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Radical Pakistan Party Releases 11 Police Hostages After Anti-France Protests

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Lahore:
Eleven Pakistani police officers seized by supporters of a radical Islamist group as part of their campaign to get the French ambassador expelled have been released, officials said Monday.
The officers were grabbed as hostages Sunday by supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) during violent protests in Lahore.
Video circulating on social media -- and confirmed unofficially by police as genuine -- showed some of them bloodied and bruised, with bandages around their heads.
Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the police had been released early Monday after "negotiations" with the TLP, which the government banned last week after effectively labelling it a terrorist organisation.
The officers had been held at a TLP mosque stronghold in Lahore, which is now packed with supporters and surrounded by police.
"Negotiations have been started with TLP; the first round completed successfully," said Rashid in a video on Twitter.
"They have released 11 policemen who were made hostages."
He said a second round of negotiations would take place later Monday, although it is not clear what they will discuss.
Previously the TLP had set an April 20 deadline for the expulsion of the French ambassador.
The group has been behind an anti-France campaign for months since President Emmanuel Macron defended the right of Charlie Hebdo magazine to republish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad -- an act deemed blasphemous by many Muslims.
Protests paralyse cities
Last week the embassy in Pakistan advised its nationals to leave the country -- a call that appears to have gone largely unheeded.
"The TLP people have gone inside the Mosque and the police have also stepped back," said Rashid.
"Hopefully, the rest of the issues will be settled in the second round."
Rioting has rocked the country for the past week since the leader of the TLP was detained in Lahore after calling for a march on the capital.
The protests have paralysed cities and led to the deaths of six policemen.
TLP leaders say several of the party's supporters were killed in Sunday's clashes.
"We won't bury them until the French ambassador is kicked out," Allama Muhammad Shafiq Amini, a TLP leader in the city, said in a video statement.
Prime Minister Imran Khan's government has struggled to bring TLP to heel over the years, but this week announced an outright ban against the group -- effectively labelling it a terrorist outfit.
Still, on Saturday he suggested the party hadn't been banned for its ideology, but rather its methods.
"Let me make clear to people here & abroad: Our govt only took action against TLP under our anti-terrorist law when they challenged the writ of the state and used street violence & attacking the public & law enforcers," he tweeted.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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Lahore: Eleven Pakistani police officers seized by supporters of a radical Islamist group as part of their campaign to get the French am...

