"I don’t need to spell it out, but the wars that we have seen, the occupations that we see throughout the world—people finally cannot turn away from that... Maybe if we start telling the truth about the past, we can start telling the truth about the present."Director Ken Loach, whose new film The Wind That Shakes The Barley has won the top prize at the Cannes film festival
"It’s because students are given condoms during freshers’ week and get taught biology at school that we need to do something."Reverend Richard Cunningham, director of the evangelical University and College Christian Fellowship, on why he is launching a national campaign to promote sexual abstinence among students
"As far as the size goes, we are committed to rebuilding Iraq and to restoring the economy and to stabilising the security. The size of the embassy is in keeping with the goals we have set ourselves for Iraq."US State Department spokesman Justin Higgins, defending spending $600 million dollars on the new US embassy in Baghdad, the largest embassy ever built in the world
"How are we supposed to get rid of the helipad now? Can you imagine taking a jackhammer to the remains of one of the most important cities in the history of mankind? This is Babylon."Donny George, head of Iraq’s board of antiquities after US contractors paved over the archeological site to create a helipad
"Upwards of 80 to 85 percent of people... have witnessed or been a part of a traumatic event, including engaging the enemy, killing people... In Vietnam, there were safe areas where people could go to rest and recuperate. That doesn’t happen in Iraq – every place is a war zone."Steve Robinson, of the US National Gulf War Resource Centre, which supports veterans
"The way in which I had been able to give my evidence (I told no lies, but I turned some very tricky corners, to put it mildly) had kept Mr B out of a great deal of trouble that I would have landed him in if I had said all I knew."David Mills, lawyer to Italian president Silvio Berlusconi and husband of Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary and a key Blair ally. Italian prosecutors accuse Mills of receiving a £350,000 bribe from Berlusconi