Word: oslo
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...wake of World War II, the relay took on more peaceful overtones. For the 1948 Summer Games in London, the relay's first runner, a Greek army corporal, symbolically removed his military uniform before setting off. Four years later, the first torch relay for Oslo's Winter Olympics started in Morgedal, Norway, the birthplace of skiing pioneer Sondre Norheim. That relay also featured the torch's first trip in an airplane. (For the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, the torch got an upgrade, flying from Athens to Paris on the famed Concorde...
...Connor, OSLO...
Interesting? Definitely. Expected? Not at all. Just two days earlier, the Associated Press had run a story from Oslo saying "Chinese dissidents" were leading the odds to win the prize, followed by human rights activists in Russia, Colombia, Jordan, Afghanistan and Vietnam. The article also added, cryptically, "U.S. President Barack Obama is thought to have been nominated but it's unclear on what grounds...
...decision had been made to give Rose Garden remarks by Obama, and shortly afterwards, news leaked out that Obama would agree to fly to Oslo to accept the award on Dec. 10. The task fell to Obama's two top speechwriters, Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes, to craft Obama's words, which had to strike a delicate balance; they needed to both seize the moment, when the world would want to hear from him, while heading off the inevitable criticism that Obama was being rewarded prematurely, for rhetoric, not action. Not only did he say he was "surprised and deeply...
...Barack Obama than countless observers around the globe were shaking their head in puzzlement or dismay. Sure, there was the Committee's official line, praising Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." But that really didn't shed much light on why the Oslo-based committee had bestowed the prestigious honor on a President who has been in office for less than a year. As Charlotte Lepri, a researcher with the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris, described her friends' and colleagues' reaction to the news, "People said, 'Why? What...