Selected quotes of the week
In the current climate, it is probably better to be accused of murder and cleared, than to be accused of abuse and cleared.
Fr Patrick Connolly, a lecturer at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, as some priests express dissatisfaction at what they say is the overly severe interpretation of abuse guidelines by Catholic bishops.
You see the amount of crimes and gun crimes and it does make you think that perhaps we're just too lenient. People serve too short a sentence for murder and sometimes you see what people serve for far lesser things . . . I think too many people who commit murders get out after seven years and personally I think it's too long . . . personally I think it's too short, I should say.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, following the shooting dead of Donna Cleary.
It's like Beirut. It is unsatisfactory and unsafe.
Irish Nurses' Organisation representative Therese Gallagher on bed shortages at Letterkenny General Hospital.
Abu Ghraib prison is in a region that has been susceptible to attacks and it is difficult to support logistically, so there has always been the intention the move detainees to a more secure location.
Lieut Col Barry Johnson explains why the US plans to close the notorious Baghdad prison.
The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the - from a security standpoint - have the Iraqi security forces deal with it, to the extent they are able to.
US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld says a civil war has not yet broken out in Iraq.
I could congratulate Ireland. But I would definitely prefer that most of these people . . . return to Latvia because they are needed.
Latvia's European Commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, says the brain drain of young qualified people moving to Ireland from Latvia is hurting its economy.
I don't feel my life is in danger, but I don't tell casual acquaintances what I do.
An anonymous doctor who works at an abortion clinic in South Dakota. The state has voted to ban abortion, a move seen as an attempt to challenge the US Supreme Court's Roe v Wade judgment.
Do you think if we all got together and pulled this down, democracy would flourish in Hollywood?
Oscars host Jon Stewart, pointing to a tall Oscar statue behind him at the ceremony.
I don't think people leave them deliberately, but they sit on the train, they're upset, and they just forget.
Kazuo Yamazaki of the Lost Property Centre in Ueno railway station in Tokyo, says an increasing number of people are leaving behind funeral urns.
We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the Middle East we would like to see developed.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
They [ the West] don't have any lessons to teach us in terms of human rights. They've covered the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia in blood.
President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, often referred to as Europe's last dictator.
I believe I was extremely greedy. I lost my moral compass.
The former chief executive of Enron, Andrew Fastow, who is on trial for siphoning millions of dollars out of the company before its collapse.
Our public is very concerned about a foreign country, in this case specifically a foreign country from the Middle East, having a major role in our ports.
Jerry Lewis, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee of the US House of Representatives, which has blocked a deal which would see a Dubai -owned company taking over the management of six US ports.