Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado emerged from hiding in Venezuela to collect her award in Oslo. The Venezuelan opposition leader fled her home country by fishing boat to the Caribbean island of Curaçao, then flew by private plane to Norway via the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal. In a video she posted Thursday around 2 a.m., Machado greeted a cheering crowd from the balcony of Oslo’s Grand Hotel, the venue that annually hosts the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Machado missed Wednesday’s event, where her daughter accepted the prize on her behalf. It was Machado’s first public appearance since January, after spending months in hiding in her home country. After arriving in Oslo, Machado met Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. In a joint press conference Thursday morning, Støre praised the Nobel prize winner: “I would like to salute you … for your struggle. It has cost you, your family and your people a lot.” “I am very hopeful Venezuela will be free. We will turn the country into a beacon of hope and opportunity of democracy,” said Machado, who was seeing her family for the first time in 16 months. In 2023, she was disqualified from running for Venezuelan president against authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro — prompting her to back candidate Edmundo González, who lost to Maduro in an election that observers described as flawed. González later fled the country for Spain. Machado recently praised Donald Trump for his stance against Venezuela’s authoritarian government, after the U.S. president said Maduro’s days in office were numbered. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded 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.”

World football governing body FIFA on Wednesday announced it will introduce an award “to reward individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace and by doing so have united people across the world.” The prize, called the FIFA Peace Prize, will be awarded annually, with the inaugural edition presented by FIFA President Gianni Infantino on Dec. 3 during the final draw for FIFA World Cup 26 in Washington. “In an increasingly unsettled and divided world, it’s fundamental to recognise the outstanding contribution of those who work hard to end conflicts and bring people together in a spirit of peace,” said Gianni Infantino. Infantino has forged a close relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has spent much of his second term in office trying to broker peace in various conflicts around the world — and to ensure that he receives the recognition he feels is appropriate for his role as a peacemaker. Despite his best efforts, Trump did not get the Nobel Peace Prize he had been overtly lobbying for. The White House blasted the Nobel Committee for not awarding the prize to Trump last month, saying that it had “placed politics over peace.” Trump has also threatened to annex Greenland and Canada, and last week said the U.S. would recommence nuclear testing. In July, FIFA opened an office in New York’s Trump Tower and appointed Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, to the board of an education charity project co-funded by World Cup ticket sales. FIFA did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for a comment.

PARIS — Acclaimed novelist Boualem Sansal is caught in the middle of a diplomatic standoff between France and Algeria. Sansal, a dual national of both countries and a vocal critic of the Algerian regime, was arrested shortly after stepping off a plane in Algiers in November on charges of undermining national unity. An Algerian court has since convicted and sentenced him to five years in prison. The case has sparked outrage in France, which accuses the Algerian government of using Sansal, who is suffering from cancer, as a geopolitical pawn. Relations between the two countries began to sour when France recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara last summer. The global literary community has also reacted in horror. Two winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, France’s Annie Ernaux and Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk, have publicly called on Algeria to release Sansal, as has Salman Rushdie. Sansal’s main support group says the author — who in 2015 was awarded one of France’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Grand prix du roman de Académie Française — has been in and out of hospital since the beginning of the ordeal. “Sansal is very ill and we don’t know if he has access to a doctor in jail,” said Noëlle Lenoir, a former French government minister serving as the president of the group. “We are very worried because we have very little news about him. We think he’s detained in isolation and deprived of his telephone.” While France has repeatedly called for the writer’s release, Sansal’s advocates worry Paris’ efforts will fall on deaf ears given the tension between the two countries. The decision to side with Morocco in the Western Sahara dispute effectively put an end to French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to heal the wounds with Algeria that have festered since the former French colony’s brutal war of independence in the 1950s. Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune viewed the move as “a betrayal,” according to a French official who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “Since the Western Sahara move, [Tebboune] feels betrayed, duped. So the relationship is going to limp on from crisis to crisis,” the official said.  The pessimism over France’s ability to effectively lobby on behalf of Sansal has led his supporters to seek help from the European Union, its top diplomat Kaja Kallas and the European External Action Service, which she oversees. The support group has also filed a complaint with the European ombudsman, which last year opened an investigation into the EU’s partnership with Tunisia over the country’s alleged human rights abuses. Boualem Sansal’s main support group says the author — who in 2015 was awarded one of France’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Grand prix du roman de Académie Française — has been in and out of hospital since the beginning of the ordeal. | Etienne Laurent/EFE via EPA Lenoir, the former government minister, wants a similar step taken with respect to Algeria. “Europe needs to wake up now. The association agreement between the EU and Algeria contains a conditionality clause that is linked to fundamental rights,” Lenoir said, referencing a trade partnership between the EU and Algeria.   European officials “need to use this leverage,” she said.   Last month, a group of French and German intellectuals called for Sansal to become a “European cause” in a column published in the French outlet Le Monde.   But so far neither Kallas nor the European External Action Service, which declined to comment for this story, have made any public comment regarding Sansal. The European Parliament, however, in January overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution demanding that EU institutions call for his liberation.  Sansal has appealed his conviction and will face a new trial on June 24. While there’s only a slim chance Sansal’s guilty verdict will be overturned, his supporters hope that Tebboune will grant him a presidential pardon.  

PARIS ― European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign against American higher education as she unveiled a half-billion-euro plan to attract foreign researchers. “The role of science in today’s world is questioned. The investment in fundamental, free and open research is questioned. What a gigantic miscalculation,” von der Leyen said. “Science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity or political party.” Appearing alongside French President Emmanuel Macron at Paris’ storied Sorbonne University on Monday, von der Leyen said the “Choose Europe for Science” initiative would put forward a €500 million program from 2025 to 2027 to attract foreign researchers to “help support the best and the brightest researchers and scientists from Europe and around the world. “ Several speakers at the event hit out at Trump’s efforts to gut federal research funding and threats to cut funding to universities like Harvard to the tune of billions of dollars over conservative criticisms of higher education and allegations of antisemitism on campuses. Both French Minister of Higher Education Philippe Baptiste and Robert Proctor, a prominent professor of the history of science at Stanford, called what’s happening across the Atlantic a “reverse enlightenment.”  The head of the European executive did not name-check American researchers or Trump, but her targets were clear. She even framed her speech around the story of Marie Curie — the groundbreaking, Nobel Prize-winning scientist who fled Russian-occupied Poland for France.  Von der Leyen also announced she would put forward a “European Innovation Act” and a “Startup and Scaleup Strategy” to cut red tape and boost access to venture capital to help turn innovative science into business opportunities. She added that she wants EU countries to spend 3 percent of their gross domestic product on research by 2030.

