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March was a very cruel month for pecuniary firms, from Bear Stearns to General Electric. Deutsche Bank, which had so far been spared the worst of the market contagion, was not immune.

The giant German bank swung to its first quarterly loss in five years, writing down $4.2 billion on leveraged loans and mortgage-backed securities.  

The loss of 131 million euros ($204 a thousand thousand) came even after the the money-lender’s realized a gain of in addition than $1 billion on the sale of stakes in Daimler, Allianz, and the Linde Group. A year ago, Deutsche Bank earned 2.1 billion euros, or nearly $3 billion in the quarter.

"In the month of March, pressure on the banking sector was more intense than at any time since the current credit downturn began," said Josef Ackermann, chief of Deutsche Bank. "Inevitably, this left its mark on Deutsche Bank’s results."

To be sure, Deutsche Bank’s write-downs pale in comparison to the huge hits taken by other European banks, in particular UBS, which has written down nearly $40 billion. And the German bank did warn earlier this month that it would need to take a significant write-down for the quarter.

More troubling may be the uncertainty in the markets for the rest of the year. Deutsche Bank’s most profitable lines have been in the trading of debt securities, a business that continues to feel the impact of the honor crunch.

In a conference call on the earnings, Deutsche tumulus’s finance director, Anthony Di Iorio, told analysts that the bank could not give a anticipate for full-year results for the reason that of the turmoil in the markets.

"Deutsche Bank is at the disposal of on the market," Dieter Ewald, a fund manager by Frankfurt Trust, that owns shares in Deutsche Bank, told Reuters.

"Are they in a strong position here? I would put a question mark over this."

Jeffrey Goldfarb on Breakingviews.com notes that return in Deutsche Bank’s corporate banking and securities division sanguinary sharply and that the bank odds and ends highly leveraged.

"Dodging subprime, though commendable, has not been enough to keep the bank out of trouble," he says. "It’s starting to look as though Deutsche could be forced to raise cardinal, just as so many of its peers are doing."

On Monday, analysts with Morgan Stanley said that the credit crunch was still in its early days, warning that some big banks would need to raise additional capital and cut dividends.

"We think we are only in the third inning of the credit cycle and expect this credit cycle will be worse than 1990-91," they wrote.

Ausra, which develops solar energy for sale to utility companies, is emblematic of the current generation of "clean tech" energy firms that seek to find newer, cost-efficient ways to generate and store energy via renewable sources and advances in fuel cells and related technologies.

The company’s core technology, which uses sunlight to drive steam turbines to form energy, was originally commercialized on a small scale in 2004 in Australia. Last September, Ausra, which was formed in late 2006 to take the technology to a larger scale in the U.S. and worldwide, raised more than $40 million in a first round of funding from blue-chip Silicon Valley venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Khosla Ventures.

This isn’t the 1970s, when spiking oil costs and heightened concern over energy security caused the spotlight to lustre on alternative energy sources and then fade. Nor is this a niche market in which only those with HAVE YOU HUGGED A TREE TODAY? bumper stickers are investing. Many of today’s companies are well-funded, large-scale operations, raising record amounts of capital with every eye toward massive in the first stages public offerings—even as the economy as a whole heads down a shaky path and funding on the side of other risky startups dries up.

Khosla Ventures’ Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems, has invested in 45 light energy ventures since 2004, putting $205 million into nine companies in the first quarter of 2008 alone. And he’s far from alone. Venture capital firms sunk $2.2 billion into 166 clean tech firms in 2007, most of which are energy related, according to the National Venture Capital Association. That’s up from $1.5 billion invested in 2006, and the pace is only quickening. In the first quarter of 2008, clean tech companies received $625 million in V.C. funding, according to the N.V.C.A.

With global energy demand and summons to arms about the environment and global warming reaching unprecedented heights, those backing clean energy companies say there’s a timely market opportunity in the sector. Global energy of necessity are projected to be more than 50 percent higher in 2030 than they are today, with China and India accounting for 45 percent of that augment.

