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Congolese gynecological surgeon Denis Mukwege has won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded for his work treating thousands of women who have been victims of rape in his country.

European Parliament President Martin Schultz said in a statement that Mukwege would receive the $65,000 award for "his fight for protection especially of women." Last year's winner, Malala Yousafzai, the teen who was shot by the Taliban for advocating education for girls, received the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month.

Past winners of the prize, named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, include the late South African leader Nelson Mandela and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"In many armed conflicts around the world, rape is used as a weapon of war," Schultz said in the statement. Mukwege, he said "decided to help victims in his country" by "[treating] victims of sexual violence who have sustained serious injuries" at his Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, on the border with Rwanda.

According to a United Nations report earlier this year, more than 3,600 women have been raped in the DRC in the four years from January 2010 to December 2013.

The New York Times writes:

"Dr. Mukwege is known for his work in one of the most traumatized places in the world. In the hills above Bukavu, where for years there was little electricity or anesthetic, Dr. Mukwege has performed surgery on countless women, some a few steps away from death, who have reached his hospital.

"At the same time, he has campaigned relentlessly to shine a spotlight on the plight of Congolese women, even after an assassination attempt two years ago.

"'It's not a women question; it's a humanity question, and men have to take responsibility to end it,' Dr. Mukwege said in an interview last year. 'It's not an Africa problem. In Bosnia, Syria, Liberia, Colombia, you have the same thing.'"

Sakharov Prize

European Union

Democratic Republic of Congo

Jeffrey Fowle, an American held since May in North Korea for allegedly leaving a bible at a club for foreign sailors, has arrived at a U.S. Air Force Base in his home state of Ohio after Pyongyang released him on a "special dispensation"

Fowle, 56, landed early today at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton. He disembarked carrying two bags and was met with embraces from family members.

As we reported on Tuesday, Fowle is one of three Americans that had been known to be held in North Korea. Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller are still held. Initial reports said that Fowle had left the bible in a hotel room and that his arrest came in June.

North Korea's state media said Pyongyang decided to free Fowle on a "special dispensation" after "repeated requests" from President Obama.

"The criminal was handed over to the U.S. side according to a relevant legal procedure," KCNA said.

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking in Berlin, said there had been no quid pro quo involved in securing Fowle's release from North Korean custody.

"We hope that the dynamics can develop in the next weeks, months perhaps where we could get back to talks and the United States is absolutely prepared to do that," Kerry said, according to Reuters.

Kerry said Washington is in contact with the families of Bae and Miller and was hoping for their release soon.

Ohio

North Korea

It was another stomach-churning day on Wall Street. At one point, the Dow industrials were down 460 points — a huge drop that followed four consecutive days of stock market losses.

The decline more than wiped out the year's gains. But then late in the trading day, tocks started to recover. And by the close, the Dow's loss was a little more than 1 percent.

Investors are worried about a global economic slowdown, the Federal Reserve's next move and even the Ebola virus.

October has sometimes been a catastrophic month for the stock market, and though this month isn't that bad yet it sometimes felt Wednesday like disaster was lurking.

Stock prices plunged sharply in the morning, came back a bit and then fell again. At one point Wednesday, the Standard and Poor's 500 was down nearly 3 percent. That came after several days of steep losses, but the index recovered some of its lost ground by the end of the day.

"Given that we've seen volatility spike up to levels that we haven't seen since the fall of 2011, I would consider that there's a bit of fear out there right now and that's something we haven't seen for a very long time," said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at Schwab.

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Frederick says investors are growing more and more worried about how much the economy has slowed in Asia and Europe. He says Germany, for instance, largely escaped the consequences of the last downturn in 2011.

"But we've seen recent significant declines in German GDP, we've seen sharp drops in German business and investor confidence and we see really the European Central Bank kind of in a position where they are talking of doing things but they can't seem to come to a decision on exactly what they are going to do and I think some people are beginning to question if they have any true ammunition left to combat this," Frederick said.

Compared with Europe, the U.S. economy continues to grow at a pretty good pace. But a string of bad economic data Wednesday left a lot of investors questioning how long it will keep doing so. Retail sales plunged more than expected in September.

And then there's the Ebola virus. In addition to all the other bad things it would do, an outbreak of the disease in this country could wreak havoc on U.S. trade and investment.

"All these things are kind of hitting at one time and people are now saying, 'I want to reduce my risk exposure very, very quickly,' " said Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research.