LONDON — Western governments should create a “strike fund” to support a wave of industrial action across Iran that will paralyze the state and hasten the end of the regime, according to the son of the country’s former leader.  Reza Pahlavi, whose father was the last shah of Iran and was ousted in the 1979 revolution, believes Donald Trump’s nuclear talks with Tehran will fail to deliver peace in the region. But he sees a chance for America and Europe to help the country’s grassroots opposition to overthrow its clerical rulers from within.  In recent years, anger at the regime’s repression and economic mismanagement have boiled over in unusually large public protests. Tehran’s standing across the Middle East has also been heavily dented by the fall of its ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and by Israel’s devastating strikes against Hamas and Hezbollah. With Iran on the back foot, Pahlavi saw an opportunity for Western powers to intensify support for the regime’s opponents and potential defectors. In an interview with POLITICO, he called for cash to be released to help people engage in peaceful civil resistance, with a series of “organized labor strikes that could paralyze the system and force it to collapse.”  Such a “strike fund” could be drawn from frozen Iranian assets, he said. “Paralyzing the regime as a result of work stoppages and strikes — which is the least cost to the nation provided we can fund it — this is something that can happen in a matter of months.”  The specter of mass strikes is a potent one in the context of Iran’s revolutionary history. Months of strikes — especially by oil workers — were critical in piling extreme pressure on the shah. After the revolution the Islamist regime suppressed the labor movement, but it has reemerged as a potential political factor, and Tehran was taken aback by the scale of action by petrochemical workers in 2021.   Pahlavi, 64, has been touring European capitals talking to government ministers and officials, as well as to private sector investors, to press the case for stepping up assistance for internal dissent. The other option, he fears, will be external action including potential military strikes from the United States or Israel.  “Diplomacy has been exhausted with no actual breakthrough, and at the same time, there’s a concern that if diplomacy fails are we talking about military action?” Pahlavi said. “What we propose is a third way — the best way to avoid having to resort to that scenario. Give the people of Iran a chance, let them be the agent of change, before we have to resort to other measures that are not wanted.”  NUCLEAR DEADLINE His intervention comes at a critical moment, with the fate of Iran in the balance.  Trump has authorized direct talks between American and Iranian officials while threatening military action if Tehran does not scale back its nuclear program quickly enough.  At the same time Iran is widely blamed for stirring conflict across the Middle East and beyond, with its long-held policy of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah and supplying Vladimir Putin’s military with drones for attacks on Ukraine.  Tehran’s standing across the Middle East has also been heavily dented by the fall of its ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and by Israel’s devastating strikes against Hamas and Hezbollah. | Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images Pahlavi regards Trump’s team as crucial allies who are clear about the threat posed by Tehran.  But he believes the United States-led talks on a nuclear deal are doomed. “This regime does not negotiate in good faith,” he said recently. “However well-intentioned, these nuclear talks will throw a lifeline to a crumbling dictatorship and prolong its export of terror and chaos.”  Time is running short. While Trump reportedly blocked Israel’s push for more military strikes against Iran, he set a deadline of mid-May for clear progress on nuclear talks.  Pahlavi believes Tehran will use the talks to play for time and that the West should focus instead on backing internal opposition.  Raiding Iran’s foreign-held assets frozen under international sanctions — worth an estimated $100 billion — could also finance a surge in technological supplies to enable the protesters, dissidents and potential defectors from the regime to communicate and organize among themselves, Pahlavi said.  MORE STARLINK While the authorities in Iran have persecuted dissent online, Elon Musk’s Starlink terminals providing uncensored internet access are already operating after being smuggled into the country, often at great personal risk to those involved. In recent months the number of Starlink users has increased significantly, and that influx of communications technology needs to continue, Pahlavi said.  “Now there are means to load a particular app on your smartphone that directly links your phone to a satellite without even the need to access the terminals,” he said. Western help needs to focus on “flooding the market with these components — it’s a matter of scaling it and having enough of those smuggled in.”  Regime change has earned a bad name, thanks to the U.S.-led military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq under President George W. Bush.  