Verbatim

'God is on my side. The people of Timor are on my side.'
JOSE RAMOS-HORTA, President of East Timor, before returning to Dili, the nation's capital, to resume his presidential duties two months after being shot in a failed assassination attempt

'I feel very bad. I'm beyond words about the inconvenience this has caused.'
THE REV. RAYMOND LEE CHO-MIN, chairman of Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, on the budget carrier's collapse amid nearly $130 million in debts

'This is the endgame of the endgame. Checkmate already happened on the 29th of March.'
TENDAI BITI, secretary general of Zimbabwe's main opposition party, saying its presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, would not take part in a runoff election against President Robert Mugabe because Tsvangirai won the March election outright

'There is no sense pointing a finger at the Chinese. They are trying to pull people out of poverty and they clearly need help.'
DR. MAX AUFFHAMMER, lead researcher of a University of California team that found that China has overtaken the U.S. as the world's biggest polluter

'This book constitutes the wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work.'
J.K. ROWLING, the best-selling British author of the Harry Potter series, testifying in a Manhattan federal court against plans by a U.S. publisher to bring out the Harry Potter Lexicon

'While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs.'
ROBERT ZOELLICK, World Bank president, after U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the release of $200 million in emergency aid to help ease soaring food prices

CORRUPTION
18 Prison sentence, in years, handed down to former Shanghai Communist Party boss Chen Liangyu for corruption charges involving $4.8 billion in stolen cash
22 Number of members of the National People's Congress, China's legislative body, who have been ousted in the past five years on corruption charges

UNTAPPED OIL
4.3 billion Estimated amount of oil, in barrels, in North Dakota and Montana that could be retrieved using current technology, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey. The amount is 25 times bigger than the 1995 estimate
7.6 billion Amount of oil, in barrels, that the U.S. uses each year

POLLUTION
46,000 Estimated number of floating plastic pieces per square mile (2.6 sq km) of ocean, according to a 2006 U.N. study
56.5 million Tons of plastic (51.3 million metric tons) produced in the U.S. in 2006

CELL PHONES
$120 Activation fee in Cuba for a cell-phone service, which ordinary citizens were allowed to join for the first time on April 14
$240 Average annual wage for state workers in Cuba. Despite the relative expense, cell-phone sales have been brisk

Sources: A.P.; South China Morning Post; New York Times; Herald Sun; New York Times; Guardian
Numbers Sources: Wall Street Journal (2); New York Times (2); Bloomberg (2); A.P. (2)