“This historic settlement will return nearly $1bn to Medicare, Medicaid and other government insurance programmes."

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, after Pfizer agreed to pay $2.3 billion to settle allegations brought by federal prosecutors that the company had promoted four of its drugs for unapproved uses. (FT)

“Our per-capita emissions will never exceed the per capita emissions of developed countries.”

Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister of environment and forests, after releasing a report predicting that India’s carbon emissions will triple in the next 20 years. (Dot Earth)

“It is surprising that such a giant galaxy existed when the Universe was only one-sixteenth of its present age, and that it hosted a black hole one billion times more massive than the Sun.”

University of Hawaii astronomer Tomotsugu Goto, who has discovered a giant galaxy surrounding the most distant black hole ever found. The find suggests that both must have formed surprisingly quickly in the early Universe. (press release)