Pahlavi’s view is that many of those currently working under poor conditions for the Tehran regime will need to stay in place to help rebuild the country once the ayatollahs are ousted.  While he insisted he was “not interested in power or a post,” he said he would play a role as interim leader to establish a new democratic constitution. “I’m not here to run for office but I have a critical role to play as a person people call upon because they trust me,” he said. “Today’s generation sees that as an element that could be a broker, an agent of change, a leader of transition that can appeal well above the political divisions to a sentiment of national unity.”  OTHER VOICES Pahlavi still stirs skepticism among Iranians, even if he is promising to act solely as a facilitator of change, who will then step aside after seeking to unite the country’s highly splintered opposition camps. While monarchist chants and symbols have popped up at demonstrations in Iran, other pro-democracy protesters have adopted the slogan that they want “neither a shah, nor a [supreme] leader.” Memories of the out-of-touch elites of the shah’s era and his feared SAVAK secret police run deep. Iran is widely blamed for stirring conflict across the Middle East and beyond, with its long-held policy of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah and supplying Vladimir Putin’s military with drones for attacks on Ukraine. | Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images Fundamentally, it is unclear whether any of Iran’s opposition abroad can prove a major force in overthrowing the regime, or whether more significant changes would be more likely to come from rivalries and fractures inside the current state apparatus. Indeed, according to Sanam Vakil at the Chatham House think tank in London, there are big questions over whether the Iranian people are as close to ousting the regime as Pahlavi suggests. She argues that even if they are, he should not be thought of as the inevitable interim leader-in-waiting.   “His father was ousted for all sorts of reasons. Why are we going to put our money on the son that literally has done nothing in the 46 years since he left Iran?” she said. “It’s important to support Iranian agency. There are so many courageous visionaries inside the country and inside Evin Prison who are highly qualified but treated abhorrently by the Islamic Republic — many Nobel Prize winners, many human rights defenders. We should put money on them.” For his part, Pahlavi insists he wants a new constitution with three pillars at its core: preserving Iran’s territorial integrity; creating a secular democracy separating religion from government; and enshrining “every principle of human rights,” including protection against discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, religion or ethnic background.  As soon as a referendum is held to ratify these new arrangements, he said, he would step back again. “That’s the end of my mission in life.” 

More than 1,000 artificial intelligence experts, thinkers, investors, regulators and doers are swarming Paris this week for two days of talks about what the technology can and should do. POLITICO runs down some of the big names shaping the debate. FRANCE’S AI HOPEFUL Arthur Mensch embodies France’s hopes for a breakthrough in the cutthroat world of AI. The 32-year-old, who co-founded and leads startup Mistral AI, has forged strong connections with the French public sector and French President Emmanuel Macron, working on the country’s AI strategy and voicing the concerns of AI companies about regulation. Mensch has repeatedly asked for European Union rules on AI to be more flexible, even after pushing for an “innovation-friendly” framework as the law was being agreed. That outreach seems to have had some success, with EU officials now agreeing to simplify some of their requirements. Trying to be a European AI success — with an eye toward an eventual initial public offering to raise funds from investors — involves a complicated balancing act. Mistral AI has tried to build partnerships in France with state-owned news agency AFP and with the French army. But Mensch, a former alumni of Google DeepMind, has also forged bonds across the Atlantic, with a growing team in the U.S. and with U.S. investment. Last year the company struck a distribution pact with Microsoft’s cloud business Azure, sparking a debate on whether European AI companies can or should remain independent of the Big Tech titans that lead AI. OPENAI’S EURO-FIXER: SANDRO GIANELLA Shortly after OpenAI stepped into the global spotlight with the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, the company knew it had to bring in a tech policy master and a safe pair of hands to run its operations in Europe.  They chose Sandro Gianella, who had learned the ropes at both a U.S. Big Tech firm (Google) and a European upstart (Irish-American payment handler Stripe).  Gianella started work in June 2023 at a critical moment, as European legislators were trying to land the EU’s AI Act, the globe’s first-ever binding AI rulebook, with calls to include specific rules for general-purpose AI models such as that of OpenAI.  