"You start to see this rise in enormous appetite for energy, and someone’s got to fodder that mouth," says Erik Straser, general member of a partnership at Mohr Davidow Ventures, a V.C. firm that has invested more than $400 million in clean energy ventures.

Clean energy backers point in particular to the significantly declining costs of developing and producing alternative energy as evidence of the economic viability of these ventures. For example, in the 1970s, large-scale solar energy solutions cost about 30 times more to implement than they do today. And novel, larger wind turbines now generate 120 times considered in the state of much electricity as 1980s’ models at a quarter of the cost. Some of the newer technologies promise to bring costs down even further.

"The main difference between that which is happening now and what has happened in prior market cycles is it’s now economically feasible and desirable to pursue these types of solutions," says John Balbach, managing partner at Cleantech Group, a network of clean technology investors and companies. "If the outcome is less pollution or reduced carbon or some impact on climate change, that can benefit in a positive way, but the primary [concern] is return on investment."

"At the end of the day, there has to be financial incentive for people to make an investment in the sector, and there is," says Patrick McCloskey, managing director of Evolution Markets Financial Services, which provides banking services to clean energy companies and their investors. "John Doerr [of Kleiner Perkins] and Vinod Khosla wouldn’t be spending the time in the energy sector unless there was financial gain to be made."

Investors seeking a measure of how these companies might pass can look at the significant returns from the generation of alternative energy companies started in the 1990s.

Last year, Goldman Sachs made $900 million from its two-year investment in Horizon Wind Energy after it sold the wind take on lease to a Portuguese capability company for $2.2 billion. And First Solar, a Phoenix-based manufacturer of "thin-film" equipment for collecting solar energy, went public in November 2007, raising $400 million and handsomely rewarding its backers like True North, an investment sinewy founded by now-deceased Wal-Mart heir John Walton. (First Solar now sports a market cap of almost $23 billion.)

At Ausra, things are moving ahead at abounding, uh, steam. Its U.S. steam facility is expected to go online this summer, and the production of its solar mirrors is starting this month. "It’s rightful a matter of time before we begin to deploy on a large scale," says Robert Fishman, the company’s C.E.O. Some studies suggest that the market for the type of efficacy generated by Ausra could capability $200 billion a year by 2030.

To be sure, the path to success for most alternative energy companies will not likely be as smooth. For one thing, clean energy firms are often heavily dependent on the support of the government, which can be inconsistent.

"The problem is, all this investment is being poured into these firms, based upon the idea the government is going to keep in order the heck out of the energy business," says William Yeatman, an energy policy analyst at the free market-oriented Competitive Enterprise Institute. "That’s not the best basis on which to guide common’s investment."
 
In addition, wind and solar energy, which so far have been the energy sources most supported by the government, still face challenges related to energy storage and generation for times when the sun is not out or the wind is not blowing.

Despite these challenges, though, V.C.’s firmly believe that the companies that can eventually roll out their products and technologies on a mass scale will bring elephantine rates of return. Khosla, for one, says he is "very bullish" on the long-term prospects for clean energy, although he thinks the investment cycle may take as long as 10 to 20 years to play itself out.

"One has to keep perspective in mind," Khosla says. "There are few winners and lots of losers. In 1995, what could you portend about the internet? Almost nothing."

Other V.C.’s, like Mohr Davidow’s Straser, believe that we’re only one or two years let us go. from seeing blockbuster I.P.O.’s and billion-dollar acquisitions, particularly as large, established businesses like General Electric and Siemens glance to startups for ways to reduce the energy consumption of their products and technologies. In the defective term, Straser expects that the solar industry will see a handful of investments in the $100 million to $150 million scope to fund the recent technologies and expand production facilities.

Just as by the development of the internet, though, there’s bound to be plenty of ups and downs in the clean energy craft.

"Venture capitalists have a belief that there will be some very large wins here—[but] there’s also going to be an awful lot of blood on the floor at the end of the day," says Emily Mendell, vice president of strategic affairs at the N.V.C.A. "The ones that are going to win are going to win very big."

