Nobel chemistry winners are announced early in rare slip-up
Stockholm (AP): The most prestigious and secretive prize in science ran headfirst into the digital era Wednesday when Swedish media got an emailed press release revealing the winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry and the news prematurely went public.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said it was investigating.
About four hours before the official announcement was planned Wednesday, several Swedish media received a press release from the academy revealing that U.S.-based scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov had won the 2023 chemistry prize for their work on quantum dots.
The Associated Press did not receive the press release in advance and decided not to publish the names until confirmed by the academy, but many Swedish media organizations did. Many were suspicious of the email at first. They published the information, however, since the academy didn't write it off as false, merely insisting that the final decision on a winner had not yet been taken.
"We don't know what happened," the academy's secretary-general, Hans Ellengren, told The Associated Press. "This is very unfortunate, and we regret very much that that this happened. Exactly what happened I can't tell, because we don't know ourselves."
The five-member Nobel Prize committees spend months whittling down lists of nominations before the full academy makes its official decision on the day of the award, announcing Nobel winners at a scheduled news conference.
Wednesday's premature press release reinforced suspicions that the final decision is just a formality, since material including background information on the winners must be prepared in advance.
More importantly, it showed the difficulty of keeping anything secret for long in the age when virtually everything is online.
"It is an important principle that the prize winners are the first to find out, and that everyone else finds out afterward at the same time," the former head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, G ran Hansson, told news agency TT. "But in the electronic era the leaks can occur in different ways than in the newspaper era."
Until just under a decade ago, the academy sent a courier to AP and other news agencies carrying an envelope with the names of the winners. The courier would be connected to the academy by phone and wait for a cue to hand over the envelope at the moment the prize committee started reading the names of the winners.
The academy stopped the practice since the awards were being announced simultaneously on the digital platforms of the Nobel Prizes.
It is not the first time the names of winners slip out before the Nobel announcements. The literature prize, in a particular, was plagued by leaks in recent decades. And in 2010, Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published the name of the medicine winner in advance.
TV4, public broadcaster SVT and news agency TT were among the Swedish media who received the news release by email at 7:31 a.m., just over four hours ahead of the scheduled prize announcement at 11:45 a.m.
Ellengren, the academy's secretary-general, said it would not comment on the exact process of nominating and awarding Nobel Prize laureates.
"The actual decision is not made until the academy meets the very same day as we announce the prize," he said.
For the official press release to be published in advance is extremely rare, said Fredrick Malmberg, head of news at Swedish television station TV4.
"I have worked since 1995 at TV4 and I cannot remember anything like this before," he said. "It is incredible."
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Bengal MLA Humayun Kabir floats new party days after laying foundation for Babri-style mosque
Beldanga (WB), Dec 22 (PTI): West Bengal MLA Humayun Kabir on Monday floated a new outfit, Janata Unnayan Party, days after he was suspended by the TMC for laying the foundation stone for a Babri-style mosque in Murshidabad district.
Addressing a public meeting in Beladanga, Kabir named eight candidates that his new party will field in the 2026 assembly elections in the state.
Kabir, the MLA of Bharatpur, said he would contest the assembly polls from two seats, Rejinagar and Beldanga in Murshidabad.
"We can only tell you later how many seats we will be finally contesting," he told the gathering.
Kabir said his mission is to oust Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from power in the assembly polls, which will be due in less than six months.
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"Mamata Banerjee is no longer the same person I knew. She is beyond the reach of the common man," he alleged.
The BJP alleged Kabir was working to help the TMC return to power.
"Kabir will not be a factor in the next assembly polls. He will face the drubbing of the electorate along with his old friend TMC, with which he is still in touch in a clandestine manner. Both Kabir and his new party will be rejected by the people of Bengal," state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya claimed.
He claimed Kabir was attempting to split "BJP votes" in the assembly polls.
"In the wake of the situation in Bangladesh, people of Bengal will thwart Kabir's attempts and elect a strong nationalist force like the BJP, only which can defeat fundamentalists," he claimed.
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The TMC is yet to comment on Kabir's new party.
The TMC had suspended Kabir on December 4 after his announcement to build a Babri-style mosque triggered a massive row.
On December 6, the day the Babri Masjid was razed in Ayodhya in 1992, a defiant Kabir laid the foundation stone for the mosque at Rejinagar.
Kabir has had a tryst with most of the major political parties in the state over the last 10 years.
In 2015, he was "expelled" by the TMC for six years for criticising the CM and alleging that she was trying to make her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, the "king".
He contested the 2016 assembly elections as an Independent from the Rejinagar seat, but lost to Congress candidate Rabiul Alam Chowdhury. He subsequently joined the Congress, which then had a huge presence in the district, but switched to the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP fielded him as its candidate in the Murshidabad Lok Sabha seat, and managed to secure the third spot after the TMC and Congress nominees. He then returned to the TMC and, in 2021, became the MLA of Bharatpur.