How Saudi Crown Prince's Plan Will Impact Nation's Economy

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Saudi Arabia's latest economic plan comes with a big risk: while it might help boost investment, it could also hit the government's finances.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants the kingdom's biggest companies -- including oil giant Saudi Aramco and chemical maker Sabic -- to reduce their dividends, most of which are paid to the state, and spend the money locally.
The idea is that their expenditure on new infrastructure and technology will be big enough to accelerate the country's growth and cause a jobs boom.
The de facto leader's strategy amounts to a "sacrificing of current profits for future investments," Karen Young, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said in an opinion piece. "There is a generational shift: a moment to build and create a post-oil era, but in the short-term, the government will be exhausting its resources."
Here's a look at the likely impact on the budget and the economy, which was hit hard last year by the coronavirus pandemic and crash in oil prices.
Oil Money:
Aramco, the world's largest oil company, transferred $110 billion to the government in 2020 through shareholder payouts, royalties and income tax, a 30% drop from the previous year.
Lower dividends from the firm, 98% state-owned, would "weigh on the government's revenues," according to James Swanston of Capital Economics.
He's unconvinced the extra investment in the economy would lead to a substantial boost in the government's tax take from other industries, at least in the short term.
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Still, Aramco has said it can sustain its dividend, which was the world's biggest last year at $75 billion. It's been helped by Brent crude's rise of almost 30% since December to $67 a barrel as more nations emerge from lockdowns. And last week the firm announced a deal that will see a U.S.-led consortium invest $12.4 billion in its pipelines.
A stronger balance sheet and higher cash flow may enable it both to keep the dividend and invest more locally.
Wages and Settlements:
Wages and pensions for state workers are expected to reach 491 billion riyals ($131 billion) this year, accounting for almost half of total spending of 990 billion riyals. Yet if oil prices stay above $60, Saudi Arabia might be able to cover salaries from crude sales alone, according to Ziad Daoud, chief emerging markets economist for Bloomberg Economics.
Whether that happens is a crucial part of the 35-year-old Prince Mohammed's initiative. The country managed to raise non-oil revenue from 166 billion riyals in 2015 to 358 billion riyals in 2020.
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But there's a catch. Much of the improvement was down to settlements with some of the kingdom's richest people that began in 2017 with what were known as the Ritz-Carlton arrests, part of the prince's anti-corruption drive.
"Growth in Saudi Arabia's non-oil revenue is only partially organic," said Daoud. The agreements "account for a fifth of non-oil revenue. These settlements will conclude at some point. When they do, not only will non-oil revenue cease to rise, it'll actually fall. To achieve sustainable growth, the kingdom must raise productivity and increase non-oil exports."
Sovereign Fund:
If the budget -- the deficit of which reached 12% of gross domestic product last year -- is stretched due to lower payouts from Saudi companies, the $400 billion sovereign wealth fund may be able to pick up the slack.
The Public Investment Fund is already positioning itself to drive the local economy. Prince Mohammed has pledged it will spend at least $40 billion a year at home through 2025, creating new cities, resorts and 1.8 million jobs.
"The budget is increasingly focused on managing the government's day-to-day expenses rather than being an engine of economic growth," said Mohamed Abu Basha, head of macroeconomic research at Cairo-based investment bank EFG-Hermes Holding. Capital expenditure "is predominantly shifting to PIF and sister state institutions."
Lasting Impact:
In December, the government projected revenue of 849 billion riyals for 2021 and a fiscal deficit of 4.9% of GDP.
Back then, oil was trading at barely $50 a barrel. It's now risen to a point at which Saudi Arabia can balance its budget, the International Monetary Fund estimates.
Yet the lasting impact of the pandemic on Saudi businesses and global energy demand mean the kingdom's finances are still precarious, according to Abu Basha.
"The boost to future non-oil revenues will depend going forward on the dividends from all these state-owned investments," said Abu Basha. "This further increases fiscal vulnerability."
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salmans-latest-economic-plan-comes-with-big-risks-2416748">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salmans-latest-economic-plan-comes-with-big-risks-2416748</a>

news world How Saudi Crown Prince's Plan Will Impact Nation's Economy

Saudi Arabia's latest economic plan comes with a big risk: while it might help boost investment, it could also hit the government...