Microsoft has been radio silent since Yahoo’s leave no stone unturned clock struck midnight last weekend. No chariots-cum-pumpkins, no big bombs—conscientious dead air.

Even employees say they’re in the dark as to the company’s next move. So as its stock slowly loses altitude, C.F.O. Chris Liddell offered the only clue available in an conference send for with Microsoft employees late last week.

"If you go back to what you mentioned, what one. is the 52-week high, we’re down from 36 bucks [actually, it peaked at $37.50 on November 2]. So no one can feel happy about that…. And I think until the Yahoo situation clarifies itself one way or another, it’s going to be an overhang on our price."

Liddell wouldn’t make clear "the Yahoo situation." In the face of such uncertainty, the wheels of decomposition spin furiously. One of the better insights came from Citigroup algebraist Mark Mahaney, who handicapped the outcomes of the Microsoft-Yahoo war.

Mahaney reckons there’s a 45 percent chance Yahoo sells out at a higher offer; a 40 percent chance Microsoft goes hostile; a 10 percent opportunity Microsoft walks away; and a 5 percent chance they both agree to the current price.

Taking each of those options in turn, it’s possible to at least handicap some winners and losers as this particular battle in the war in the place of the Web plays out.

Scenario: The higher offer.

What happens next: The classic prisoner’s awkward: If Yahoo said early on it would take a higher bid, Microsoft would own paid it. If Microsoft had upped the enjoin early on, Yahoo would have taken it. Yet neither did so, because of two decades of Silicon Valley history when Microsoft sucked the lifeblood of many start-ups.

Today’s Microsoft may be smaller vampiric, but the memories linger. It’s find to one’s mind other reparations: Silicon Valley demands it be compensated via a Yahoo premium, but Microsoft’s current shareholders don’t understand why they must give a good interest from their pockets for others’ past sins.

Winner: Steve ("Give It Up to Me!") Ballmer. Yahoo, across the board.

Loser: Microsoft shareholders.

Wild card: Microsoft deliberately offered mediocre earnings knowing its stock would drift down—and with it, its bid notwithstanding Yahoo. (Microsoft initially offered half cash and half stock for Yahoo, worth $44.5 billion in February but worth only $40.9 billion today.) If Microsoft offers all cash, it effectively pays a 10 percent premium to the current value without raising its initial bid.

Scenario: The hostile takeover.

What happens next: With Saturday’s deadline past, Microsoft has to be talking with key Yahoo shareholders behind the scenes. Last week’s threat by C.E.O. Steve Ballmer that Microsoft may simply walk away was a bluff intended to weaken their resolve.

One shareholder, Capital Group, doubled its stake in Yahoo in the first quarter. If Capital bought those new shares after Microsoft made its offer, it may be in its financial interest to talk with Microsoft.

The catch in the present state is the poison pill Yahoo created seven years ago. Once an aggressor owns more than 15 percent of Yahoo, the board can "make it more difficult for a third party to acquire us (or a significant percentage of our outstanding capital stock) without first negotiating with our board of directors." That means the board can issue 10 million new shares overnight, and existing investors can also buy starting anew shares.

So Microsoft’s ultimate tactic is a proxy fight—it can push an alternate board; all of Yahoo’s directors are up for reelection this year.

Yahoo deserves a board that can help it find a way lacking of its slump. Some current board members, hailing from Skyrider and Northwest Airlines, seem irrelevant. But those pitched by Microsoft, with experience at Grey Global Group and Adelphia, are arguably worse.

So while hostile in name, this effort will remain tame. Microsoft remains as incapable of a knockout pickle-herring as it has been all along. And that means a long and costly proxy battle, with at best a Pyrrhic victory for Microsoft. And the slump in Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s stocks will likely continue.

Winners: No one, really.

Losers: Everyone else.

Wild card: Big Yahoo investors like Capital Group decide they’re tired, and take Microsoft’s offer.

Scenario: Microsoft walks away.

