Wang smashed the former world record, which she created in Salt Lake City, the United States last month, by 0.516 seconds.

The 24-year-old Wang is China's top-ranked short-track speed skater. In 2006, she won her first Olympic gold medal in Turin, Italy. This year's World Championships saw Wang pocket three titles in 500-meter, 1,000-meter and 1,500-meter events and top the overall rankings.

"The piracy is only a symptom. The issue cannot be fundamentally resolved if the domestic crisis in Somalia is not effectively addressed."

China's UN Ambassador Zhang Yesui, in explanatory remarks after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1846 urging intensified efforts to fight Somali piracy on December 2

"We live in troubled times where non-state actors have taken us to war before, whether it is the case of those who perpetrated [the] 9/11 [attacks on the United States] or contributed to the escalation of the situation in Iraq."

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, appealing to India not to punish his country for last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai in an interview with the Financial Times. India has claimed that the gunmen were based in Pakistan

"Everybody talks about AIDS at cocktail parties. But nobody wants to hear about diarrhea."

John Oldfield, Executive Vice President of Water Advocates, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes clean water and sanitation, calling for attention to the fact that diarrhea kills five times as many children as AIDS, on World AIDS Day

"You have agreements on commitments, institutions and money, then you'll have a deal."

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, in an interview with China's Xinhua News Agency after the United Nations Climate Change Conference opened on December 1 in Poznan, Poland. Delegates hope to make progress toward a deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012

"Many Americans are unaware that the share of the U.S. global trade deficit with East Asia, including China, has declined from 75 percent to 49 percent over the past decade, or that most of the goods that U.S. firms manufacture in China are sold there, not exported to the United States."

Carla A. Hills, who served as U.S. Trade Representative from 1989 to 1993, urging continued trade cooperation with China