"The extent and timing of any additional firming that may be needed to address these risks will depend on the evolution of the outlook for both inflation and economic growth, as implied by incoming information.''

Statement of the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee on August 8, in keeping its target for the federal funds rate at 5.25 percent and halting an unbroken stretch of interest rate hikes for more than two years

"The next prime minister's position on the issue of Yasukuni shrine visits is of great importance, directly connected to the issue of historical perception and Japan's diplomacy to Asia."

Tokyo local Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, on premiership front-runner Shinzo Abe's quiet pilgrimage to the war-related Yasukuni Shrine in April

"Although this mainland case occurred two years earlier than other cases, there is no reason to think that China had an outbreak of bird flu in 2003. People shouldn't panic. The country's bird flu surveillance capability is much stronger now than it was two years ago."

Mao Qun'an, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Health, after scientists traced the first confirmed human infection in the world in the current H5N1 virus cycle to a 24-year-old man who died in Beijing in 2003

"No words can adequately describe the horror of these weapons that tortured and killed tens of thousands of people by throwing them into infernos in an instant. "

Keiji Tsuchiya, at a gathering on the 61st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, which he survived