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 celebration dinner in Beijing, attended by 20 people, was broken up by police, and the attendees were detained. The Chinese media avoided the story of Liu's Peace Prize, in marked contrast with their previous announcements of other recipients of Nobel Prizes. The official Xinhua News Agency downplayed all but the literature prize, and most other mainland news portals followed the Xinhua lead; popular internet portals such as Sina.com and NetEase deleted pages dedicated to stories related to all five Nobel Prizes. According to a well-informed Twitter user, cited by the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, the