SOFIA, Oct 6 (Reuters) – The crew of a merchant ship was missing on Tuesday after the vessel sank in the Black Sea off NATO member Bulgaria following a drone strike that Prime Minister Rumen ​Radev described as a gross violation of international law.

It was not immediately ‌clear who carried out the attack by air and sea drones about 70 miles (112 km) off the coastal town of Byala in eastern Bulgaria, but there are growing concerns about hybrid attacks by Russia as it wages war in Ukraine.

Shipping sources said it appeared to be the first ‌such ​attack in Bulgarian waters.

Two ships were hit in the ⁠attack, Radev said in a televised ⁠statement. The crew of one, which was carrying grain, was rescued, with two injured. The other, which sank, was a Togo-flagged ship whose cargo was not disclosed.

A search has been launched for the missing crew and for any signs ​of an environmental threat.

A maritime security source said initial assessments of the strike suggested it had probably been a Russian attack.

Radev did not say who was ⁠behind the attack but made a reference to ⁠Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“If this war is not brought to ​an end in time, it will continue to expand its geographical scope and increase the ​risk of even a global conflict,” he said.

“We are seeing the ‌war intensify, with all the rules of international law now being violated, and civilian vessels being attacked at sea. This is absolutely unacceptable.”

Russia did not immediately comment on the incident.

DISTRESS SIGNALS REPORTED

British maritime risk management group Vanguard said the attacks on Tuesday ⁠were on the Togo-flagged general cargo vessel ALFA WATAN and the Palau-flagged general cargo vessel ABLE, within Bulgaria’s economic zone.

Both vessels issued distress signals, with Bulgarian sources stating that they had ⁠been struck by drones, ‌Vanguard wrote in a report.

The drone attack follows an incident ⁠in which Romanian authorities said on Monday two people had ​died ‌in a fire on a ship in the Black Sea ​outside Romania’s ⁠territorial waters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy blamed Russian drones for the incident. Russian authorities issued no immediate comment on it.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European countries have reported Russian drones breaching their airspace multiple times and mines floating in the Black Sea across trade and energy routes.

(Reporting by Alex Lefkowitz and Ivana Sekularac, Editing by Edward ​McAllister and Timothy Heritage)

The Israeli military told Reuters the two strikes targeted militants.

The strikes come a day before the ‌third ​anniversary of the Hamas-led October ⁠7 attack on southern ⁠Israel, which led to Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The Hamas-led attacks killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 hostages taken to Gaza. Palestinian ​authorities say more than 74,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault.

Israel, which says ⁠Hamas has been rearming ⁠and launching attacks in violation of ​a ceasefire, has stepped up strikes on the group ​in recent weeks.

Hamas has denied trying to ‌carry out attacks or rebuild its arsenal and accuses Israel of undermining the Gaza peace deal.

Last year’s US-brokered Gaza ceasefire calls for eventual ⁠reconstruction of the territory. But little progress has been made towards implementing a deal to end the ⁠conflict that ‌includes terms for Hamas to disarm ⁠and Israel to withdraw its ​troops.

Gaza health ‌officials have said at least ​1,400 Palestinians ⁠have been killed by Israeli fire since last October’s ceasefire. Israel says four of its soldiers have been killed by militants in Gaza over the same period.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by ​Alexandra Hudson)

Lithuania’s parliament voted in favour of removing the ban on Tuesday, in a first of two ballots required for the change.

Asked by reporters how Russia viewed ‌that ​development, as well as a proposal ⁠floated this month by ⁠US President Donald Trump to build an American military base in the Baltic country, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:

“If the military infrastructure of what is, in effect, ​NATO’s leading country (the US) is moving closer to our borders, then, of course, this cannot be perceived ⁠as anything other than a ⁠step towards escalating tensions.”

He added: “The same applies ​to the deployment of nuclear weapons on the territory of ​a neighbouring state. Neither of these developments will contribute ‌to stability and predictability on the European continent; on the contrary, they will, much to our regret, mark yet another significant escalation of tensions.”

Lithuania, a member of ⁠the EU and NATO, borders Russia and Moscow’s close ally Belarus. The US has kept an armoured battalion of almost 1,000 ⁠troops there ‌since 2019, in overlapping rotations, meaning the ⁠troops arrive and leave every few months.

