The ensemble worn by Michelle Obama on Inauguration Day went on display yesterday, allowing the public a first close-up look at the design that helped earn the first lady praise for her fashion sense.

The sheath dress and matching coat appear in a retrospective of designs by Cuban-born Isabel Toledo, who held her first show in 1985 but was largely unknown outside the fashion world until Ms Obama wore the outfit on January 20, 2009. "This is now one of the most famous dresses in the world," said Valerie Steele, chief curator at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which is hosting the exhibit. "It's become a piece of history."

"Even people who have little or no interest in fashion will be really interested to see this," Ms Steele said.

The wife of President Barack Obama has won acclaim for her fashion style, particularly for mixing high- and low-end pieces and choosing little-known designers over industry stalwarts.

Space shuttle launch postponed to July

Nasa cancelled the launch of space shuttle Endeavour yesterday for the second time after a potentially dangerous hydrogen gas leak surfaced while the ship was being fuelled for flight.

An identical problem stymied a launch attempt on Saturday. Technicians had replaced seals in a hydrogen vent line in hopes of stemming the leak.

The next opportunity to launch Endeavour will be on July 11.

"We're going to step back and figure out what the problem is and go fix it," said deputy shuttle programme manager LeRoy Cain. "Obviously we have something here we didn't understand as well as we thought we may have."

Endeavour had been scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida at 5.40 a.m. EDT (0940 GMT) yesterday on a 16-day mission to install a Japanese-built porch on the International Space Station.

Cocaine haul hidden in frozen sharks

Mexico's navy has seized more than a tonne of cocaine stuffed inside frozen sharks, as drug gangs under military pressure go to greater lengths to conceal narcotics bound for the US.

Armed and masked navy officers cut open more than 20 shark carcasses filled with slabs of cocaine after checking a container ship in a container port in the southern Mexico state of Yucatan, the navy and Mexican media said.

"We are talking about more than a tonne of cocaine that was inside the ship," Navy Commander Eduardo Villa told reporters after X-ray machines and sniffer dogs helped uncover the drugs.

Drug gangs are coming up with increasingly creative ways of getting drugs into the US - in sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture - as Mexico's military cracks down on the cartels moving South American narcotics north.

Fish can learn despite small brains

A small fish found in streams across Europe has a human-like ability to learn, British scientists reported yesterday.

The nine-spined stickleback could be the first animal to exhibit a key human social learning strategy that allows it to compare the behaviour of others to its own experience and make choices that lead it to better food supplies.

"Small fish may have small brains but they still have some surprising cognitive abilities," said Jeremy Kendal of Durham University.

Prof. Kendal and colleagues from St Andrews University found in tests that 75 per cent of sticklebacks were clever enough to know from watching others that a feeder in a tank was rich in food, even though they had previously got little from it themselves.

This ability represents an unusually sophisticated social learning skill not yet found in other animals, they reported in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

Ex-priest caught in scandal marries

A former Roman Catholic priest and media celebrity who left the Catholic Church last month after he was photographed cuddling a woman on a Florida beach has married his girlfriend, local media reported yesterday.

Alberto Cutie, 40, who joined the Episcopal Church after the photos scandal stoked debate over the Catholic celibacy requirement for priests, married 35-year-old Ruhama Buni Canellis on Tuesday in a civil ceremony, the Miami Herald reported.

The couple avoided photographers and news crews when they were married by a judge in Miami's Coral Gables district.