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Extra! People's Daily On Xi Jinping Trip To Pakistan

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People's Daily, April 22, 2015

President Xi Jinping's two-day visit to Pakistan this week was the first official visit by a Chinese head of state to its western neighbor in nine years. China's state-run newspaper People's Daily gave ample front-page coverage to the trip that concluded Tuesday, with four large photographs and the text of Xi's remarks to the Pakistani Parliament.

The daily notes that the meeting with Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain included major accords on economic and cultural cooperation between the two countries, totaling some $46 billion in contracts, as well as a five-year training program to train 1,000 Pakistan teachers in the Chinese language.

Not mentioned in People's Daily’s coverage Wednesday, nor in Xi’s speech to Parliament, is that Pakistan is planning to buy eight submarines from China as part of enhanced security and military cooperation between the two countries. Indeed, Beijing is increasingly concerned about ties between radical Muslim groups in Pakistan and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, based in the northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang.

ABOUT THE SOURCE: People's Daily is a daily state-run newspaper in China founded in 1948, which today is published worldwide with a combined circulation of more than three million.

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Society

How Colombia's "Prosperity Preachers" Squeeze The Masses, With The State's Blessing

In traditionally Catholic Colombia, Protestant preachers have learned to effectively combine marketing and religion to make themselves enormously wealthy. And thanks to political lobbying and religious freedom, they are exempt from the law and taxes.

Image of a man in a suit, Esteban Acosta, a self-proclaimed apostle, giving a speech at ​La Unción Christian Community Church, a big screen behind him projecting his speech.

Esteban Acosta, a self-proclaimed apostle, giving a speech at La Unción Christian Community Church, in Cartagena, Colombia.

Karem Racines

CARTAGENA — Outside the La Unción Christian Community Church, in this coastal city in Colombia, hundreds of believers gather to tour the city and bring their “message of salvation” to others. On a white crane, there are six speakers, microphones, recording equipment and about ten people identified as "STAFF".

A drone flies over and records the scene. When everything is ready, Pastor Esteban Acosta goes up to the platform and leads the chants.

The followers, of different ages and economic backgrounds, look animated, holding posters and colored balloons. They are spread out between the current location of the church and its new location, being built across the street. In the old structure, the prized Cartagena land, which cost "a million dollars in credit" according to the pastor, there is room for 2,000 people.

In the new temple, with tinted windows and a marble floor, another 2,000 people will fit. Everything is financed by the "generous contributions" of the parishioners.

Esteban Acosta, a self-proclaimed apostle, and his wife, pastor Lisbeth Bello, convince their followers to make donations in exchange for religious favors, while they amass fortunes to afford a life of luxury. They use marketing strategies and a repetitive message with a simple promise: the more money they give to God through them, the more progress they will have on earth as a reward. They call it the "prosperity gospel."

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