Time magazine, on Chinese workers who are runners-up in its selection of Person of the Year for 2009

"It's the first time we have these snow conditions in this place in 15 years."

Eurostar Chief Operating Officer Nicolas Petrovic, blaming powdery snow for a three-day service shutdown after some 2,500 people were trapped on trains inside the Channel Tunnel linking France and Britain for up to 16 hours on December 19

"History is being made today because this dispute has soured global trade relations for too long."

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU Trade Commissioner, after the EU and Latin America signed a deal ending the so-called banana wars, the world's longest trade dispute, on December 15

"This is a fundamental moment in cancer research. From here on in, we will think about cancers in a very different way."

Michael Stratton, lead researcher and scientist of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, Britain, on their groundbreaking discovery of the entire genetic code of lung and skin cancer

"One could say he was the first one to see it from a plane. But how many millions of indigenous eyes saw it, and prayed to it? No one should refer to Angel Falls any more."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, saying on December 20 that the world's tallest waterfall in his country should bear an indigenous name rather than that commemorating the U.S. pilot who spotted it in 1933

"It used to be that China is doing something and the rest of the world has to guess what China is up to, but now the world could know exactly what China is doing due to its more and more transparent reporting environment."

David Wivell, senior producer of TV news from Associated Press's Beijing bureau