President Obama’s $35,800-a-plate fund-raising dinner was the talk of Wall Street last week.

Held at Daniel, the Michelin three-star restaurant of Daniel Boulud on the Upper East Side, the event was seen as a test of the president’s popularity among the deep-pocketed financiers he has often vilified but has long relied on to finance his campaign. The tables were filled with moneymen like Marc Lasry, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Avenue Capital; Robert Wolf, the chief executive of UBS Group Americas; and Mark T. Gallogly, a co-founder of Centerbridge Partners.

Iran plans to send a live monkey into space next month, the latest advance in a missile and space program which has alarmed Israel and its western allies that fear the Islamic Republic is seeking nuclear weapons.

The head of Iran's Space Agency on Monday said five monkeys were undergoing tests before one is selected for the flight on board a Kavoshgar-5 rocket, according to the official IRNA news agency.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last August that Iran planned to send a man into space by 2017.

Western countries are concerned the long-range ballistic technology used to propel Iranian satellites into orbit could be used to launch atomic warheads.

In the first months of the Arab Spring, foreign journalists got well-merited credit for helping to foment and publicise popular uprisings against the region's despots. Satellite TV stations such as Al Jazeera Arabic, in particular, struck at the roots of power in Arab police states, by making official censorship irrelevant and by competing successfully against government propaganda.

photographic mischief by Gus...

PROCLAIMING Jesus to be ''a prophet of Islam'' on billboards is a statement of belief and does not discriminate against or vilify Christians, the Advertising Standards Bureau has found.

The billboard, one of several in an awareness campaign by Islamic group MyPeace, was the subject of a series of complaints to the bureau on the grounds that the statement was insulting to those who believed Jesus to be the son of God.

Other complaints included the charge that Jesus ''must not be associated with such [an] aggressive religion'' and another claiming the advertisement was upsetting to children.

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In response, Garnaut said that there was a tendency for economists "to tailor the analysis to what their client wants". In other words, Garnaut was suggesting that economists employed by business cannot be taken at face value. But, apparently, economists who are engaged as consultants by governments are completely credible. I asked both Cameron and ABC management why Garnaut's role as a paid consultant to the Gillard government was not mentioned during the interview. There was no reply.

Both Gillard and Abbott promised sweeping tax breaks in duelling election campaign-like pitches aimed at the hearts and hip-pockets of voters.

And each side claimed its plan was superior to the other.

But the similarities soon ended, with Labor and the Coalition taking predictable and aggressive stances on either side of the issue of carbon tax compensation.

ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.

Tabloid newspapers and talkback radio have been in hysterics all week over the NRL's decision to charge Johnathan Thurston, the Queensland State of Origin halfback, with thumping a referee.

This was clearly a NSW conspiracy.

"Queensland fans rightly think it stinks," shrieked Brisbane's parish pump, The Courier-Mail. It was "a pathetic act of desperation from a state that will do anything to stop Mal Meninga's team from claiming a sixth straight series win, and grinding more salty humiliation into the Blues' gaping Origin wounds".

The Opposition Leader's bare-knuckled biffo can take him only so far before a more positive strategy is needed.

The federal Labor Party a year ago decided to follow the strategy of NSW Labor, and now it has arrived at the same destination.

The federal party cut down its leader, jettisoned its most idealistic policies, shifted to the right, relied on a negative campaign against its enemy rather than one showcasing its own positive offerings, and imported leadership by focus group.

A series of Twitter posts by shadow treasurer Joe Hockey have left many Canberra insiders mystified.

Yesterday, Mr Hockey posted a series of pictures on his Twitter account of a cardboard cut-out of Kevin Rudd outside various Canberra landmarks.

"The ghost of Kevin Rudd is making guest appearances all day today, the first anniversary of his political assassination ... where will he be next?" Mr Hockey tweeted in the morning.

Mr Hockey then posted a series of photographs of the former prime minister in various locations.

Pulitzer-winning author and former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges has a revolutionary worldview. In the video below, his recent "Endgame Strategy" piece for AdBusters is read aloud by George Atherton.

His conclusions are chilling, but not entirely hopeless.

After a year as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard has failed to establish any sort of positive relationship with the Australian people, according to the Labor Party's own research.

Gillard is seen as cold and untrustworthy, still haunted by the way she took the job by deposing the man to whom she had endlessly pledged loyalty, Kevin Rudd.

By overthrowing Rudd, she created an emotional starting point for public assessment. This was compounded by her broken promise - "there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead" - to entrench a dominant image of dishonesty.

fatso

Millions of pounds raised by the sale of a little-known Picasso masterpiece are to fund medical research into obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

The portrait of the artist's lover, Marie-Therese Walter, fetched £13.5m when it went under the hammer on Tuesday at Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art auction in London.

The 1935 work, "Jeune fille endormie", was given to the University of Sydney last year by an anonymous US donor on the condition that it be sold to support scientific research at the university.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jun/22/picasso-sold-auction