Anti-Islam film controversy: US turns to TV ads to spread message in protest-hit Pakistan

September 21, 2012
Obama


Washington, September 21: The United States has paid Pakistani television stations to run advertisements featuring President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, hoping to soothe public opinion in a country hit by protests against an anti-Islam movie made in California, the State Department said on Thursday.

The US embassy in Islamabad spent about $70,000 to run the announcement, which features clips of Obama and Clinton underscoring U.S. respect for religion and declaring the U.S. government had nothing to do with the movie, it said.

"In order to ensure we reached the largest number of Pakistanis, some 90 million as I understand it in this case with these spots, it was the judgment that this was the best way to do it," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a news briefing.


The U.S. announcement aired as Washington warned Americans to avoid non-essential travel to Pakistan, one of the mostly Muslim countries hit by a wave of anti-American demonstrations. In Libya, a deadly assault last week killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

The protests, which were sparked by an Internet video that mocked the Prophet Mohammad and swept through Yemen, Egypt and other countries, also prompted the U.S. government to withdraw non-essential personnel in Tunisia and Sudan.

In Pakistan, protesters have demonstrated in more than a dozen cities.

Counter-terrorism analysts for the New York Police Department warned in a paper circulated on Thursday that the anti-U.S. and anti-Western protests would continue to spread, fueled most recently by a French magazine's publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad.

The cartoons in France's Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly have provoked relatively little street anger thus far, although about 100 Iranians demonstrated outside the French embassy in Tehran.

Nuland said the decision to buy the television ads, identified as paid public service announcements, was not unusual in countries where this is "the norm for getting your message out."

"I think the sense was that this particular aspect of the president and the secretary's message needed to be heard by more Pakistanis than had heard it, and that this was an effective way to get that message across," she said.


She said it would take time to measure the effectiveness of the ads in Pakistan, where on Thursday huge crowds again gathered to protest against the video.




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News Network
June 11,2020

Jun 11: The total death toll in the US from the novel coronavirus pandemic could hit the grim figure of 200,000 by September and expecting a dramatic decrease in COVID-19 cases in the country will be a "wishful thinking , an eminent Indian-American professor has warned.

Ashish Jha, the head of Harvard's Global Health Institute, told CNN on Wednesday that he is not trying to scare people to stay at home rather urged everyone to wear masks, adhere to the social distancing rules and called for ramping up testing and tracing infrastructure.

Anybody who's expecting a dramatic decrease in cases is almost surely engaging in wishful thinking. And if it (COVID numbers) stays just flat for the next three months, we're going to hit 200,000 deaths sometime in September and that is just awful, Jha said.

Jha said the 200,000 death toll is not just a guess . Currently 800-1000 people are dying daily in America from the virus and all data suggest that the situation is going to get worse.

We're gonna have increases, but even if we assume that it's going to be flat all summer, that nothing is going to get worse... even if we pick that low number of 800 a day, that is 25,000 (deaths) a month in three and a half months. We're going to add another 88,000 people and we will hit 200,000 sometime in September, Jha said.

The United States is by far the hardest-hit country in the global pandemic, in terms of both confirmed infections and deaths.

According to data by the Johns Hopkins University, the number of coronavirus cases in the US currently is nearly two million and about 112,900 people have died in the country, the most in the world.

When asked about an improvement in states like New York, which had been the epicenter of the COVID19 pandemic in the US, Jha said while coronavirus cases are declining in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, the numbers are increasing in states such as Arizona, Florida, Texas, North and South Carolina while the country as a whole is pretty flat.

He said, people should take measures as that will help suppress the virus and ensure people could get back outside safely but he voiced concern that this was not the situation in reality.

We're not doing that and so we're going to unfortunately have another 25,000 deaths a month until September, and then it'll keep going. It's not going to magically disappear. We've got a turn around. This is not the future I want, he said.

Jha said he had expected the situation to improve in the summer months but on the contrary the numbers have continued to rise even in the warm weather.

Summer was supposed to be our better months - warmer weather, people outside, a little less transmission. This is not the time (summer) I was expecting a lot more cases. We're seeing a lot more cases, especially in states like Arizona where the numbers look really scary, he said.

Jha added that he was hopeful that maybe the summer months would give us more of a break. I think I may have been too optimistic on that.

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News Network
January 24,2020

Davos, Jan 24: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan claimed that he met with a “brick wall” when he approached Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a peace proposal, soon after assuming office.

