鈥淚 brought some mosquitoes. Here, I鈥檒l let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected.鈥�
Bill Gates springs a surprise on his audience while talking about malaria at the TED 2009 conference (AFP, 5 February)
鈥淲e鈥檝e now got a ticking toxic time bomb.鈥�
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Campaigner Jean Kennedy on the arrival of the 鈥済host ship鈥� Clemenceau at Hartlepool in north-east England to be dismantled. The decommissioned French aircraft carrier, which contains 770 tonnes of contaminated material, including asbestos, had previously been rejected by ship-breaking yards from Egypt to India (The Independent, London, 9 February)
鈥淚f it was a man-made situation, the Chinese government will be very uncomfortable.鈥�
Cheng Li at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC comments on fresh questions over whether the weight of the reservoir held back by the Zipingpu dam in China triggered the devastating Sichuan earthquake last year (The New York Times, 5 February)
鈥淭he bitterness is great that the government could not act to save a life.鈥�
Italy鈥檚 prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, lamenting his government鈥檚 failure to push through anti-euthanasia legislation in time to block the death of Eluana Englaro, who had been in a coma following an accident (AFP, 9 February)
鈥淧erhaps these findings will see chips treated like wine in the future.鈥�
Graham Clayton from the University of Leeds, UK, on the finding that the alluring aroma of chips [fries] contains aromatic notes of butterscotch, flowers and ironing boards (The Independent, London, 9 February)