Trump 'nominated for Nobel Peace Prize'

Oslo : The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced later today at a ceremony in Oslo, in Norway. 

While the shortlist has not been officially announced, there are clear favourites to have been nominated, as well as some unexpected reported names. 

In February, controversial US presidential candidate Donald Trump was rumoured to have been nominated for the accolade, alongside Pope Francis, Syria’s ‘White Helmets’ rescuers and the residents of Greek Islands who have provided shelter and safety to refugees and a Yazidi woman trafficked by Isis who is now a UN Goodwill Ambassador. 

Mr Trump’s reported nomination comes after he made a number of inflammatory and divisive comments in the run-up to the caucus. The billionaire business magnate enraged millions by proposing Muslims be banned from entering the US and has been condemned for his comments about immigration and Mexican migrants, with one of his most infamous pledges being to build a “big beautiful wall” between the US and Mexico. 

Kristian Berg Harpviken, a Nobel-watcher and head of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, told Reuters earlier this year the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has also been tipped for an award, alongside Colombian peace negotiators, US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation.

He also a claimed to have seen a letter submitted by an unidentified US nominator who proposed Trump for “his vigorous peace through strength ideology, used as a threat weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, Isis, nuclear Iran and Communist China”.  He did not list Mr Trump as one of the candidates who actually has a chance of winning.

Thousands of people are eligible to submit nominations for the Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel committee typically receives more than 200 nominations, according to the Associated Press.