The ​legal ‌overhaul of the nuclear arms ban, which ​requires a ⁠two-thirds majority in two parliamentary votes to go into effect, is set to remove prohibitions put in place more than three decades ago after Lithuania broke away from the Soviet Union.

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Lucy PapachristouEditing ​by Andrew Osborn)

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) – A US judge on Tuesday will hold a hearing on Walt Disney’s lawsuit seeking to block the Federal Communications Commission’s early review of licenses for the firm’s eight company-owned ABC ​stations.

The lawsuit, filed in August, poses a key test for First Amendment ‌free speech rights of broadcasters versus the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the media landscape and force a “course correction.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged broadcasters to drop comedy or news programs he dislikes or which have joked about or criticized him or his administration. He has also repeatedly ‌called on ​the FCC to strip stations of licenses after criticizing ⁠news and other programming.

In its ⁠suit, Disney said the FCC is seeking to coerce and retaliate against “a network that refuses to bow to the administration’s demands,” calling the agency’s actions an “extraordinary assault on free speech.”

US District Judge Loren AliKhan previously declined to hand down ​an order barring the FCC from issuing an order to refer Disney’s ABC licenses for a public hearing. The FCC has agreed to provide at least 48 ⁠hours’ notice to the court before moving ahead.

AliKhan ⁠is holding a hearing to determine whether she should issue ​a temporary restraining order.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who ordered the early reviews in April, even ​though the ABC stations’ license renewals were not scheduled to be ‌considered before October 2028, said last week that he has made no decisions on how to proceed.

The FCC had not ordered an early review in more than 50 years before April.

The reviews were ordered a day after Trump urged ABC to fire late-night ⁠host Jimmy Kimmel.

Broadcast stations need FCC licenses to use public airwaves. While license revocations are extremely rare, critics say threats of losing a license can pressure broadcasters and raise ⁠concerns about government interference in ‌programming decisions.

The FCC is also investigating ABC daytime talk ⁠show “The View,” which discusses politics, after saying it may be ​subject to ‌federal rules requiring broadcasters to provide equal opportunities to political ​candidates. Disney ⁠noted that since February, the program has not invited any political candidates to appear, citing the FCC’s “pressure campaign.”

Last month, Kimmel said FCC threats prevented the airing of his interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico during a broadcast. The interview was instead posted on YouTube, where it has been viewed over 13 million times.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; ​Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)

MEDINA, OHIO, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Early voting begins on Tuesday in Ohio, where the winners of November’s midterm elections will help determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the US Congress for the next two years, given the state has one Senate seat and two House seats seen as “Toss Ups” ​by Cook Political Report.

When polls open across the Midwestern state early on Tuesday, voters will be casting ‌ballots at a time when discontent throughout the United States runs deep, especially over rising prices.

The political party out of power usually benefits in midterm elections and with Republicans holding the White House and both chambers of Congress at a time when President Donald Trump’s approval rating is at a record-low 32%, Democrats are feeling increasingly competitive less than a month before the November 3 elections.

INFLATION, WAR ON BALLOT

Political analysts will ‌be ​watching closely what unfolds in Ohio, as Trump has been a dominant force, ⁠especially among blue-collar workers who used to ⁠align with the Democratic Party.

But with inflation running at around 3.4%, every visit to a grocery store stirs that discontent because of rising food prices, but also due to rapidly escalating energy and housing costs.

The US war with Iran, launched by Trump on February 28 for reasons that he has not clearly presented to the nation, also ​has voters worried that it will become yet another “forever war.”

The president won Ohio and the state’s 17 electoral votes handily in 2016, 2020 and 2024, despite losing the 2020 presidential race to Democrat Joe Biden.

In this election, all eyes will ⁠be on whether some of those disaffected Democrats return to their party ⁠and if a significant number of independents turn their backs on Trump’s Republicans.

SENATE SEAT

Former Senator ​Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, is trying to return to the Senate, where he served for 18 years before being defeated ​two years ago by Republican Senator Bernie Moreno.

This time around, Brown, a populist Democrat who long ‌railed against US trade deals with foreign competitors, is attempting to unseat Republican Jon Husted in a special election with the winner holding the seat through 2028.

Political analysts see the race between Husted and Brown as a toss-up.

With Republicans currently holding a 53-47 majority in the Senate, Democrats are hoping for a net gain of at least four seats, including in Ohio, ⁠in order to control the chamber.

