- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a chief ministers' conference in New Delhi.

'If there's a rift between me and India, it would be the first rift between me and India since I was seven years old. You know, India was the first country in the world I was aware of; I have a very special feeling for it.'

 - Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, rubbishing all speculations of a rift between him and New Delhi.

'This is part of give-Gaddafi-what-he-wants so we can have the oil.'

 - The mother of a 20 year old girl who perished in the Pan Am Flight 103 that was bombed out of the skies over Lockerbie in December 1988 in an act of terror. She was conveying her outrage, and that of the families of 269 other victims, at the release of Basset al-Megrahi, the only Libyan to be convicted in the Lockerbie bombing case, from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds. Cancer-afflicted Megrahi was accorded a hero's welcome at the Tripoli airport when he returned home and was received by the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

'I think I'll be going to the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.'

 - Usain Bolt, the all-time fastest runner in the world, on being asked where his next big stop would be after he had broken his own previous record in 100 m run at the world athletics championship in Berlin.

'The burqa represents the oppression of women, their enslavement, their humiliation.'

 - Fadela Amara, a Muslim woman who is France's Minister for Urban Regeneration.

'Prostitutes are more trustworthy than government officials.'

 - An online survey of 3,376 Chinese conducted by the Insight China magazine.

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