Nobel Peace Prize Nom For WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for the site's "exposure of corruption, war crimes and torture around the world."

Nobel-watcher and Peace Research Institute Oslo Director Kristian Berg Harpviken says he is not surprised WikiLeaks has been nominated and he expects it will receive more than one vote. "WikiLeaks has been on top of the international news headlines for the last 12 months," he said. "It is also something very new in more ways than just bringing interesting news. It is, in fact, newsworthy in and of itself as a phenomenon. It is an interesting and many ways challenging candidate in its own right." A wide range of people are invited to make a peace prize nomination, including politicians, professors, and former laureates.

The wingnuts are gonna really lose their shit.

Not This Year's Nobel Peace Prize Winner

In the midst of a campaign to see him nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Belgium's revered Father Francois Houtart has confessed to child molestation.

The confession was published in a Belgian newspaper Wednesday and confirmed by the organization the priest founded, deepening a sex-abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in the country. After a spate of accusations this year, the church in September published the harrowing accounts of more than 100 victims of clerical sex abuse, some as young as 2 when they were assaulted. In October, after supporters of 85-year-old Francois Houtart began working to nominate him for the Nobel, a woman contacted the nonprofit organization he founded and said the priest had abused her brother 40 years ago, according to its director, Bernard Duterme.

The committee to nominate Houtart for his anti-globalization work has disbanded.