Quotes of the Day

'Today's media, more than ever, hunts in a pack ... It is like a feral beast just tearing people and reputations to bits.'
TONY BLAIR, claiming newspaper and television coverage has worsened during his 10 years as the U.K.'s Prime Minister

'If it was up to me, I would close Guantánamo not tomorrow but this afternoon.'
COLIN POWELL, former U.S. Secretary of State, calling for the immediate closure of the controversial military prison

'We want to see you back in uniform. That's an order.'
HUGO CHAVEZ, Venezuelan President, urging ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro to bring back the fatigues El Comandante was once known for. Castro, who has not appeared in public in 10 months, has only been seen in recent photos wearing tracksuits

'This is the greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times.'
SALI BERISHA, Albanian Prime Minister, on George W. Bush, who visited the tiny Balkan country on June 10—the first sitting U.S. President to do so. Albania marked the occasion by renaming the street in front of its parliament building in Bush's honor and by issuing a commemorative series of postage stamps

'It was fast, I know that. Faster than this chair was made to go.'
BEN CARPENTER, 22, of Alamo, Michigan, who in a bizarre collision was pushed down a highway at speeds of up to 80 km/h after his wheelchair became lodged in the grille of a large truck

'Japan did not fight a war of aggression. It fought in self-defense.'
YUKO TOJO, 68-year-old granddaughter of Japanese General and former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. General Tojo ordered the World War II attack on Pearl Harbor and was later executed for war crimes; his granddaughter is campaigning for a seat in the Japanese parliament as a far-right candidate

'I am having the experience two times in my life of doing something that makes New Jersey fashionable. What are the odds on that?'
STEVEN VAN ZANDT, on being in both Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and the TV show The Sopranos, which ended its eight-year U.S. run on June 10

Numbers

JAPAN SUICIDES
32,155 Number of Japanese who killed themselves in 2006, a 1.2% drop from the year before
886 Number of suicides by students, an all-time high

HIGH FINANCE
$4 billion Estimated amount the leveraged-buyout firm Blackstone Group will raise by taking 10% of its stock public later this month
$2.33 billion Estimated amount the company's two co-founders will earn by selling some of their shares in the initial public offering

RECYCLING
745 Kilograms of trash generated per person in the U.S. in 2005, the latest data available. Some 32% of this waste was recycled, double the rate from 15 years ago
$236 billion Estimated annual revenue of the U.S. recycling industry

AFRICA AID
$60 billion Amount that leaders at the recent G-8 summit said they would donate to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa
$30 billion Amount of that aid that had already been promised by the U.S.; critics complain that little new money was pledged at the meeting

EVEREST
514 Number of climbers who have scaled Mount Everest so far in 2007, the most since it was first conquered in 1953
$25,000 Approximate cost to each climber for the chance to scale the world's tallest peak