鈥淲hen it comes to an issue like child health, if the present rate of decline continues it鈥檚 not going to take 10 years to achieve the goals, it鈥檚 going to take 150.鈥�
WHO director-general Lee Jong Wook on the problems of eliminating child mortality and malnutrition in poor countries (AFP, 22 August)
鈥淭here isn鈥檛 much money in climate science鈥 pay-off would be a nice top-up to my pension.鈥�
Advertisement
British climate expert James Annan on his $10,000 bet with two Russian solar physicists who claim that the Earth will cool over the next decade as the sun鈥檚 activity decreases (The Guardian, London, 19 August)
鈥淭he biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated.鈥�
A senior official, speaking anonymously, on the still-confidential finding that traces of uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated equipment from Pakistan and is not proof of a clandestine weapons programme (The Washington Post, 23 August)
鈥淪uch huge differences between blacks and whites should not be acceptable.鈥�
Ashish K. Jha, of the Harvard School of Public Health, whose study found that black men were 63 per cent less likely than whites to undergo heart bypass surgery under the US Medicare health programme, even though blacks have a higher rate of cardiovascular disease (The Baltimore Sun, 18 August)
鈥淭he sound defined progressive music as we know it.鈥�
Keyboard player Keith Emerson, of the band Emerson, Lake and Palmer, on the synthesised sound pioneered by Robert Moog, who died on Sunday in Asheville, North Carolina (Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August)