Gianella is not your average suit-and-tie Brussels tech lobbyist. Having embraced the post-pandemic remote work culture, he can often be found in the picturesque Bavarian Alps near Munich. His social media feeds are about AI, to be sure, but he posts just as much about bike or ski trips in the Alps.  Those diverse interests might help him balance a frantic OpenAI work stream while juggling scrutiny from several European capitals. Brussels has been drafting a voluntary code of practice for general-purpose AI models, while Paris and London have also been keen to develop their own AI efforts and rein in potential risks, including scrutiny of OpenAI’s links to Microsoft. THE AI SEER: GEOFFREY HINTON Cited as one of the godfathers of AI for his work on artificial neural networks, Hinton shocked the AI world in May 2023 by quitting Google to speak about the existential risk of artificial intelligence. The computer scientist said he had changed his mind about the technology after seeing its rapid progress, and began touring the world to warn of the dire threats it posed to humanity. That mission included briefing U.K. government ministers on the societal impacts that would result if AI systems evolved beyond human control.  “He was very compelling,” said one person who was briefed. Hinton’s warnings helped convince then-U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to launch the world’s first AI Safety Institute and hold an AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park.  AI doomers have since lost the argument on trying to slow down the technology’s development, but the 77-year-old continues to beat the existential risk drum. The Nobel Prize winner (in physics) will be in Paris speaking at side events. THE AI OPEN-SOURCE ADVOCATE: YANN LECUN Even though he works for Silicon Valley giant Meta as its chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun is a pillar of the French AI ecosystem. An early AI pioneer, he’s been a lifelong advocate of open source, an open and collaborative form of software development that contrasts with closed proprietary models developed by AI star OpenAI and others . LeCun plays an influential role at Meta, with his hand visible in the company’s 2015 opening of the FAIR artificial intelligence laboratory in Paris. The launch was a first for France at the time, and was motivated by LeCun’s conviction that the French capital was home to a pool of untapped talent. Almost 10 years later, corporate alumni from that laboratory have seeded themselves across European AI. Antoine Bordes, who was the co-managing director of FAIR, works for the defense startup Helsing, while another former employee, Timothée Lacroix, is now Mistral AI’s co-founder and chief technology officer. LeCun is also an enthusiastic cheerleader for the technology, and could be seen walking around Paris with his AI-powered Ray Ban glasses even as Meta hesitated to release them in Europe due to regulatory concerns. LeCun has never been an AI doomer and argues that an open-source approach can ensure AI evolves in a way that benefits humanity, even if it’s also been viewed as beneficial to China, where open source helped fuel the creation of the DeepSeek chatbot. LeCun’s open-source advocacy has seen him joust with SpaceX founder Elon Musk on social media before Meta’s current turn to embrace the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. THE UK’S AI WHISPERER: MATT CLIFFORD Matt Clifford is the U.K. government’s go-to brain on all matters tech. He chairs the country’s moonshot funding agency ARIA, helped set up the U.K. AI Safety Institute under the last government, and is now advising the new government on implementing an “AI Opportunities Action Plan” that he authored. He played a crucial role in the first AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November 2023, jetting across the world as then-PM Sunak’s representative.  After that, the former McKinsey consultant returned to his day job as an early-stage investor in tech firms; when Sunak’s government fell at last year’s election, the new Labour administration came calling. The 39-year-old had several chats with the country’s technology secretary, Peter Kyle, which led to his being tasked with creating an AI Action Plan for them over the summer. That plan was finally released in January and will be the blueprint for British AI policy; the government accepted all 50 of its recommendations, and Kyle is now advising No.10 once a week on implementing it. With no other tech specialist close to No.10, Clifford’s star keeps rising. While the Bradford-born Clifford is affable and doesn’t take payment for his government work, he has been the subject of briefings against him for perceived conflicts of interest. His recommendation that the copyright regime be reformed has drawn particular ire from publishers and rights holders. THE AI REGULATOR: KILLIAN GROSS Last year the European Union became a global trendsetter by adopting its AI Act, a binding rulebook regulating the highest-risk AI systems. European Commission veteran Kilian Gross has been one of the key figures in ensuring the law is rolled out swiftly.  Gross leads the AI regulation and compliance unit inside the Commission’s AI Office, a key group that will determine the fate of the AI Act. While AI Office boss Lucilla Sioli is the Commission’s face to a broader audience on anything related to AI regulation, Gross is never too far away to jump in when things get technical.  