2009 Nobel Peace Prize There have been a number of calls for Obama to either return the award or to have the Nobel Committee recall it, most recently in 2013. In April 2013 a petition was begun asking the Nobel Committee to rescind the Peace Prize. The petition garnered 10,000 signatures in its first day and nearly 20,000 by the end of its first week. Nobel laureate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore called the award "extremely well deserved". Obama received congratulations and kind words from other elected officials, such as from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former rival, Senator John McCain, who
2010 Nobel Peace Prize among the public in China, as more than 75 percent of respondents had no idea who the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was." The "Beijing Daily" published an editorial on the day of the award ceremony entitled "Why not give the peace prize to Julian Assange?". It suggested that Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, was not awarded the prize because he could not "become a tool for Western forces in attacking countries with different ideologies ... even if this tool is serving out a prison sentence for violating the law." Following the announcement on 8 October 2010, Xinhua relayed