Verbatim

‘People are at least as smart as goats … Now one of the ways I keep those goats in the fence is I electrified them. Once they got popped a couple of times, they quit trying to jump it.’
TRENT LOTT, Republican Senator from Mississippi, on how to deal with illegal immigration on the U.S. border

‘If it was up to me, I would’ve seized their cars and crushed them, but it’s not legal for me to do that.’
KEN LIVINGSTONE, mayor of London, on American diplomats who are refusing to pay the $16 toll for driving in central London, where the U.S. embassy is located, citing diplomatic immunity

‘I feel that Japan is in general, cool, almost like ice.’
TO CHU JI, North Korean defector who fled the Stalinist nation for Japan four years ago, after deciding that Japanese “don’t care about each other” and returning on June 21 to North Korea

‘Our innocent people are becoming victims of careless operations of NATO and international forces.’
HAMID KARZAI, Afghan President, on the increasing number of civilian deaths from NATO- and U.S.-led air strikes in his country. In the past three weeks, more than 90 civilians have been killed in aerial bombings aimed at resurgent Taliban forces in the south and east of the country

‘This is green imperialism.’
NOR MOHAMED YAKCOP, Malaysia’s Deputy Finance Minister, arguing that developed countries are hypocritical because they complain about China’s greenhouse-gas emissions while taking advantage of the country’s cheap labor

‘Thanks be to God, now I’m leaving.’
ALI HASSAN AL-MAJID, known as Chemical Ali, on receiving his death sentence handed down by the Iraqi High Tribunal on June 24. A cousin of Saddam Hussein, he was found guilty of orchestrating deadly gas attacks on Kurds in 1988

Numbers

SPORTS
$162 million Amount bid by ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to buy Britain’s Manchester City soccer club
$1.95 billion Total amount of Thaksin’s fortune frozen pending an investigation into his finances; Thai authorities said they would freeze an additional $148 million in assets after the bid’s acceptance was announced on June 21

LAWSUITS
$54 million Compensation demanded by Judge Roy Pearson in a lawsuit against a dry cleaner in Washington, D.C., who lost a pair of his pants, claiming it failed to deliver on its promise of “satisfaction guaranteed”; the suit was dismissed on June 26
$10.50 Cost of the alteration that led to Pearson’s pants being lost

MIDDLE EAST
$600 million Amount of withheld Palestinian tax revenue Israel agreed to release in support of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party lost control of the Gaza Strip to the Islamic militant group Hamas
$800 Average yearly per capita income in the Gaza Strip, compared with $20,000 in Israel

ANTITERRORISM FUNDING
31% Portion of the $16 billion in post-9/11 federal security grants to U.S. states and the District of Columbia that hasn’t been spent. Almost $5 billion remains stalled in government coffers
$2.2 billion Amount of new spending requested by the Bush Administration for antiterrorism programs in its 2008 budget