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Soundbites

“If conservationists and whalers decided to sit together at a table and look for a solution, it could be they won’t find it, but we cannot give up trying.”

Cristian Maquieira, Chile’s delegate to the International Whaling Commission meeting in Santiago, which ended last week with both pro and anti-whaling countries vowing to try to reach a compromise (AFP, 28 June)

“We will make all our efforts to finish this job. Forces from the entire province have become involved.”

A Chinese official in Qingdao, on removing the thick algal bloom from the Yellow Sea in preparation for Olympic sailing events in August (The New York Times, 1 July)

“This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defence of our evolutionary comrades.”

Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project. The Spanish government looks likely to give apes some “human” rights (The Daily Telegraph, London, 26 June)

“We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.”

Steve Lamoureaux, chief innovation officer at Massachusetts-based Affinnova, which used an algorithm to identify preferences in the US for vice-presidential candidates and found that the top choice of Republicans and Democrats was former secretary of state, Colin Powell (Computerworld, 30 June)

“I feel more centred in who I am and what I’m doing.”

Dede Osborn, a subject in a Johns Hopkins University trial on the effects of the hallucinogen psilocybin – the active component of magic mushrooms. Many subjects reported lasting spiritual benefits of the experience (AP, 1 July)