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Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya   Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus’s Opposition Leader, was honored for standing up to the dictatorship in her home country.   Each year Reader’s Digest editors in Europe nominate a shortlist of Europeans who have had a major influence on a pressing contemporary issue and are helping to make the world a better place. First launched in 1996 , the European of the Year for 2022 is 39-year-old Belarus Opposition Leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya . She has been presented with the award trophy at her headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania, the country where she has been living in exile since running against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in contested elections that took place in August 2020.   The award recognizes Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s bravery in standing up to Lukashenko, the dictator who had jailed her husband, pro-democracy activist and opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky, just before th...

Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the WMO, holding the Reader's Digest European of the Year award for 2021. (Picture: By courtesy of WMO)   Each year Reader's Digest editors in Europe nominate a shortlist of Europeans who have had a major influence on a pressing contemporary issue and are helping to make the world a better place. First launched in 1996, the European of the Year for 2021 is 59-year-old Finnish meteorologist Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization ( WMO ). He has been presented with the award trophy at WMO headquarters in Geneva.   The award recognizes Petteri Taalas's achievement in prompting action by European and world leaders, as well as by the European Union, the United Nations and big corporations such as IBM and Google, to play a role in the prevention of climate change and to mitigate its impacts. Taalas explains, "Growing numbers of states and individuals are ...