CLOSE HOUSE RACES

Meanwhile, two US House races could help determine next year’s majority in that chamber, which Republicans currently hold with a 218-214 margin. One independent is aligned with Republicans and there are two vacancies that ⁠will be filled in the midterm elections.

In ‌the seventh congressional district, which includes Medina, just south of Cleveland, incumbent Representative Max ⁠Miller, a Republican, is in a tough race in seeking a third term.

While he ​has raised ‌far more funds than his Democratic opponent and has Trump’s endorsement in a Republican-leaning ​district, Miller’s campaign ⁠has been hit by allegations of domestic violence, which he denies.

Democrat Brian Poindexter, a labor union iron worker and member of a suburban city council, is mounting an aggressive campaign to unseat Miller.

Meanwhile, in Ohio’s 9th congressional district that covers most of northwest Ohio and hugs the shores of Lake Erie, Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur, a moderate who was first elected in 1982, is battling in another toss-up race against Republican challenger Derek Merrin, who nearly defeated her in 2024.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan. Editing by ​Michael Learmonth and Jonathan Spicer )

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) – An overwhelming majority of Americans said that it is inappropriate to use taxpayer funds for TV ads featuring the president around an election, in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted as spots with President Donald Trump air ahead of November’s midterms.

The six-day poll, which ​concluded on Monday, found that 86% of Americans — and four out of five Republicans — think it is ‌inappropriate to use taxpayer money to pay for election-related TV ads featuring the president or his cabinet.

Ethics experts and lawmakers from both parties have criticized three nationally broadcast ads that celebrate a “golden age of America” airing weeks before the November 3 midterm elections. Lawmakers have questioned whether public funds are being used to promote Trump politically, while other critics say the spots may violate longstanding restrictions on government propaganda ‌and political ​activity.

Trump and his aides have said the ads are educational, patriotic and not ⁠intended to promote any politician’s candidacy.

“These ⁠public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” said a White House spokesperson who declined to be named. Trump said late on Monday that he would pay for ads himself or with money raised from the MAGA political ​committee.

One ad features Trump declaring that “America will never be a communist country” while a chorus repeats “love me.” Another combines images of Mount Rushmore with footage of Trump praising a “golden age of America.” A third describes a “final battle” against ⁠the “deep state” and closely resembles one of Trump’s 2024 campaign advertisements.

Each ad ⁠ends with a disclaimer that it was paid for by the US government.

Democratic lawmakers have ​sought independent investigations and said that the White House transferred $20 million in Homeland Security Department funds to air the ads.

PRESSURE ON ​REPUBLICANS AHEAD OF ELECTIONS

Republicans seeking reelection face growing pressure as the president’s approval rating sits at ‌record lows.

Trump has taken a series of unusual steps in recent months promoting his brand and accomplishments, including a sweeping makeover of Washington.

A Trump-appointed board shut down the capital’s landmark John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after courts rejected two plans to put the president’s name on the building.

Some 71% of respondents oppose renaming the Kennedy Center to ⁠include Trump’s name, the poll showed. Just a quarter of Republicans supported that idea.

“For me to get involved and to take that on long term and to carry it or to raise money to carry it, I think that the ⁠Trump administration should certainly have recognition,” Trump ‌said last month.

A MEDIA BAN AT THE WHITE HOUSE

In September, Trump banned CNN, MS ⁠NOW and Politico from the White House before a judge ordered the administration to ​restore their ‌access.

Republicans were more supportive of keeping some reporters out of the White House, with ​57% backing the ⁠practice. Democrats and independents were overwhelmingly opposed. Overall, 68% of respondents said the practice was inappropriate.

The Justice Department has accused the outlets of threatening national security with their coverage, citing stories about US missile stockpiles, construction of Trump’s White House ballroom and turnout at the recent Republican midterm convention.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online and nationwide, gathered responses from 4,506 US adults and had a margin of error of about 2 percentage points.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Jason Lange in Washington; editing by ​Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)

NEW YORK/BOSTON, October 6 (Reuters) – Dario Amodei made $18 million last year as CEO of Claude AI developer Anthropic, the company’s IPO filing shows, putting him in the middle ranks of top executives at major technology firms in terms of compensation.

Anthropic is preparing for an IPO as early as this fall that could value it at more than $2 trillion, according to its ​IPO prospectus seen by Reuters. Amodei’s pay last year puts him above CEOs at Alphabet and Amazon, but behind those at Oracle and ‌Nvidia.

