French author Annie Ernaux has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory,” the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.

Among her most successful works is “Les années” (The Years), and “L’événement” (Happening), about a student’s unwanted pregnancy and abortion in 1960s France. It was adapted into a film by director Audrey Diwan that won the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.

In announcing the award, the academy noted the “universal consequence of her work that can reach everyone.”

The 82-year-old French author, who writes non-fiction as well as novels turning on everyday life, was chosen from a list of 233 candidates – the names on this longlist are kept secret.

Before the prize was announced, many experts counted the Frenchwoman among the narrow favourites. Ernaux is considered by critics to be a master of autofiction – a mix of the autobiographical and fiction.

The German literary critic Denis Scheck had her on the list as his winner pick. Both aesthetically and politically, this year’s decision was “a delightful choice,” he told dpa on Thursday.

Academy secretary Mats Malm said he had not been able to reach Ernaux by phone before making the announcement.

She learned of the award shortly afterward through a call from Swedish news agency TT, the agency reported. “No, really?” she said in amazement. The phone had been ringing constantly – but she hadn’t answered it, she said.

She was very surprised, she later told Swedish Radio, calling it an “honour.” At the same time, she said, the Nobel Prize also comes with “a great responsibility.”

Reviewing Ernaux’s “Se perdre” (Getting Lost) for Britain’s Guardian newspaper last month, the critic said the book would “become a kind of totem for lovers: a manual to help them find their centre when, like Ernaux, they are lost in love.”

Ernaux was born in 1940 in Lillebonne, in France’s Normandy region, and grew up in modest circumstances. In her work, she frequently deals with the experiences of a life marked by gender, language and class differences, said Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel literature committee.

Last year the prize went to the relatively unkown Tanzanian author Abdulrazak Gurnah “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents,” in the words of the academy.

Louise Glück, who was US Poet Laureate in 2003 to 2004, received the 2020 prize.

By Steve Holland

FORT MYERS, Fla. (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden met with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday to assess the devastation from Hurricane Ian, and stressed the need for a united federal and state effort for the lengthy recovery ahead.

Biden, a Democrat, and DeSantis, his potential Republican presidential rival, have clashed over multiple issues including COVID-19 vaccines, abortion and LGBT rights.

They largely set those differences aside during the visit to hard-hit Fort Myers as Biden pledged federal support for a cleanup and rebuilding effort that could cost taxpayers billions of dollars and take years to complete.

Biden and DeSantis greeted each other warmly and stood shoulder to shoulder as they met with victims of the hurricane.

“Mr. President, welcome to Florida. We appreciate working together across various levels of government,” DeSantis, often a blistering critic of the president, told Biden during remarks after the tour.

“We’re in this together,” said Biden, who referred to DeSantis as ‘Guv,’ and complimented the “good job” the governor had done. “We’ve worked hand-in-glove. We have very different political philosophies.”

More than 100 people died and nearly 400,000 homes and businesses remained without power in Florida on Tuesday, five days after Hurricane Ian crashed across the state.

Biden opened his remarks by saying the storm showed climate change was real and needed to be addressed, something some in DeSantis’s Republican party have denied. “I think the one thing this has finally ended is a discussion about whether or not there’s climate change and we should do something about it,” he said.

Climate change is making hurricanes wetter, windier and altogether more intense, experts say.

The president also stressed the amount of federal help Florida receive for storm aid and as part of Democrat-backed spending, including $13 billion over the next five years for highways and bridges.

“The key here is building back better and stronger to withstand the next storm. We can’t build back to what it was before. You got to build back better, because we know more is coming,” he said.

Biden and his wife, Jill, arrived in Fort Meyers early Wednesday afternoon, two days after visiting Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory battered by Hurricane Fiona last month.

Biden got an aerial view of the destruction during a helicopter flight and called the destruction “horrific.”

BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, INSURANCE QUESTIONS

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell said it would cost the federal government billions of dollars to repair the damage from the storm.

“We are still very much in the lifesaving and stabilization mode. They are just beginning the assessments of what the actual extent of damages to the infrastructure. It’s going to be in the billions,” Criswell told reporters on Air Force One.

Biden and Criswell also suggested Wednesday that Florida’s insurance industry, which faces tens of billions of dollars in losses for the storm, could come under increasing scrutiny.

“The fact of the matter is, states like Florida, where they’ve had a lot of natural disasters because of flooding and hurricanes and the like – the insurance industry is being very stretched,” Biden said. “We’re going to have to have a hard look at whether or not the insurance industry can be sustained.”

Biden visited Florida in July after a condominium complex collapsed and killed nearly 100 people, and stressed cooperation with DeSantis at the time.

But before Hurricane Ian hit, Biden had planned a rally in the political battleground state where Democratic officials expected the president to attack the governor.

On climate change, Biden has made reducing carbon emissions a focus of his presidency, while DeSantis backed funding to harden Florida’s defenses against flooding but also opposed some previous disaster-relief aid and pushed pension funds not to consider environmental impact when they invest.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu; Writing by Jeff Mason and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Heather Timmons, Aurora Ellis and Lincoln Feast)

An investigator who interviewed Jeffrey Dahmer and knew his family reveals the shocking motives behind the serial killer’s heinous acts and cannibalism of his victims, RadarOnline.com has learned.

