Perspectives

" It is fairly well known that a lot of Germans like getting their kit off. Now there is an airline for them. "
The Australian Broadcasting Company, reporting that a German travel agency is offering nudist flights to Baltic Sea resorts

" We have four empresses with different names and a tsar … the true Romanovs, whom I know well, are not among them."
Vladimir Churov , chairman of Russia's Central Election Commission, on a spate of applications from fake aristocrasy seeking to run in the March parliamentary elections

"It is not meant as a nose joke."
Kanittha Rattanasin , a Thai sign-language interpreter, on the national sign—two fingers pinching the proboscis—for the prominent-featured new prime minister, Samak Sundaravej

" We are unsure whether … institutions would be clamoring to accept people with McQualifications."
Sally Hunt , general secretary of Britain's University and College Union, on a government plan to allow McDonald's to grant employees high-school-equivalency degrees for management training

"I always wanted to write novels anyway."
Jim Jennewein , striking Hollywood screenwriter, who is pitching publishing houses as the Writers Guild strike drags on

" No one is perfect. "
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, on the death of the former dictator Suharto, whose political purges targeted hundreds of thousands of citizens in the 1960s