Covid Survivors May Need Just One Shot Of 2-Dose Vaccines, Say Studies

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If you already had the virus, your immune response after one vaccine is likely to be even better.
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Coronavirus vaccines were just rolling out in December when more than 1,000 staffers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles volunteered for a sweeping study. The goal: pinpoint how immune reactions to the jab might vary.
By last month, a clear pattern in the data "popped out at us," said research leader Susan Cheng. Those who had recovered from Covid-19 responded to their first shot so robustly that the results rivaled never-infected colleagues who had received both shots. The implication was clear. If you've had Covid, you may only need one of the two doses recommended by Pfizer and Moderna.
"We did not expect that this was going to jump out like a smoking gun," said Cheng, who co-authored the Nature Medicine write-up. In fact, if you already had the virus, your immune response after one vaccine is likely to be even better than a never-infected person's after two, according to Italian research just out in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The issue of giving only a single dose to people who have had Covid has become all the more urgent since safety concerns have been raised about Johnson & Johnson's and AstraZeneca's vaccines. The implications at a time of strained global supply are striking: giving previously infected people just one mRNA vaccine shot could free up more than 110 million doses worldwide, according to a calculation by University of Maryland School of Medicine immunologist Mohammad Sajadi and colleagues.
'Remembering' Covid
Sajadi co-authored one of the recent studies that fit into a recent flurry of findings all pointing in the same direction: The immune system in people who've had Covid "remembers" the virus, so a first vaccine acts as a powerful booster for existing defenses. "The data is very clear," Sajadi said. "Every study has shown you get a very clear and strong memory response."
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Healthcare workers administer doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at an arena on the campus of San Diego State University in San Diego, California.
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Since February, several European countries -- including France, Spain, Italy and Germany -- have adopted policies giving Covid survivors just one dose of the two-dose vaccines.
In Israel, a world leader on coronavirus vaccinations, health authorities initially withheld vaccines altogether from recovered Covid patients, but in February recommended they receive one shot. New research there suggests that the booster vaccine adds protection against newer variants that originated in the U.K., South Africa and Brazil.
"We think that our study supports the recommendation to administer one vaccine dose to recovered individuals to protect against the original and SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern," Michal Mandelboim, head of Israel's National Center for Influenza and Respiratory Viruses, said in an email. A study in "Science" found that in Covid survivors, vaccinations massively boosted immunity against variants.
In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends two vaccine doses for people who have had Covid, but the mounting evidence that one vaccine could be enough is under discussion. The U.S. has administered enough doses for 31% of its population, while Israel has given enough for 57%, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.
Data Needed
In a blog post, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins raised the possibility that giving survivors a single dose could "help to extend vaccine supply and get more people vaccinated sooner."
"But any serious consideration of this option will require more data," he cautioned in February.
Since then, one study after another has reinforced the single-vaccine-for-survivors idea, though some skeptics have pointed out that it is logistically simpler to just give everyone two doses than to figure out who needs only one.
In the U.S., vaccine supplies are relatively copious, Sajadi said. But "for other countries, especially places that are having a hard time getting vaccine, this is really still an important question. And it's also an important question in general because you don't want to just give someone a medical intervention they don't need."
If a patient who'd had Covid asked Sajadi at this point whether they needed a second vaccine, he said, he'd say it would make sense to skip it if nothing in their medical history indicated issues with immune responses.
Cheng at Cedars-Sinai said she would still default to the CDC guidance calling for two vaccines, even for people who've had Covid. The data does suggest, however, that one dose could be enough, she said -- and that could be true for other types of people as well: "I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg of figuring out who they are."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/covid-survivors-may-need-just-one-shot-of-2-dose-vaccines-say-studies-2416739">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/covid-survivors-may-need-just-one-shot-of-2-dose-vaccines-say-studies-2416739</a>

