鈥淭he Antarctic ozone hole has not become more severe since the late 1990s, but large ozone holes are expected to occur for decades to come.鈥�
Ozone specialist Geir Braathen on a report by the World Meteorological Organization predicting that the atmosphere will take up to 15 years longer than previously expected to recover from pollution and repair the ozone hole over the southern hemisphere (Associated Press, 18 August)
鈥淚 would put it on the same level as seeing the face of Mohammed in a potato.鈥�
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Keith Ward, former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, on Veronica鈥檚 Veil, a piece of cloth supposedly used to mop Christ鈥檚 brow as he carried the cross. The Pope is due to view it next week (The Daily Telegraph, London, 21 August)
鈥淭wo fully functional penises is unheard of in even medical literature.鈥�
A surgeon from a hospital in Uttar Pradesh, India, where the planned removal of one of the penises of a businessman suffering from 鈥減enile duplication鈥� is expected to take place (The Times of India, 19 August)
鈥淲hat happens when we find a pluton on a pluton?鈥�
Allen Glazner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on why geologists are upset about plans to call Pluto-like planets plutons. In geology, the word is reserved for bits of molten rock that solidify underground and then surface (The New York Times, 22 August)
鈥淚t was like a crank call鈥� the scientific mechanisms and principles were just bollocks.鈥�
A UK government official on being approached by Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie with a scheme to clean up nuclear waste using a mystical Kabbalah fluid that had apparently been tested in a Ukrainian lake (The Sunday Times, London, 20 August)