over six years of violence, which ended in 1994 when the Armenian side gained control of the region.

After years of sporadic clashes, the Second Karabakh War began in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by its historic ally Turkey, reclaimed a third of the territory of Karabakh in just 44 days, before both sides agreed to lay down their weapons in a Russian-brokered ceasefire.

But the third war was to last just a day. The Karabakh presidency said its army had been outnumbered “several times over” by Azerbaijani forces and had no choice but to surrender and agree to “the dissolution and complete disarmament of its armed forces,” by which time Azerbaijan had killed at least 200 people and injured many hundreds more. A second ceasefire – also brokered by Russia – came into effect at 1 p.m. on September 20.

The swiftness of Karabakh’s surrender was a measure of its military inferiority. Armed with Turkish drones, Azerbaijan won a crushing victory in 2020, attacking not only Nagorno-Karabakh but also Armenia itself. Unlike in 2020, Armenia’s armed forces did not attempt to defend the region during the most recent offensive – in part out of fear of further Azerbaijani aggression.

Karabakh’s despair was Baku’s triumph. In a speech to the nation Wednesday evening, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev announced his forces had “punished the enemy properly” and that Baku had restored its sovereignty “with an iron fist.”

Shahramanyan, the regions’ president, said Thursday he had signed the decree “due to the current difficult military-political situation.” The Azerbaijani presidency had previously insisted that the Artsakh government – as well as its armed forces – also dissolve itself. It warned if they did not do so, that the offensive would continue “until the end.”

What happens next?

The day after the ceasefire, Baku sent representatives to meet with Karabakh officials and discuss “reintegration.” Few details were released of the talks, but Azerbaijan has long been explicit about the choice confronting ethnic Armenians in the region.

In a speech delivered in May, he said Karabakh officials needed to “bend their necks” and accept full integration into Azerbaijan.

Aliyev claimed that the rights of Karabakh Armenians “will be guaranteed,” but Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and international experts have repeatedly warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing.

Anna Ohanyan, a senior scholar in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said she feared what would happen to local residents who chose to stay and attempted to refuse Azerbaijani citizenship.

Will any Armenians remain?

More than half of the local population had fled Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia by Thursday morning. Many harbored no hope that they can ever return to their ancestral homeland.

Ohanyan said that the best case scenario would be that Azerbaijan erects “a Potemkin village” – that is, a sham settlement intending to paint a false picture to the outside world, the sort once used to impress Russian empress Catherine the Great.

“But in the long term, I think there will be a systematic push, continued demographic engineering to push Armenian communities outside the region,” Ohanyan said.

Poghosyan arrived in Armenia Thursday morning with her husband, twin children, parents and grandmother. She said what ordinarily would have been a 45 minute drive had taken the seven of them 35 hours, so snarled up was the road.

Who will take the refugees?

Pashinyan said in a speech Sunday his government “will welcome our sisters and brothers of Nagorno-Karabakh to the Republic of Armenia with all care.”

But how prepared Armenia – a nation of some 2.8 million people – is to house up to 120,000 arrivals from Nagorno-Karabakh remains unclear.

Many of those on the move landed in temporary refugee camps set up in the border towns of Goris and Kornidzor. During a visit to Armenia, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power warned those arriving were suffering from “severe malnutrition.”

Nagorno-Karabakh has been under blockade since December 2022, when Azerbaijan-backed activists established a military checkpoint on the Lachin corridor.

Can everyone leave?

Vartanyan, of Crisis Group, said she was concerned about who would manage the routes into Armenia. “Will it be Russian peacekeepers, the ICRC, or will it be Azerbaijani authorities?” she asked. “Does it mean people will have to go through filtration camps? And then will people get detained – for example, the local men who took part in the fighting in the past, or those who were part of the local de facto authorities?”

Over the weekend, “one of the main things that people were doing in Stepanakert was burning all the possible documentation that could become evidence for the Azerbaijani authorities that they personally were part of the de facto government,” Vartanyan said.

On Wednesday, Ruben Vardanyan, a prominent Karabakh politician and businessman, was arrested at a border checkpoint at the Lachin corridor and taken to Baku, the border service said. Vardanyan was indicted for multiple charges Thursday, including financing terrorism, participating in the creation and activities of illegal armed groups, and illegally crossing Azerbaijani borders, according to state media.

The Azerbaijani State Security Services allege that Vardanyan funded “illegal military units” in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Baku has long maintained that the Artsakh government and its armed forces have operated illegally on Azerbaijan’s territory. A video published by the security services appeared to show Vardanyan in detention.

David Babayan, a local politician and adviser to president Shahramanyan, said Thursday he would hand himself in to Azerbaijan.

“You all know that I am included in the black list of Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani side demanded my arrival in Baku for an appropriate investigation,” Babayan wrote on Telegram. “My failure to appear, or worse, my escape, will cause serious harm to our long-suffering nation.”

In the decree signed Thursday, president Shahramanyan called on Azerbaijan to allow the “free, unconstrained, and unhindered passing of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the militants who laid down their weapons, with their property and transportation means through Lachin corridor.”

Slovakia is getting ready to elect its fifth prime minister in just four years, and with Kremlin sympathizer Robert Fico’s opposition party leading the polls, it is one being watched with alarm in the West.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Slovakia has been one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies. The two countries share a border, Slovakia was the first country to send air defenses to Ukraine and it welcomed tens of thousands of refugees.

But all that could change if Fico comes to power. The former prime minister makes no secret of his sympathies towards the Kremlin and has blamed “Ukrainian Nazis and fascists” for provoking Russia’s President Vladimir Putin into launching the invasion, repeating the false narrative Putin has used to justify his invasion.