What happens next: Yahoo’s stock drops back below $20, and Microsoft’s rallies above $30.

Then Yahoo turns its spin machine away from Microsoft and toward subsequent time growth. Yahoo has launched a few initiatives—improving its algorithms, opening its search to developers—that could potentially have a real impact. Its stock, usually volatile, could rise above $31 if it does everything right.

Microsoft has its own options. It could buy the AOL business that Time Warner is eager to exchange. It could buy or exchange stakes with News Corp., taking an interest in MySpace and Fox Interactive Media. It could buy Ask.com if Barry Diller once for all spins it off, or a neglected online-ad player in the manner of ValueClick.

Winners: Microsoft shareholders.

Losers: Yahoo shareholders, at least for several months.

Wild card: Microsoft bolts just so Yahoo’s stock can plunge, then it walks back in a few months with a lower offer. each intriguing bet, but if Yahoo does rotation around this year, Microsoft would regret taking such a risk.

Scenario: Microsoft sticks to its half-stock, half-cash bid.

What happens next: Assuming Microsoft doesn’t pay all cash, this isn’t likely unless Yahoo’s stock falls further.

Winners: Microsoft workers hoping for the cash Microsoft would need to pay for Yahoo.

Losers: Anyone who bought Yahoo upon Microsoft’s initial offer.

Wildcard: Yahoo’s prospects grow unexpectedly dimmer in the next few months.

You’re probably not going to live to see an electric 747 landing at O’Hare, but a growing number of aeronautical engineers believes electric airplanes are the to come of general aviation.

They may be right.

These engineers work at places equal NASA and say the battery and fuel enclosed space technology that is pushing automobiles beyond internal combustion will do the same for light aircraft.

One company leading the way is Pipistrel and its Taurus Electro, which uses a 30 kilowatt motor to take off then glides silently on air currents. It’s already received a twelve orders for the plane and plans to begin delivering them by year’s end.

"We have this technology," says Tine Tomazic, the company’s test pilot. "It’s here now."

Electric aircraft trace their history to 1884 and the La France, a dirigible powered by chromium-chloride batteries and 7.5-horsepower motor. It flew five miles in 23 minutes to become the first airship to take off and land from the same point.

Ninety-six years later, the solar-electric Gossamer Penguin made its first flight on Aug. 7, 1980. Solar Challenger flew 163 miles from Paris, France to Dover, England in 5 hours and 23 minutes about a year later.

Solar panels gave way to the first manned battery-electric flight on July 16, 2006, when students at Tokyo Institute of Technology built an airplane powered by means of 160 AA batteries. It flew for the most part 1,300 feet in 59 seconds. Last month, Boeing successfully tested a hybrid inflammable air fuel cell-lithium ion battery airplane. The plane flew for 20 minutes using power generated by fuel cells alone.

The Taurus Electra mates an electric motor to a glider through a 48-foot wingspan. The lithium-polymer battery pack weighs 101 pounds and provides plenty power to struggle up to 6,000 feet at a climb rate of 560 feet by means of minute. Pipistrel CEO Ivo Boscarol says the battery pack recharges about as fast as a small cavity phone and the Taurus Electro offers the same performance as the gasoline-powered Taurus. It will sell for around $100,000.

Pipistrel spent 1 million Euros (about $1.5 million at today’s exchange censure) developing the Taurus Electro; the European Union contributed about one-third that amount to the project.
 
The engineers, pilots and academics who attended the Electric Aircraft Symposium in San Francisco say advancements in battery technology, composite materials and electric motors will make relating to electricity airplanes like the Taurus Electro increasingly common. AC Propulsion, for example, is developing an 15 kilowatt motor that is 17 inches in diameter and weighs 18 pounds; it hopes to see the motors used in the Solar Impulse solar-electric airplane that will attempt to fly for 36 hours straight late next year.

Mark Moore, an engineer at NASA Langley Research Center, says electric motors offer many benefits over internal combustion, including zero emissions, greater efficiency and improved reliability. This allows "completely kinds of freedom of design" and "new and exciting possibilities."