In an interview to Foreign Policy magazine on the sidelines of WEF 2020 here, Khan also said he told Modi that Pakistan will act firmly if it was given evidence of any involvement in the Pulwama terror attack, but India instead “bombed” Pakistan.

Tensions have escalated between the two countries, following India withdrawing the special status of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019. Even since, Khan has been trying to seek global intervention to de-escalate the tensions between the two countries.

On Thursday, India's External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar categorically ruled out any third party role on the Kashmir issue, asserting that any issue between the two countries should be resolved bilaterally.

In the interview, Khan said that he is a firm believer that military means are not a solution to ending conflicts. “After assuming office, I immediately reached out to Prime Minister Modi. I was amazed by the reaction I got, which was quite weird.

The subcontinent hosts the greatest number of poor people in the world, and the best way to fight poverty is to have a trading relationship between the two countries rather than spending money on arms. This is what I said to the Indian Prime Minister. But I was met by brick wall,” Khan said.

Khan took charge as Prime Minister in August 2018. Referring to the suicide attack in Pulwama, Khan said he immediately told Modi ,“if you can give us any actionable intelligence (that Pakistanis were involved), we will act on it. But rather than do so, they bombed us.”

Noting that the both countries are not close to conflict right now, Khan said that it is important that the UN and the US act.

When asked about US President Donald Trump’s close relationship with Modi, Khan said the relationship is understandable because India is a huge market. “My concern is not about the US-India relationship. My concern is the direction in which India is going,” Khan said.

Khan also sought to compare the events in India to what happened in Nazi Germany.

“Between 1930 and 1934, Germany went from a liberal democracy to a fascist, totalitarian, racist state. If you look at what is happening in India under the BJP in the last five years, look where it's heading, you'll see the danger. And you're talking about a huge country of 1.3 billion people that is nuclear-armed,” he said.

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News Network
June 2,2020

Jun 2: A new female billionaire has emerged from one of Asia's most-expensive breakups.

Du Weimin, the chairman of Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products Co., transferred 161.3 million shares of the vaccine maker to his ex-wife, Yuan Liping, according to a May 29 filing, immediately catapulting her into the ranks of the world's richest.

The stock was worth $3.2 billion as of Monday's close.

Yuan, 49 this year, owns the shares directly, but signed an agreement delegating the voting rights to her ex-husband, the filing shows. The Canadian citizen, who resides in Shenzhen, served as a director of Kangtai between May 2011 and August 2018. She's now the vice general manager of subsidiary Beijing Minhai Biotechnology Co. Yuan holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Beijing's University of International Business and Economics.

Kangtai shares have more than doubled in the past year and have continued their ascent since February, when the company announced a plan to develop a vaccine to fight the coronavirus. They slipped for a second day Tuesday following news of the divorce terms, losing 3.1% as of 9:43 a.m. in Hong Kong and bringing the company's market value to $12.9 billion.

Du's net worth has now dropped to about $3.1 billion from $6.5 billion before the split, excluding his pledged shares.

The 56-year-old was born into a farming family in China's Jiangxi province. After studying chemistry in college, he began working in a clinic in 1987 and became a sales manager for a biotech company in 1995, according to the prospectus of Kangtai's 2017 initial public offering. In 2009, Kangtai acquired Minhai, the company Du founded in 2004, and he became the chairman of the combined entity.

China's rapidly growing economy has been an engine for the country's richest, and Du is not the only tycoon who's had to pay a steep price for a divorce. In 2012, Wu Yajun, at one point the nation's richest woman, transferred a stake worth about $2.3 billion to her ex-husband, Cai Kui, who co-founded developer Longfor Group Holdings Ltd. In 2016, tech billionaire Zhou Yahui gave $1.1 billion of shares in his online gaming company, Beijing Kunlun Tech Co., to ex-wife Li Qiong after a civil court settlement.

Sometimes, a goodbye can be time-consuming too. South Korean tycoon Chey Tae-won's wife filed a lawsuit in December asking for a 42.3% stake in SK Holdings Co. valued at $1.2 billion. That would make her the second-largest shareholder of the company should she win the case, which is still ongoing.

The most expensive divorce in history is that of Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos. The Amazon.com Inc. founder gave 4% of the online retailer to Mackenzie, who now has a $48 billion fortune and is the world's fourth-richest woman.

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