Amodei’s pay leans heavily towards stock and other sorts of compensation, suggesting that like many other tech founders, his yearly salary will account for just a fraction of his wealth.

Dario Amodei and his sister, Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, each had their annual salaries doubled this past July to $1.4 million. Stock and options awards made up the bulk of their packages in 2025, with Daniela Amodei receiving a total of $16.4 million last year.

Anthropic’s board this year granted the pair the promise of further equity in the form of restricted stock units, which promise a future payout ‌if certain ​conditions are met. Some of that is tied to their remaining at the company, and some of ⁠it is tied to the IPO.

Chief Financial Officer ⁠Krishna Rao earned $720,250 last year. He was granted options to buy 1.4 million shares when he was hired in 2024, and exercised options worth $385,285 in 2025.

An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on the figures.

MIDDLE OF THE PACK

The rise in US CEO pay in recent years has far outpaced the gains for the average worker, a dynamic critics worry could be exacerbated by AI’s widespread adoption.

S&P 500 CEO average annual compensation rose 21% to $22.8 million ​last year, and that does not include the extraordinary case of Tesla’s Elon Musk and his $158 billion restricted stock plan, according to the AFL-CIO.

Courtney Yu, director of research for executive compensation data firm Equilar, said Amodei’s $18 million haul “seems on the lower end for a company valued at $2 trillion, but it will be interesting to ⁠see how that changes once the company goes public” and his full ownership stake is shown. ⁠With six other co-founders, Amodei may wind up getting a lesser share of the wealth created by the IPO ​compared with other major tech CEOs, Yu added.

Top executives at AI-focused tech firms earned amounts that varied widely in 2025, based on SEC filings. At the high end, Oracle ​co-CEO Clayton Magouyrk earned $627.5 million, while the lowest was the $54,080 paid to Musk as CEO of SpaceX, before it went ‌public. SpaceX has also promised super-voting restricted shares to Musk, already the world’s richest person, if the company’s market value grows to $7.5 trillion and the firm puts 1 million people on Mars.

Other giant companies pay less on a year-by-year basis, with executives benefiting from enormous stock ownership while having only salary and security costs reflected in annual filings.

For instance, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai made $10.9 million in 2025, including $8.8 million for personal security “due to Sundar’s significant public profile.” By “compensation actually paid,” Pichai earned $213.9 million last year, which ⁠among other things reflects the change in value of his unvested shares.

Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy made $2.1 million in 2025, a disclosure said, mainly reflecting travel and security. On an “actually paid” basis, Jassy received $13.2 million.

LIVING OFF THE STOCK

Equilar’s Yu said the disclosures show how these executives don’t need to worry about year-by-year pay.

“Founder CEOs typically own ⁠enough equity that when the company does well and ‌the stock prices increases they can just live off the wealth of the equity they already own, and typically ⁠don’t take in a lot in annual compensation,” Yu said.

Anthropic said in the filing it offered a mix of ​salary, equity awards ‌and other benefits. The S-1 statement seen by Reuters does not describe the founders’ share of ownership ​in the company, which ⁠could be worth billions of dollars, depending on the final terms and valuation of the IPO.

The Amodei siblings and their fellow co-founders pledged in the IPO filing to dedicate 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to charitable causes.

Asked about the 80% figure Monday, an Anthropic spokesperson noted an essay Dario Amodei posted earlier this year, where he wrote that wealthy individuals have an obligation to help address problems stemming from AI adoption, and decried that many wealthy people, particularly in the tech industry, “have recently adopted a cynical and nihilistic attitude that philanthropy is inevitably fraudulent or useless.”

(Reporting by Echo Wang and Isla Binnie in New York and by Ross Kerber in Boston. ​Editing by Colin Barr and David Gaffen)

NEW YORK, Oct 6 (Reuters) – A stream of investor cash flowing into money-market funds has slowed significantly this year, pushing up yields on Treasury bills and potentially leaving markets vulnerable to short-term funding issues.

Money fund inflows have totaled just $158 billion in the first three quarters this year, TD Securities data show, down from $823 billion for the full year of 2025 and $840 billion in 2024.

Reduced money-fund inflows have hit demand for T-bills, ​analysts said, lifting their yields in recent sessions relative to comparable overnight index swaps (OIS), a key money market benchmark that reflects Federal Reserve rate-increase expectations ‌embedded in swap markets.