With all these fears mounting, investors did what they have so often done: They pulled their money out of riskier investments and into the safety of U.S. Treasury bonds. And that drove interest rates down sharply.

Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, says investors may be overreacting.

"The fact that the 10-year yield broke 2 percent again in a U.S. economy that arguably is in the best shape and fastest-growing that it's been in the entire recovery — I think that's a real disconnect," he said.

But for now investors seem to be swamped by fears. One other looming concern is where the Federal Reserve is likely to go in the months ahead.

As the U.S. economy has improved, Fed officials have gradually made clear that an interest rate increase is somewhere on the horizon. That's not likely to happen anytime soon, but it's enough to add to the market's jitters at a time when there are already plenty of things to worry about.

Here's another entry in the strange bedfellows political show, 2014 edition: As Election Day gets closer, some Republicans in battleground races seem to be moving to the center on a number of issues. Their latest sea change is the minimum wage.

Alongside pay equity, infrastructure investment and college affordability, raising the minimum wage is at the center of the Democrats' election year economic agenda. President Obama has given numerous speeches on the minimum wage, excoriating Republicans in Congress for blocking a federal minimum wage hike. "Either you're in favor of raising wages for hardworking Americans, or you're not," he said in April.

He makes it sound so simple — but this is politics.

As free-market conservatives, Republicans are philosophically opposed to raising the minimum wage. But a handful of Republican candidates in tight races have come out in favor of raising the minimum wage on the state level.

Bruce Rauner, running for governor of Illinois, has said in the past that he believed the minimum wage could be lowered, or even eliminated. But now, Rauner says, if Illinois passed tort reform and tax reform, he would support raising the state wage. He's also come out in favor of raising the federal minimum wage.

Why the change? Illinois is one of five states this year that has a minimum wage hike on the state ballot. These propositions are hugely popular and usually pass with 60 or even 70 percent of the vote.

In Arkansas and Alaska, where there are also minimum wage referendums on the ballot, Republican Senate candidates Tom Cotton and Dan Sullivan say they'll vote for them. In Sullivan's case, he was previously opposed to the ballot proposition, but then, his spokesman said, "he had a chance to read the initiative."

Democrats are crying foul. They were hoping to use the referendums to get more of their supporters to the polls. If there's no difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates on this issue, that might be harder.

Ted Strickland, the populist former governor of Ohio, says these Republicans have had a foxhole conversion. "Most people understand that when someone embraces a policy they have previously rejected, and they do it just a short time before an election," says Strickland, "they are acting out of political expediency rather than out of convictions and courage."

Republican strategist Sarah Fagen says that in this case what Republicans consider to be good policy — letting the free market work — is not good politics. Republicans would rather avoid the debate over the minimum wage altogether and focus on other issues, she says, so they've made a kind of tactical retreat.

Remaining opposed to a federal wage hike but supporting a state hike allows them, says Fagen, to be true to "their economic philosophy but still be reasonable to voters who are demanding that the minimum wage be increased."

Republicans are choosing their battles more carefully this year. They're moving to the center on issues like contraception or the minimum wage, and that's caused some fancy political footwork on both sides. In some states, Republican legislators voted to raise the state wage in order to avoid having the issue on the ballot. But in Alaska, Democrats in the Legislature blocked a bill so that the issue would be on the ballot this fall.

And that raises the obvious question: Can these ballot propositions actually help Democratic candidates?

Progressive activist Brad Woodhouse says yes, up to a point. Using the minimum wage ballot referendums as bait, Democrats can target drop-off voters who might only come out and vote because they think it's in their economic interest.

"You hope that if they come out to increase the minimum wage," says Woodhouse, "that they'll vote for the Democrat."

Ballot initiatives can boost turnout — by about 1 percent. That, theoretically, could help Democrats win an otherwise close race.

But academics who study ballot referendums say no minimum wage initiative has ever determined the outcome of a state race. John Matsusaka, director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, points out that there are many examples of Republican candidates winning statewide even as minimum wage ballot referendums also passed 2 to 1.

"The Democrats might get a bump from this," says Matsusaka. "But the people who look closely at these data have a hard time finding that it makes a big difference."

So the bottom line is that these initiatives are very good for people who want to raise the minimum wage, but they're less useful as a political tool for Democrats looking for help in a Republican-leaning political landscape.