Russian journalist auctions Nobel prize

The Nobel Peace Prize auctioned off by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees sold Monday night for

$103.5 million, shattering the old record for a Nobel. “I was hoping that there was going to be an enormous amount of solidarity, but I was not expecting this to be such a huge amount,” Muratov said in an interview after bidding in the nearly three-week auction ended on World Refugee Day. Previously, the most ever paid for a Nobel Prize medal was $4.76 million in 2014, when James Watson, whose codiscovery of the structure of DNA earned him a Nobel Prize in 1962, sold his. Muratov, who was awarded the gold medal in October 2021, said the proceeds will go directly to UNICEF in its efforts to help children displaced by the war in Ukraine.

A mob of religious hardliners on Tuesday temporarily disrupted an event related to the International Day of Yoga at a football stadium in the Maldivian capital which was attended by top diplomats and members of the general public, attacking some of the participants and destroying property. In a statement, police said that they were treating the incident as a serious issue, and the Serious and Organised Crime Department was investigating it with “utmost urgency”. So far, six people have been taken into custody, police said. Maldives Police Service has launched a high priority investigation into the violent disruption of the event held at the National Stadium in the Muslim majority nation. “Perpetrators had sought to incite fear by forcefully entering, destroying property and attempting to assault participants of the event,” said the police statement.