Leadership
"I hope we can find some way to keep the businesses around here going but I don't know." — new Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi.
Best qualified person for the job
President George W Bush's choice for the number three spot at the US Department of Energy is Robert G Card, who until recently was CEO and president of a nuclear clean-up contract company that has been fined or penalised more than US$725,000 for numerous worker safety, procurement and other violations since 1996.
Elizabeth Windsor perhaps?
"The appointment of yet another man, Archbishop Peter Hollingsworth, as the next governor-general of Australia calls for a radical rethinking of the way the head of state is chosen ... In the length and breadth of this great brown land, where women total slightly more than half of the population, surely somewhere — anywhere — there is a woman suitably qualified for the job." — University of Melbourne senior law lecturer Kim Rubenstein, writing in the April 29 Australian.
Our hearts bleed for them
"In just 13 months, Shell has cost Woodside $13 million, it's split the ALP and the Liberal Party, has left the NWS [North-West Shelf oil and gas] joint venture in turmoil and crashed the Aussie dollar." — Woodside executive quoted anonymously and "off the record" in April 28-29 Australian Financial Review.