"The whole city is in darkness. You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go."

Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity in the Caribbean state of Haiti where a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on January 12 might have killed more than 100,000 people

"Google is just playing cat and mouse, and trying to use netizens' anger or disappointment as leverage."

Guo Ke, a professor on mass communications at Shanghai International Studies University, on Google's intention to quit China

"China's exports largely consist of low-value everyday goods like cheap electrical appliances and textiles--but that's a long way from where it wants to be."

Kerry Brown, Director of Strategic China and an associate fellow at Chatham House of Britain, on China's emergence as the world's biggest exporter

"We are prepared to deal with anyone who renounces violence and terrorism."

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, offering to hold dialogue with Al Qaeda militants in an interview carried by Yemen's Saba news agency on January 10

"We live here in north Sudan and we do not feel any difference between here and south Sudan. We have merged into the local community and we do not want, after all these years, to separate."

Sulaiman Ismail Genaih, a leading figure in the southern Sudanese tribe of Kiraish, calling for national unity despite probabilities that the referendum on self-determination for south Sudan, scheduled for January 2011, would result in secession of the south from the north

"Today, there is a new window of opportunity in disarmament and nonproliferation."

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, pledging to do everything in his power to advance the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world

"If I were a betting man, which I am, I would bet we're not alone--there is a lot of life."

Simon P. Worden, head of NASA's Ames Research Center, predicting that, within four or five years, astronomers should discover the first Earth-like planet where life could develop, or may have already