news world Covid Survivors May Need Just One Shot Of 2-Dose Vaccines, Say Studies

If you already had the virus, your immune response after one vaccine is likely to be even better. Coronavirus vaccines were just rolling...

Pakistan Police And Rangers Taken Hostage In Anti-France Protests

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Anti-France Protests: The protests have paralysed cities and led to the deaths of six policemen. (AFP)
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Eight Pakistan police officers and special rangers were being held hostage Sunday by supporters of a radical Islamist party, officials said, after days of violent anti-France protests.
Rioting has rocked the country for the last week since the leader of the now-banned Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) was detained in the second biggest city Lahore after calling for the expulsion of the French ambassador.
The protests have paralysed cities and led to the deaths of six policemen, prompting the French embassy to recommend all its nationals temporarily leave the country.
"The (TLP) group is still holding eight police officers, including rangers and constables, hostage. Some of those taken hostage in the morning were released later in the day, but eight still remain," Rana Arif, a police spokesman in Lahore told AFP, referring to the country's paramilitary force.
Firdous Ashiq Awan, a spokeswoman for the Punjab provincial government, said earlier in the day that 12 policemen had been abducted and taken to a TLP mosque in Lahore, where hundreds of supporters were gathered.
"Violent groups armed with petrol bombs and acid bottles stormed the Nawankot police station this morning," she tweeted, adding that six police officers have now died in clashes this week.
A video circulating online -- the authenticity of which has been confirmed to AFP by Lahore city police -- shows a senior police officer with a blood stained bandage wrapped around his head being held at the mosque. 
The deputy superintendent, the third most senior officer from the raided station, speaks to the camera with an expressionless face. 
The camera then swings round to show wounded TLP supporters gathered on the floor.
The TLP has been behind an anti-France campaign for months since President Emmanuel Macron defended the right of Charlie Hebdo magazine to republish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad -- an act deemed blasphemous by many Muslims.
Tear gas and stone throwing
TLP leaders say several of the party's supporters were killed in Sunday's clashes.
"We won't bury them until the French ambassador is kicked out," Allama Muhammad Shafiq Amini, a TLP leader in the city, said in a video statement. The party has given the government an April 20 deadline to act.
Muhammad Shabir, an injured TLP protester, said supporters had been staging a peaceful sit-in when they were attacked by police. 
"They fired directly at us and threw acidic water. Some men had their chest burned, others their back, face or whole body," he told AFP.
"The government of Pakistan has done a big injustice to us."
The police said they had not attempted a clearance operations and had acted in self defence. They would not comment on the reported TLP deaths. 
An oil truck was seized and petrol bombs thrown at officers, both Arif and Awan said. 
An AFP reporter at the scene said police used tear gas against stone-throwing protesters.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said TLP supporters had blocked 191 sites over the past week, with the mosque in Lahore now a gathering point. 
"No negotiations are taking place, (we) tried for two-three months but they are not ready to backtrack from their agenda and the government has no other choice but to establish its writ," he said at a press conference. 
Prime Minister Imran Khan's government has struggled to bring TLP to heel over the years, but this week announced an outright ban against the group -- effectively labelling it a terrorist outfit.
Still, on Saturday he suggested the party hadn't been banned for its ideology, but rather its methods.
"Let me make clear to people here & abroad: Our govt only took action against TLP under our anti-terrorist law when they challenged the writ of the state and used street violence & attacking the public & law enforcers," he tweeted.
Khan said insulting the prophet hurt Muslims around the world.  
"We cannot tolerate any such disrespect & abuse," he added.
Pakistan on Friday blocked social media and instant messaging platforms for several hours to head off major protests.
Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in conservative Pakistan, where laws allow for the death penalty to be used on anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or Islamic figures.
The French embassy's call for its nationals to leave Pakistan appears to have gone largely unheeded so far.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/pakistan-police-and-rangers-taken-hostage-in-anti-france-protests-2416705">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/pakistan-police-and-rangers-taken-hostage-in-anti-france-protests-2416705</a>

