鈥淲hat did the father say? He couldn鈥檛 say a thing 鈥� he just stood there blinking.鈥�
New Russian mother Tatyana Khalina expresses her spouse鈥檚 surprise after she gave birth to her daughter Nadia, who weighed in at a colossal 7.75 kilograms 鈥� that鈥檚 17.5 lbs (BBC online, 27 September)
鈥淭his is our way of seeing how God created the universe, and [the Vatican] wants to make a strong statement that truth doesn鈥檛 contradict truth; that if you have faith, you鈥檙e never going to be afraid of what science comes up with. Because it鈥檚 true.鈥�
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Guy Consolmagno, curator of the Vatican meteorite collection describes how Catholicism has nothing to fear from the discoveries of science. The Vatican is hosting an astronomy conference from 1 to 5 October (BBC online, 27 September)
鈥淚t is astounding how all the courts try to evade the question of personhood of a chimp as much as they can.鈥�
Martin Balluch of the Association Against Animal Factories in Vienna, Austria, on losing the latest legal battle to get a chimpanzee called Pan declared a 鈥減erson鈥�, so a guardian can be appointed to look out for the ape鈥檚 interests (Associated Press, 27 September)
鈥淚 would not be surprised if we one day find a Marco Polo Neanderthal.鈥�
Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. DNA analysis of fossil bones by Paabo鈥檚 team reveals that Neanderthals travelled as far as Siberia (NYTimes.com, 2 October)
鈥淭he Foton M3 mission is a success.鈥�
An over-optimistic Josef Winter, of the European Space Agency, on the release of 8.5 kilometres of cable tether from a spacecraft. The cable was supposed to unwind 35 km back to Earth, but it got stuck (The Moscow News, 27 September)