Nancy Glass was one of the few investigative reporters who had access to Dahmer and was able to interview the man convicted of murdering at least 17 young men from 1978 until his arrest in 1991.

Glass has revealed some of Dahmer’s motives behind his actions that she learned from a 1993 interview for CBS’Inside Edition.

In a Wednesday interview for the Australian radio show, Kyle and Jackie O, Glass shared that “he said he chose to eat them because he wanted them to be part of him.” Glass added that “he was so desperate, so desperately lonely, so ashamed of being gay.”

In an eerie afterthought, Glass told the hosts that during her time spent with Dahmer for the interview, he seemed “completely normal.”

The chilling recall of Dahmer’s demeanor suggests that he was capable of either being a master manipulator in body language and/or was devoid of all empathy to his victims and their families, allowing him to carry on as normal — for whatever normal can be to a serial killer cannibal.

The journalist also revealed that before ever corresponding with or interviewing Dahmer in prison, she took steps to understand his background by interviewing his family.

“I was involved with the family for several years. And the father [Lionel Dahmer] never thought anything was wrong [with Jeffrey]. He never noticed it,” Glass recalled on building a relationship with the Dahmer family. They granted Glass’ request to correspond with Jeffrey in prison.

Dahmer’s home life has been well shared as a story of trauma and grave neglect, that can be speculated played a hand in laying the foundation for the monster he was destined to become.

Glass stated that Dahmer’s “desperately lonely” disposition stemmed back as far as when he was a newborn, when his mother, Joyce Flint, forbid anyone to touch or hold him, “except to change his diaper,” Glass said of Joyce’s mothering.

Glass noted that this resulted in “bonding issues” that would later manifest in the killing and eating of his victims’ corpses as a way to “be part of him.”

When asked if she felt any empathy towards Dahmer throughout their correspondence and prison interviews, Glass simply replied, “no.”

“You guys interview how many people? And basically, I’m the same as you. You go at it from a very professional standpoint,” she told the radio show hosts. “When you’re you’re interviewing a politician. You’re careful, right? You don’t judge. But ask the question so that everybody listening can judge – and that was my job.”

It was ultimately Dahmer’s deeply engrained fear of abandonment and inability to connect and form social bonds that drove his vial actions, never allowing his victims the opportunity to leave him.

Armie Hammer made a rare outing to a golf club following the scandal that destroyed his marriage and career. The 36-year-old embattled Hollywood star was sporting noticeably new facial hair on Tuesday during his solo day out, RadarOnline.comhas learned.

Hammer was photographed rocking a thick mustache and soaking up the sunshine at a Santa Monica club just one year after being publicly accused of sexual abuse and cannibalism. The unemployed former A-lister looked stoic as he slung his bag over his shoulder to exit the facility.

Wearing a blue sports shirt and a baseball cap with gray shorts and sandals, Hammer held onto his cell phone and appeared tense when he spotted the paparazzi nearby.

His attempt to fly under the radar with his new stache didn’t work.

In the pictures obtained by Daily Mail, Hammer glared at the photographers as he waited on the corner to cross the street when the lights turned. His hairy face isn’t the only new addition to the Death on the Nile actor.

As RadarOnline.com reported, Hammer was seen in August with two bizarre tattoos after returning to the United States fresh from abruptly quitting his job at a Cayman Islands timeshare.

He reportedly took the job because he allegedly had no money after leaving a rehab facility in Florida where he sought treatment for sex, drugs, and alcohol.

In July, Hammer walked away from his position after his new job title made headlines. He moved in with Robert Downey Jr., who allegedly paid for the trouble star’s rehab.

The Call Me By Your Name actor’s job was exposed after someone tweeted that he was their friend’s parents’ concierge. Last year, Hammer was publicly accused of rape and cannibalism. Months before the allegations, his wife of 10 years, Elizabeth Chambers, filed for divorce.

“Elizabeth’s priority has always been her children and their well-being. The past year hasn’t been easy, but she and Armie have always had love for each other,” a source said at the time.

“They’re slowly figuring things out as a couple, but being parents to their two kids will always come first.”

Hammer and Chambers share two kids together — daughterHarper Grace, 7, and son Ford Douglas Armand, 5.

Work on “an ingenious tool for building molecules” – click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry – yielded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a trio from Denmark and the US, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday.

The award will be shared jointly between Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and Barry Sharpless, of Scripps Research in California.

The award honours their work in a field that allowed “molecular building blocks [to] snap together quickly and efficiently,” said the academy.

Sharpless, 81, came up with the theory. Following that, he and Meldal, 68, independently came up with the chemical reaction that is critical to the process. Bertozzi, 56, then built on that work to create reactions that work on living organisms.

Sharpless now holds two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry. His first was awarded in 2001.

Sharpless and Frederick Sanger are the only two-time Chemistry laureates, and two of seven total individuals and organizations to have won a Nobel Prize twice. The Red Cross, for example, has been awarded three Nobel Peace prizes.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 “is about making difficult processes easier,” the Nobel Committee for Chemistry explained.