“If money funds are not getting those inflows, then they have to think about where they want to put their money,” said Sam Earl, US rates strategist at Barclays.

Money market funds, however, remain net buyers of Treasury bills, though demand has slowed markedly. By the end of August, those holdings had increased roughly 4% from year-end 2025, according to the latest Investment Company Institute data, versus an 18% rise over all of 2025.

SIGNS OF INVESTOR CONCERN

That softer pace of demand is beginning to show up in the relative pricing of Treasury bills, with investors requiring a larger premium to ‌hold them.

US ​3-month bill yields rose nearly 10 basis points above 3-month OIS on Monday, after hitting last week the widest ⁠spread since September 2024. For six-month maturities, that spread ⁠was at 11.3 basis points on Monday, touching 12.5 last week, the highest since April 2025.

The spread measures the bill’s valuation relative to the market’s implied path for short-term Fed policy. If T-bills are yielding more, it suggests investors are demanding extra compensation to hold US short-term debt, typically valued for liquidity and near risk-free status.

Nafis Smith, principal and head of taxable money markets at Vanguard, said the strength of the US equity market this year has helped crimp money ​fund flows by reducing the investor impulse to put money into cash. The S&P 500 is up 13% this year and the Nasdaq is up 18%.

Alongside the slowdown in money-fund buying, the rise in bill yields reflects expectations of heavy Treasury supply in the fourth quarter and more interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, analysts said.

Barclays ⁠estimates that the Treasury will issue roughly $225 billion of bills in October and another $160 billion in November. ⁠That should push yields higher as the Treasury floods the market with short-term securities. Yields have been rising at the long end ​of the curve as well, reflecting heavy corporate debt issuance to fund the AI buildout, deficit spending in the US and around the world and strong domestic economic growth.

“The ​Treasury is keen to focus more of the issuance on the very front of the curve in bills, but the largest source ‌of demand is slowing and that’s concerning,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, head of US rates strategy at TD Securities.

Higher yields, if they persist, could alter cash flows across short-term funding markets. If money funds move cash out of overnight repo markets and into higher-yielding Treasury bills while bill issuance ramps up, funding conditions could tighten, pushing up repo rates and raising financing costs for dealers and market participants.

It’s too early to sound the alarm on that front though, analysts said. Money fund inflows typically accelerate in the fourth quarter as investors ⁠build cash ahead of year-end liquidity needs, tax payments, and portfolio rebalancing.

RATE UNCERTAINTY PREVAILS

For now, higher bill yields further reflect growing uncertainty over where interest rates are headed. US rate futures have priced in one rate hike of 25 basis points this year, and two more in 2027, LSEG estimates showed.

Money fund managers tend to shorten portfolio maturities ⁠when they anticipate higher interest rates. Shorter-dated debt matures more quickly, ‌allowing managers to reinvest at higher yields if the Fed raises rates.

“We have this ebb and flow around rate hike ⁠expectations and for a money fund that’s focused on capital preservation, that uncertainty creates a natural incentive to remain short,” ​said Vanguard’s Smith.

Money ‌funds’ weighted average maturity (WAM) — the average time until securities held by a fund mature — has declined to 36 days last ​month from a ⁠peak of 42 days in May, TD data showed. That’s still well above the 2022 low of just 15 days.

For now, the move in Treasury bill rates does not appear to be a sign of stress in underlying funding.

Repo markets, often the first place where funding strains emerge, have remained orderly, analysts said. Treasury officials have also repeatedly highlighted continued strong demand for bills from stablecoins and money funds even if it has softened slightly, but for now caution seems to prevail.

“We’re seeing volatility on the short end that I don’t think the market has been accustomed to,” said Vanguard’s Smith. “That creates an incentive for a money fund to be shorter and try to demand a higher risk premium.”

(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss, ​editing by Colin Barr and Nick Zieminski)

Halzen realised that ice at the South Pole could be used to track ​neutrinos, sometimes known as ‘ghost particles’ for the way they pass through the Earth and our bodies ‌without a trace, and only interact with matter extremely rarely.

“The messengers bring information from the cosmos,” Eva Olsson, of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told a press conference. “They open the door to distant galaxies and tell us about the processes of exploding stars.”

