Word: prize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...like many West Wing staffers on Friday, Deputy White House Spokesman Bill Burton had been awoken by a phone call, in this case from an ABC News correspondent, Yunji De Nies, who told Burton that President Obama had just won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. "That is good," quipped Burton...
...minutes later, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called the President to wake him up with the news, which had been sent around internally to White House staff in an email from Situation Room Staff at about 5 a.m. that read: "Item of Interest: President Obama Wins Nobel Prize." (See pictures of President Obama's first eight months of diplomacy...
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...
Friday's Nobel Peace Prize award to President Barack Obama momentarily achieved that rare accord among the Middle East's feuding factions that has for so long been the holy grail of peacemakers. While the region's leaders, particularly those inclined to stay onside with the U.S., dutifully issued boilerplate acclamations, most of their citizens were united in a common skepticism - President Obama has raised expectations in his outreach to the Muslim world and his prioritization of settling the Israel-Palestine conflict, but thus far he has little progress to show for his efforts. (See TIME's Photoshop imaginings...
...done nothing to assuage Israeli suspicions. Knesset Chairman Reuven Rivlin said he thought it was "very strange" that Obama had won the award and feared that the President would use it as an opportunity to force Israel into a peace deal. Bloggers have been harsher. "Thank you Nobel Prize Committee for awarding the most ridiculous Nobel Prize for Peace since 1994, when you awarded one to the terrorist leader Yasser Arafat," wrote jewliscious.com blogger Dahlia, a student living in Israel. "Well done and kudos...