In click chemistry, molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently. Bertozzi took it to a new dimension and started utilising it in living organisms. Bertozzi’s “bioorthogonal reactions take place without disrupting the normal chemistry of the cell,” the academy says.

The reaction pioneered here is very popular both in research and in industry because it makes it very easy to connect molecules.

Although the process builds molecules unlike those found in nature, they often perform the required function.

The theory developed by Bertozzi, Meldal and Sharpless can be used to explore cells, track biological processes and create better ways to target cancer, for example. This is already being tested in clinical trials.

“This year’s Prize in Chemistry deals with not overcomplicating matters, instead working with what is easy and simple. Functional molecules can be built even by taking a straightforward route,” says Johan Åqvist, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Professor Bertozzi could barely believe the news. “I’m absolutely stunned. I’m sitting here and can hardly breathe,” the US scientist said to Professor Hans Ellegren, who called her on the phone with the announcement.

To Ellegren’s question of whether she was shocked by the news, Bertozzi responded, “that’s an understatement. I’m still not entirely positive that it’s real.”

Bertozzi is the first woman among this year’s winners. The Nobel Prizes in medicine and physics went exclusively to men on Monday and Tuesday.

She is also notably one of very few openly gay laureates of all time.

Efforts in “pioneering quantum information science” netted the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger.

According to the Nobel Academy, their work focused on “entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated. Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information.”

Quantum science promises to open up whole areas of new applications for computers, in everything from enhanced encryption to the ability to crunch massive amounts of numbers faster than any modern computer.

The work of the three scientists – who worked separately – advanced theories that had been pondered by scientists like Albert Einstein for decades.

Aspect is a professor at the Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France. Clauser is a research physicist at JF Clauser and Associates. Zeilinger is a professor at the University of Vienna.

Clauser, 79, has in the past described how when still at school he would spend time in the laboratory of his father, an aeronautical engineer. “I was supposed to be doing my homework, but most of the time I was just wandering around admiring the advanced equipment,” he said.

With his father’s support – “a great teacher” – Clauser was destined for science, studying physics at the California Institute of Technology and going on to Columbia University in New York.

He has also worked at the University of California in Berkeley and independently as consultant and inventor, publishing prolifically and receiving a number of awards, including the Wolf Prize in Physics along with Aspect and Zeilinger.

Hobbies include racing yachts.

Zeilinger, 77, was dumfounded on being told by phone of his award. “I’m still somehow shocked,” he said on Tuesday when he was connected to the official announcement in Stockholm after the Nobel Academy informed him more than an hour beforehand.

“This prize is an encouragement for young people,” he said afterwards.

Aspect, 75, is credited with refining Clauser’s experimental measurements, clearing away existing doubts about the theory.

Ex-President Donald Trump’s legal team was warned by the National Archives that a number of official White House documents were still missing, including a correspondence between Trump and Kim Jong-Un, RadarOnline.com can confirm.

In a shocking development to come as Trump’s legal team continues to battle the Justice Department over the classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago during the FBI’s raid on the property in August, a letter released by the Archives on Monday shows Trump’s team was warned about missing documents as early as May 2021.

According to the letter, National Archives and Records Administration general counsel Gary Stern informed Trump’s legal team that “roughly two dozen boxes of original Presidential records” had still not been returned to NARA as of May 6, 2021.

Included in the missing records was an “original correspondence” between Trump and Kim Jong-Un from Trump’s tenure as president, as well as a letter former President Barack Obama left for Trump during the presidential transition in January 2017.

Maggie Haberman, who interviewed Trump for her new biography of the former president, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, claimed that Trump once boasted to her about the “great things” he obtained during his time as president – including the Kim Jong-Un letters.

“No, I think…that’s in the archives, but most of it is in the Archives,” Trump reportedly told Haberman when asked specifically about his correspondence with the North Korean dictator. “But the Kim Jong Un letters, we have incredible things. I have incredible letters with other leaders.”

As RadarOnline.com previously reported, NARA was ultimately forced to visit Mar-a-Lago in January 2022 to recover the 24 boxes of White House material believed to still be in Trump’s possession – although NARA only successfully recovered a total of 15 boxes.

“In mid-January 2022, NARA arranged for the transport from the Trump Mar-a-Lago property in Florida to the National Archives of 15 boxes that contained Presidential records, following discussions with President Trump’s representatives in 2021,” the Archives said in a statement at the time.

“Former President Trump’s representatives have informed NARA that they are continuing to search for additional Presidential records that belong to the National Archives,” the statement added.

The remaining missing records were subsequently referred to the Justice Department in May 2022, which resulted in the raid on Mar-a-Lago by the FBI on August 8.

The FBI ultimately recovered an additional 33 boxes of material and records, including more than 100 classified White House documents and 48 empty folders marked classified.

A copy of the search warrant used to raid Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida home later revealed the former president is currently under federal investigation for the “removal or destruction of records, obstruction of an investigation, and violating the Espionage Act.”