HALZEN HAILED FOR DETECTING ‘MESSENGERS FROM THE COSMOS’

The neutrino interactions collected by the IceCube observatory in Antarctica provide researchers with knowledge about how high-energy neutrinos are ‌created, ​potentially even revealing previously unknown cosmic phenomena, the body said.

“Francis Halzen has led ⁠an international team of researchers and ⁠engineers who have provided us with a fantastic instrument,” Mark Pearce, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said in a statement.

“His tenacity and scientific vision has paved the way for a new kind of astronomy.”

In 2014, the US-based Smithsonian magazine, dubbed Halzen “Neutrino Man” when giving him one of its ingenuity Awards, acclaiming him for ​an “amazing experiment (that) heralds the beginning of a new era in astronomy”.

It even published a comic illustrating his life: “How One Physicist’s Pursuit of the Cosmos Took Off in Antarctica”

The winners of the Nobel physics prize are selected by ⁠the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and receive a prize sum totalling ⁠12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million), which is shared among the winners if there are ​several.

The Nobel Prizes were established under the will of Swedish inventor and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel, whose fortune was built in ​part on the invention of dynamite. First awarded in 1901, the prizes honour achievements in science, ‌literature and peace, with the economics award added later by Sweden’s central bank.

WINNERS FROM EINSTEIN TO BOHR AND THE CURIES

Physics occupied a prominent place in Nobel’s will and the prize remains one of the discipline’s highest distinctions. Over the decades it has recognised discoveries that have fundamentally reshaped humanity’s understanding of the universe.

Among past laureates are some of the ⁠most celebrated figures in science, including Albert Einstein, Marie and Pierre Curie, Max Planck and Niels Bohr, whose work helped establish the foundations of modern physics.

Last year’s physics prize was awarded to US-based scientists John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John ⁠Martinis for experiments that demonstrated the ‌principles of quantum physics in action, research seen as helping to advance the next ⁠generation of computing and other digital technologies.

The award was the second of this year’s ​Nobels to ‌be unveiled, following Monday’s medicine prize announcement, with chemistry next on Wednesday.

Nobel medals ​are presented to ⁠the winners by Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. The awards are followed by an elaborate banquet at Stockholm City Hall.

The peace prize, the only Nobel not presented in Sweden, is awarded separately in Oslo.

($1 = 10.0329 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Niklas Pollard, Marie Mannes and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm; additional reporting by Simon Johnson, Anna Ringstrom and Greta Rosen Fondahn in Stockholm, and Terje Solsvik in Oslo; Editing by ​Alex Richardson and Kevin Liffey)

OSLO, Oct 6 (Reuters) – The Nobel Peace Prize committee is closely watching the reshaping of a world order in turmoil, and those fostering new ways of cooperating ​that match the award’s goals, its secretary says.

Kristian Berg Harpviken, ‌secretary of the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee, prepares its dossiers and joins the deliberations but does not vote. This year’s announcement is on Friday.

Speaking in general terms about the committee’s work in an interview on Monday, Harpviken said it was closely following the ‌changes in ​the international order.

“We know what we’re leaving behind, ⁠we don’t know how ⁠much of it will survive, and in what form, and we certainly don’t know what will come,” he said.

“That is something that the committee, of course, takes very seriously in its discussions, also because some ​of the trends we are seeing internationally are trends that are threatening to many of the values that the Nobel Peace Prize has upheld ⁠throughout its history.”

Created by Swedish industrialist Alfred ⁠Nobel in 1895 in his will, the Peace Prize ​goes to the person “who has done the most or best to advance fellowship ​among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the ‌establishment and promotion of peace congresses”.

Asked whether the committee could at some stage name a laureate concerned with how this new world order should look, Harpviken said:

“Of course, it’s clear that people who are able to, within ⁠the transition period we are now seeing, start to stake out new institutions, new initiatives, new ways of working, that would be in harmony with the ⁠very objectives that Alfred ‌Nobel defined in his will.

“Because, ultimately, that is of ⁠course the yardstick for what the committee does. That ​would ‌obviously be something that the committee would be looking ​for.”

The fact ⁠that the world is in upheaval does not mean that there is a want of candidates, or that the Peace Prize is losing its relevance, Harpviken said, adding:

“I’m not worried about the prize, but I am worried about where the world is heading.”

(Reporting by Nora Buli and Gwladys Fouche in Oslo; Editing ​by Kevin Liffey)