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Anti-France Protests: The protests have paralysed cities and led to the deaths of six policemen. (AFP) Eight Pakistan police officers an...

Jailed Putin Critic's Daughter Makes Desperate Plea As His Health Worsens

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Alexei Navalny is on his 19th day on a hunger strike in a Russian prison.
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Moscow:
"Allow a doctor to see my dad."
The plea, tweeted Saturday by Alexei Navalny's daughter, came amid a global wave of dismay over Russian authorities' refusal to let President Vladimir Putin's leading critic see his physician as his condition has reportedly worsened.
Navalny is on his 19th day on a hunger strike in a Russian prison. Daria Navalnaya, his 20-year-old daughter, is in California studying at Stanford University.
Navalny's press secretary KWWira Yarmysh has tweeted that Navalny is "dying," and several doctors said he could go into cardiac arrest at any time. Yarmysh said he had days to live.
Navalny's team on Sunday announced new protests in cities across Russia for Wednesday evening.
"Have you ever seen with your own eyes how they kill a person?" his representatives asked in a statement. "You are seeing it right now. ... They are killing Alexei Navalny. In a terrible way. In front of us all."
Dozens of writers, historians, actors and celebrities published a letter in the Economist and Le Monde on Friday calling on Putin to allow Navalny to see his doctor. President Joe Biden on Saturday called Russia's actions "totally unfair" and "totally inappropriate."
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that the administration has warned Russia that there will be consequences for Russia if Navalny dies in prison. He did not elaborate.
Navalny's wife was allowed to visit him in prison last week for the first time. Yulia Navalnaya said she spoke to her husband by telephone through glass. She said he had difficulty speaking and had to put the receiver down and lie down because he was so weak.
Navalny's Twitter account said Friday that authorities had threatened to put him in a straitjacket and force-feed him. He has no access to the account, but lawyers have regular contact with him, and posts are made by his team.
The post said: "Now I just point a finger at the point of the law and say: Sorry. Don't force-feed me."
Navalny was poisoned with a chemical weapon in the same class as the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok while traveling in Siberia last August. U.S. and European authorities have blamed the attack on Russian state agents; they've responded with sanctions against Russian organizations and individuals.
For two days after the attack, Russian authorities refused his family's demands to allow his evacuation to Germany for medical treatment. The Kremlin says there is no evidence Navalny was poisoned, and prosecutors have declined to open a case into the incident.
Navalny suggested Friday that his recent symptoms, which include numbness in his legs and one hand, could be related to that poisoning, or a new state attack.
"They are afraid that it will turn out that the loss of sensation in my limbs may be associated with poisoning. The old one. Or something new, I wouldn't be surprised."
His Twitter feed has recounted efforts by Russian prison authorities to break him during his hunger strike, including slipping candies into the pockets of his prison clothing and frying chicken in front of him while recording his reaction.
The doctors who warned that Navalny's life was in danger included Yaroslav Ashikhmin, Alexei Erlikh, Alexei Kashcheyev, Alexander Polupan and Andrei Volna.
"We, the doctors, are ready to act," tweeted several physicians associated with Anastasia Vasilyeva, a Navalny ally who heads a small independent medical workers' union. "The question remaining is whether the penal colony is willing to cooperate to save the life of Navalny."
The group said high potassium levels in Navalny's blood were indicative of kidney failure and that severe heart-rhythm disturbances threatened cardiac arrest.
"Action must be taken immediately," the group said. Others posted on the urgency of the situation on social media.
"We are talking about life and death, with no exaggeration," tweeted Navalny aide Ivan Zhdanov, who fled Russia but whose father was recently arrested over protests in the country.
"Navalny could die at any moment," tweeted Maria Pevchikh, an investigator with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation. "This moment may be today. We require urgent, immediate admission from doctors."
Navalny was arrested when he returned from Germany in January and imprisoned for failing to report to authorities as part of his probation conditions on an earlier case. He has said he couldn't report because he was being treated in Germany. He says the many charges against him are political cases intended to silence him and deter others.
Navalny's Friday post said he had a right to see a doctor and a right to refuse to be force-fed.
"I protest not only for myself, but also for hundreds of thousands of those who have no rights," it said.
Russian state media have claimed Navalny is a Nazi and a CIA agent and that he is motivated only by money. Authorities claim his searing anti-corruption expos&#233;s are fabricated.
State media recently dispatched Maria Butina to his prison, where she loudly berated him and told him his jail conditions were better than a hotel. Butina was imprisoned in the United States as an unregistered Russian agent.
Russia's prosecutor general on Friday commenced action to designate Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation and his political network of regional offices known as Navalny Headquarters as an extremist organization.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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Alexei Navalny is on his 19th day on a hunger strike in a Russian prison. Moscow: "Allow a doctor to see my dad." The plea, ...

