"Today is another memorable date in the history of cross-Straits relations...which signifies that our 30-year effort has finally paid off."

Minister Wang Yi of the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's State Council, at a ceremony on December 15 when the Chinese mainland and Taiwan started direct air, shipping and postal services

"They have taken the smarter route-I learn from you, I catch up, then I innovate and I compete with you. I think that is the way it will have to go."

Singaporean Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, saying that China is on the right track at a dialogue commemorating 30 years of China's reform and opening up in Singapore on December 16

"Throwing the shoes at Bush was the best goodbye kiss ever...it expresses how Iraqis and other Arabs hate Bush."

Musa Barhoumeh, editor at Jordan's independent Al-Gahd newspaper, writing in a comment on Iraqi cameraman Muntazer al-Zaidi's shoe attack on U.S. President George W. Bush at a press conference in Baghdad on December 14

"The surprise is not that there are some thieves in the system, the question is where were the police?"

International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Khan, criticizing U.S. regulators at a news conference in Madrid for their failure to prevent a $50-billion pyramid fraud scam run by ex-Wall Street heavyweight Bernard Madoff who was arrested on December 16

"We Africans are at the mercy of the developed world who have super weapons that could eliminate us from the face of the world in a whisker of time, but instead of working hard to reduce the technological gap, we are just sitting back."

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, calling on Africans to work harder to free their impoverished continent from domination by the developed world in a statement released on December 13