"If asked, [I would] have rejected it."

Kotaro Hirota, 67, on the enshrinement at the Yasukuni Shrine in the late 1970s of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Koki Hirota, who was convicted as a World War II Class A war criminal

"In the second half of 2006, the cash income growth of the rural Chinese population will continue to lose momentum, which may result in a yawning income gap between rural and urban residents."

A report issued by the National Reform and Development Commission

"Between August 2005 and June this year, anti-corruption officials investigated 6,972 cases of alleged commercial bribery, involving a total of 1.96 billion yuan."

Li Yufu, Vice Director of the one-year-old national anti-commercial-bribery campaign, speaking at a July 31 press conference

"In the interests of American national security, our troops and our taxpayers, the open-ended commitment in Iraq that you have embraced cannot and should not be sustained."

A letter from 12 top congressional Democrats to U.S. President George W. Bush, demanding the implementation of the scheduled withdrawal of the 130,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by year's end

"It is essential that any future measures that could be required to implement the resolution rule out the use of force."

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's UN Ambassador, on a UN resolution requiring Iran to halt uranium enrichment and nuclear fuel reprocessing activities by August 31