Facebook plans to go after Clubhouse — and podcasts — with a suite of new audio products

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Facebook wants you to start talking, and listening, on Facebook.
Sources say the social network is planning to announce a series of products — some of which won’t appear for some time — under the umbrella of “social audio” on Monday. They include Facebook’s take on Clubhouse, the audio-only social network that grew rapidly last year, as well a push into podcast discovery and distribution, aided by Spotify.
Facebook’s audio plans include:
<ul>
<li>An audio-only version of Rooms, <a href="https://www.messenger.com/rooms">a videoconferencing product it launched a year ago</a>, when the pandemic spurred massive adoption of Zoom.</li>
<li>A Clubhouse-like product that will let groups of people listen to and interact with speakers on a virtual “stage.”</li>
<li>A product that will let Facebook users record brief voice messages and post them in their newsfeeds, like they currently can do with text, pictures, and videos.</li>
<li>A podcast discovery product that will be connected with <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22296132/spotify-strategy-dawn-ostroff-joe-rogan-interview">Spotify, which has invested heavily in podcasting over the last couple years</a>. It’s unclear to me if Facebook intends to do more beyond flagging podcasts for its users and sending them to Spotify. (Worth noting: Spotify and Facebook first linked up 10 years ago, when <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110922/the-big-picture-of-facebook-f8-prepare-for-the-sharing-explosion/">Facebook was pushing the idea of</a> “<a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110922/the-big-picture-of-facebook-f8-prepare-for-the-sharing-explosion/">frictionless sharing</a>,” which was supposed to mean that your Facebook friends could see what you were reading, or listening to, or watching. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/facebook-realizes-nobody-wants-share-everything-all-time/323377/">That fizzled out</a> pretty fast.)</li>
</ul>
It’s also unclear to me what the timeline is for the products Facebook will announce tomorrow. My sense is that the Rooms product — which, again, is a version of videoconferencing without video — is the most likely candidate to go live right away. Sources said other products may not show up, even in beta form, until later this spring.
All told, the announcements are meant to signal CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s belief that his users are ready to use voice and audio as a way to connect with each other. He’s not the only Big Tech executive who’s gotten interested in that idea recently: Twitter has already launched Spaces, its own take on Clubhouse. And Apple is preparing a new subscription podcast service it may announce as early as Tuesday, as part of its own <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Fapple-events%2F&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Frecode%2F2021%2F4%2F18%2F22390742%2Ffacebook-podcasts-clubhouse-audio-launch-spotify-zuckerberg-apple" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_query_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://www.apple.com/apple-events/","referrer":"vox.com","sref":"https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/4/18/22390742/facebook-podcasts-clubhouse-audio-launch-spotify-zuckerberg-apple","xcust":"___vx__p_22154783__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>product rollout</a>.
Zuckerberg is scheduled to talk to technology journalist (and Vox Media contributor) Casey Newton on Monday at 1 pm Eastern; this weekend Newton <a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/mark-zuckerberg-is-coming-to-sidechannel?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1NTc5NCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MzUyNjY2NjksIl8iOiJwRE90MCIsImlhdCI6MTYxODc3MzY0NSwiZXhwIjoxNjE4Nzc3MjQ1LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNzk3NiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.GFIsRBsH-g5KMxry0sWENTrZm7pwKN8sgPBaZxp3-WE">wrote</a> that he and Zuckerberg would talk about “this wild transitional moment in tech and media,” noting that Facebook is “increasingly interested in newsletters, live audio, and other technologies.”
Facebook offered this non-comment in response to a query from Recode: “We’ve been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years and are always exploring new ways to improve that experience for people.” Reps for Spotify and Apple declined to comment.
Zuckerberg has made his interest in <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22311703/clubhouse-influencer-andreessen">Clubhouse, which launched at the beginning of the pandemic</a> and enjoyed rapid growth throughout the last year, quite clear. He’s shown up for multiple chats on the service, including one with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. Clubhouse, meanwhile, has <a href="https://www.joinclubhouse.com/blog/growing-a-global-community">just announced a new funding round</a> that values the company at $4 billion — just months after announcing a funding round that valued it at $1 billion.
At the same time, observers have speculated that Clubhouse, which features ephemeral, real-time chats in front of audiences as big as 5,000 people, may have a hard time recapturing the buzz it had in 2020 and earlier this year, when much of the world was locked down and looking for distractions. The app’s pace of downloads appears to have slowed along with its novelty, and Clubhouse hasn’t updated its user totals from February, when it said it had 10 million users.
And if you want a thoughtful critique of Clubhouse’s product challenges, I suggest you read this Twitter thread from tech investor Shaan Puri. Tl;dr: It’s hard to consistently create live, audio-only content that will engage current users and bring in new ones.
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
So... everyone seems to think clubhouse is the "next big thing" - but I think it's going to fail.
Here's how I think it all goes down..
— Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) <a href="https://twitter.com/ShaanVP/status/1371972261004070913?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2021</a></blockquote>
</div>
On the other hand, Clubhouse is still limited to Apple iPhone users, and when it opens up to the world of Android users, its numbers will most definitely shoot up again. It’s certainly too early to assess whether the format Clubhouse pioneered — a mix of live podcasting and virtual conference-schmoozing — is going to stick around.
It’s also, obviously, way too early to figure out if Facebook’s massive scale will help it dethrone Clubhouse. But Zuckerberg hasn’t been shy about copying services or features built by competitors or would-be competitors, with mixed results: It successfully aped the “Stories” feature pioneered by Snapchat, for instance, but Rooms, its would-be Zoom competitor, never caught on. And Reels, its attempt to clone TikTok’s short-form video service, is a work in progress that is stocked in large part with... videos that first appeared on TikTok. Still to come: A Facebook-branded version of Substack’s successful write-your-own-newsletter service.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/4/18/22390742/facebook-podcasts-clubhouse-audio-launch-spotify-zuckerberg-apple">https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/4/18/22390742/facebook-podcasts-clubhouse-audio-launch-spotify-zuckerberg-apple</a>

vox Facebook plans to go after Clubhouse — and podcasts — with a suite of new audio products

Facebook wants you to start talking, and listening, on Facebook. Sources say the social network is planning to announce a series of produc...