Fico has called on the Slovak government to stop supplying weapons to Kyiv, and said that if he were to become prime minister, Slovakia would “not send another round of ammunition.” He is also opposed to Ukraine joining NATO.

Grigorij Mesežnikov, a political analyst and the president of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Slovak think tank, said that like many Russia sympathizers, Fico is framing his support for Moscow as a “peace” initiative.

Fico previously served as Slovakia’s prime minister for more than a decade, first between 2006 and 2010 and then again from 2012 to 2018.

He was forced to resign in March 2018 after weeks of mass protests over the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová. Kuciak reported on corruption among the country’s elite, including people directly connected to Fico and his party SMER.

Chaos and infighting

Voters turned away from SMER in the subsequent election in 2020 and elected the center-right Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO) party.

Originally seen as a breath of fresh air, OLaNO and its leader Igor Matovič ended up disappointing many of their voters. Matovič, a self-made millionaire, won the election on a strong anti-corruption platform, promising to “clean up” Slovakia.

But his anti-corruption credentials suffered several blows early on. He was forced to admit to plagiarizing his masters thesis and presided over a government plagued with infighting.

He was forced to step down after just over a year after his unilateral decision to buy Covid-19 vaccines from Russia sparked a rebellion in his coalition government.

Matovič switched places with his finance minister Eduard Heger, but the chaos continued. As the country struggled with the fallout from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more infighting and personal conflicts led to the collapse of the governing coalition in December. Heger continued as a caretaker prime minister but he, too, ended up quitting in May and was replaced by a technocrat, Ludovit Odor.

The chaos of recent years has given Fico a new chance.

“A year after the last election, it looked almost like the party would completely disappear. But (Fico) has managed to rehabilitate himself and is now the frontrunner,” Mesežnikov said. “SMER still have a strong support among their core voters and this support is emotionally connected to (Fico), but they have also been helped by the many conflicts within the government and by some external factors, including Covid, high inflation, the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine.”

Slovakia has a complicated electoral system and fragmented political scene, with as many as 10 political groupings potentially capable of reaching the 5% threshold needed to enter the parliament.

That means that even if Fico’s party wins the election, he will likely need at least one coalition partner. He has not ruled out working with Republika, an extremist far-right party which claims that the war in Ukraine is a consequence of “NATO’s expansion policy” and Kyiv’s “aggression towards the Russian minority in eastern Ukraine.”

Disinformation and propaganda are winning

Government infighting and several high-profile corruption scandals have weakened people’s trust in public institutions and created fertile ground for propaganda and disinformation campaigns.

In the latest twist last month, Slovak police charged the country’s spy chief and several other top level security officials with conspiracy to abuse power. Fico, who is close to some of those embroiled in the scandal, described the situation as a “police coup.”

According to a survey by GlobSec, a Bratislava-based security think tank, only 40% of Slovaks believed Russia was responsible for the war in Ukraine, the lowest proportion among the eight central and eastern European and Baltic states GlobSec focused on. In the Czech Republic, which used to form one country with Slovakia, 71% of people blame Russia for the war.

The same research found that 50% of Slovaks perceive the United States — the country’s long term ally — as a security threat.

Dominika Hajdu, the policy director at GlobSec’s Centre for Democracy and Resilience, said Slovakia is uniquely vulnerable to Russian propaganda.

“Some of the parties that are currently leading in the polls are spreading the same narratives – for example that it is the West that is trying to ‘drag us’ into the war and that anyone who is pro-Ukrainian is automatically anti-Slovak,” she said.

She said the pro-Russian propaganda is resonating also because a large part of the population was always very pro-Russian and, even now, about a quarter of people view Russian President Vladimir Putin positively.

“Historically, there has always been a strong pan-Slavic narrative of Russia being the stronger brother who would protect Slovaks from the Hungarians and who then liberated Slovakia from the Nazis,” she added.

Slovakia has a complicated relationship with Hungary, having been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire for centuries. Hungarians are the biggest minority in Slovakia and many Hungarians still see the 1920 Trianon Treaty, which redefined national borders after World War 1, as an injustice against their country. That has led to nationalistic rhetoric on both sides of the border.

Věra Jourová, European Commission’s top digital affairs official, said the vote on Saturday will be a “test case” of how effective social media companies have been in countering Russian propaganda in Slovakia, because the issue is such a divisive line in the election.

“Slovakia has been chosen (by Russia) as the country where there is fertile soil for success of the Russian pro-Kremlin, pro-war narratives,” said Věra Jourová, European Commission’s top digital affairs official.

Mesežnikov said Fico and his allies were tapping into a growing fatigue and anger among Slovak voters over the government’s unequivocal support for Ukraine.

“The government took a very quick and firm decision — and I’d say in doing so found itself on the right side of the history — to support Ukraine,” he said. “Slovakia became a proactive member of the EU in proposing sanctions on Russia and sent all the equipment it could to Ukraine.”

Slovakia’s decision to send air defenses just weeks after the invasion started was followed by the delivery of armored vehicles, helicopters, howitzers and other equipment. It also took in more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees — a noticeable number for a country of just 5.4 million.

However, Mesežnikov said that a large group of Slovaks did not agree with that approach — and that SMER and Republika were quick to start courting them.

“Their other argument, besides the peace one, is that we shouldn’t be helping Ukraine because it’s at the expense of Slovaks. They say it is too expensive and that we should worry only about ourselves,” Mesežnikov said.

That is a powerful argument for voters who have been struggling with a cost-of-living crisis, but Mesežnikov said it is not based entirely on facts as most of the support is subsidized with European Union funds.