Inspired by the populist message of the group known as Occupy Wall Street, more than 200 Facebook pages and Twitter accounts have sprung up in dozens of cities during the past week, seeking volunteers for local protests and fostering discussion about the group’s concerns.

Some 900 events have been set up on Meetup.com, and blog posts and photographs from all over the country are popping up on the WeArethe99Percent blog on Tumblr from people who see themselves as victims of not just a sagging economy but economic injustice.

IT HAD been his passion since he was a boy, inspired by his mother's love of antiques, but after collecting a vast array of Napoleonic objets d'art and recreating his very own ''Imperial palace'' in South Yarra, Liberal party powerbroker Michael Kroger is finally over his ''Napoleon complex''.

At an auction in the shadow of the grand Chateau de Fontainebleau just outside Paris yesterday, the Michael Kroger Collection, including imperial eagles, towering bronze candelabras, antique clocks, vases, paintings, chairs, sideboards, elaborate gilt mirrors and military paraphernalia, went under the hammer, raising more than $500,000 for the businessman.

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — As the board of Amgen convened at the company’s headquarters in March, chief executive Kevin W. Sharer seemed an unlikely candidate for a raise.

Shareholders at the company, one of the nation’s largest biotech firms, had lost 3 percent on their investment in 2010 and 7 percent over the past five years. The company had been forced to close or shrink plants, trimming the workforce from 20,100 to 17,400. And Sharer, a 63-year-old former Navy engineer, was already earning lots of money — about $15 million in the previous year, plus such perks as two corporate jets.

one of the various end credit comments from the show "Two and a Half Men" written by Chuck Lorre.

One should remember.

From Lyndon Schneiders at Unleashed

How many hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars is Tony Abbott prepared to pour down the bottomless pit labelled northern development to keep Barnaby Joyce and Bill Heffernan happy?

...

But Heffernan won't believe it because he was removed as chair of the Land and Water Taskforce when Labor swept to power in 2007 and had the audacity to replace the politician-stacked taskforce with a body with broad scientific, pastoral and agricultural expertise.