Gross was trained as a competition lawyer, but in his quarter century at the EU executive he has also worked on policies such as digital, energy, taxation and state aid. He also advised Germany’s Energy and Housing Commissioner Günther Oettinger.  Tech lobbyists say Gross has been running around Brussels to meet with tech companies or industry lobby groups, either to explain the rules or to listen to their complaints about how burdensome they are. His nerves could be tested to the limit over the next 18 months as the EU’s AI rulebook gradually takes effect. THE AI SCIENTIST: YOSHUA BENGIO While policymakers regulate how AI companies deal with the risks of the technology, the step before that — identifying those risks — is the playground of Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio.  One of the “godfathers of AI,” together with Hinton and LeCun, Bengio is an influential voice in the debate over the risks of AI and potential responses to them. In the lead-up to the Paris summit, Bengio led work on an AI safety report authored by 96 scientists, which will be a focus of debate in Paris. His message: Before we can start addressing the risks, we need to crack open the AI boxes and require that companies provide more transparency about how their AI models work.  Bengio is also being tapped for regulatory work. The European Commission’s AI Office has named him as one of the academic experts who will draft a set of voluntary rules for the most advanced general-purpose AI models. That initiative, however, is now in peril after Google and Meta attacked how the rules are drafted. THE AI DISSIDENT: MEREDITH WHITTAKER As an influential AI ethics researcher at Google, Meredith Whittaker urged that the company do more about AI’s potential harms. Now, as head of the non-profit foundation behind encrypted messaging app Signal and an adviser to the AI Now Institute, she remains a powerful voice calling Big Tech to account and countering some of the AI hype. Whittaker quit Google in 2019 after leading a series of walkouts to protest workplace misconduct. She has since warned that existing AI systems can include biased datasets that entrench racial and gender biases — an issue that requires immediate action by regulators. She also campaigned against attempts to break encryption and warned of the market power of a handful of U.S. companies over AI. Until recently she even had a role counseling regulators as a senior adviser on AI to Lina Khan, who chaired the U.S. Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2025. THE AI PRESIDENT: EMMANUEL MACRON French President Emmanuel Macron may be struggling to form a government but he hasn’t abandoned his ambition to be the brains behind France’s — and Europe’s — AI strategy. As host of the AI Action Summit in Paris, the French president has been hard at work pushing European countries to adopt a more aggressive innovation strategy that could help draw investment. He has also stepped up talks with French and European business leaders and researchers to show off what France can do for AI. Macron’s interest in AI is not new. Back in 2018 he launched a national AI strategy, entitled “AI for Humanity,” aimed at positioning France as a world leader and funding AI research, innovation and training. That ambition has now shifted up a gear, especially since Washington announced the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure. Macron is pushing hard to help French companies and above all the country’s great hope, Mistral AI, which Paris is counting on to rival OpenAI. At the same time, Macron also wants to make Paris a platform for global talks on universal access to AI, as Europe tries to find a space in a tech race dominated by the U.S. and China. Here he has tried to pull in new allies, even reaching out to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to co-chair the Paris AI Summit.

British researcher Geoffrey Hinton, who left Google in 2023 to warn of the risks of artificial intelligence, has won the Nobel Prize in physics for pioneering work in AI. Hinton has helped “initiate the current explosive development of machine learning,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel prizes, said in a press release. It also awarded U.S.-based John Hopfield. Machine learning is a technology modeled on the structure of a human brain that underpins many AI applications, such as image recognition. Hinton developed image recognition technology, which was acquired by Google in 2013. However, in 2023, Hinton left Google to speak out about AI’s risks to jobs, disinformation and humanity. He called AI’s progress “scary” and warned of a flood of misleading, AI-generated pictures, videos and text online. In later remarks, Hinton said he didn’t see how to “prevent superintelligence wanting to get control of things.” In May, he co-authored a paper urging for more AI governance. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences didn’t address Hinton’s warnings in its remarks at length. It said machine learning was “revolutionizing science, engineering and daily life” and that its future depended on “how we humans choose to use these incredibly potent tools.”