Chen, who led Taiwan from May 2000-May 2008, is the island's first ex-leader to be detained.

"There is an increasing awareness that the institutions that we built in the 1940s cannot serve us for the purposes of 2008 in the way that we want."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, talking to journalists after EU leaders agreed on a global revamp of the financial order at a regional summit in Brussels on November 7

"I think in a decade, we'll be looking back at this moment and saying, 'This was it. This was when things really changed and China's economy transitioned from externally, export-oriented to an internal focus.'"

Ben Simpfendorfer, a China economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong, commenting on the Chinese Government's November 9 announcement of a $586-billion economic stimulus package against the worldwide financial crisis

"Often you see an opening-up of a country after a war. But in China it is a well-planned shift rather than a shock, which is gradually carried out with sufficient control."

Annette Nijs, former Dutch State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science, noting the remarkable balance China has developed between its political system, the market economy and the social stability in an interview with Xinhua News Agency

"It's certainly been a grand adventure."

Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, after NASA declared an end to the $475-million Phoenix mission on November 10, five months after the Phoenix Mars spacecraft became the first to land in Mars' arctic plains and taste water on another planet

"If we are determined to maintain a Jewish and democratic Israel, we must concede parts of the homeland we have prayed for and dreamed of for generations, as well as Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, and return to the State of Israel in 1967 with amendments."

Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking during the annual memorial ceremony for former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated by an ultranationalist Jew in 1995