Breaking: President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Early this morning, it was announced that President Obama had been selected as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. From the New York Times:


In a special surprise, the Nobel Committee announced in Oslo, which has awarded the annual prize for the president "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen diplomacy and international cooperation among peoples." The award specifically mentioned Obama's efforts to reduce the World Nuclear Arsenal.

"He created a new international climate," the committee said.

The announcement early next killer with Mr Obama - less than nine months after taking office as president the first African-American - has shocked the public by Norway in Washington.

The White House had no idea it was coming.

... A senior government official said in an e-mail message that Mr. Gibbs had called the White House shortly before 6 am and woke up the president with the news.

"The president was humbled to be selected by the committee," the official said, without adding anything else.

Obama has done to repair the fractured relations between the United States and the world, a major theme of his campaign for the presidency and since he took office as president, has pursued a series of policies to achieve this goal. He promised to pursue a world without nuclear weapons, as he did in a speech in Prague earlier this year, reached toward the Muslim world, giving a major speech in Cairo in June, and I I tried to restart peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

"Only very rarely does anyone have the same degree that Obama has attracted the attention of the world and given his people hope for a better future," he told the Committee in its citation. "His diplomacy is based on the idea that those who run the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority in the world."