There are still some bugs to be worked away, not the least of which is the limited range afforded by current battery technology. Greg Cole, an engineer and designer at Windward Performance, says even the best batteries don’t offer more than one hour of flight measure, except he expects that to double within five years. Hydrogen fuel cells are another possibility for extended range, although they remain fairly far from hand to hand the horizon.

Electric aircraft advocates say two things will spur innovation and help bring electric aircraft to general aviation. The first is a proposed "Green Prize" competition by dint of. the CAFE Foundation to reward the first airplane capable of 100 mph and the equivalent of 100 mpg. The second is the Experimental Aircraft Association’s request that the Federal Aviation Administration to allow the use of electric motors in ultralight and light sport aircraft.

“The EAA community is committed to this direction,” said engineer and lifetime EAA member Craig Willen. "Man can and will develop electric propulsion for flight."

Pictures and video of the Taurus Electro courtesy Pipistrel.

It’s 7 o’clock on a Saturday evening. In a new dance studio in Dubai, a technolike beat begins playing, accelerating as a high-pitched female voice sings in Hindi: "You are my world. Such is my love."

On the wooden floor, accountants, publicists, and other businesspeople dance with waive. They shuffle their feet, twist and writhe their hips, and flail their arms, taking cues for the Bollywood-style number from their dance teacher, Rinku, who until recently was working in Mumbai.

It’s low knowledge that the Indian film industry is big business—the 800 or so movies released in more than 25 Indian languages each year bring in $1.5 billion in revenue. Bollywood—technically Mumbai’s Hindi-language-films business—accounts for a third of releases and is the most visible and popular segment of the Indian movie industry. And as its worldwide audience, now estimated at 3.6 billion, grows, so does the strong dance style—which mixes folk, classical, and pop influences—it made popular.

Bollywood dance studios, which started popping up in India in the mid-1990s, are now spreading across the globe, to cater to some of the 22 million people of Indian origin living abroad. The lessons have been in demand among high-school and college students for years; now, adults are getting in on the craze.

Rinku teaches at the Bosco Caesar Dance Company, which was opened by a pair of eminent Bollywood choreographers, Bosco Martis and Caesar Gonsalves, in late 2007. Most of the person million foreign workers in Dubai are of South Asian origin, and the two men, who during the last 17 years have created dances for some of Bollywood’s biggest stars, initially thought they could use the school to scout for new, young talent. They were surprised at the enthusiasm they found for Bollywood dance classes among older professionals.

There are it being so that four B.C.D.C. studios in Dubai, offering a total of 14 sessions a week. (Lessons cost $14 each.) While the classes for younger students are more consistently full, adult sessions have also been very popular. "The fact that we’ve never had an empty session seeing that we started last year is proof that the adults are really keen," Rinku says.
Pummy Kalsi, an Indian-born international business manager at U.S.-based Polymer Technologies in Dubai, has taken about 10 lessons with his wife, Jyoti, despite his gruelling between nations travel schedule. "Being Indian, there’s a natural connection with Bollywood dancing, which has a greater variety of moves," says 50-year-old Kalsi, who never got beyond his first lesson in salsa. "It’s exciting to be able to dance to the original moves of a song at a disco or a party."

Says his wife, "I think the big appeal of Bollywood dancing really hit me when Pummy decided to forgo his golf session to put on his dancing shoes."

In a typical Bollywood film, the characters break into at least five complicated song-and-dance numbers. Anything less could jeopardize its box-office prospects. And while Western culture has always influenced the choreography—in the ’80s, Michael Jackson’s and Madonna’s music videos helped shape group dances in Bollywood films—that influence grew dramatically when the Indian economy began liberalizing in the early 1990s. With the arrival of players such as Rupert Murdoch and numerous cable channels, Bollywood choreographers integrated a range of MTV-style moves.

"Bollywood dance is just a style adapted for a mass audience," says Martis.

Songs from movies hold become a key component of Indian wedding festivities. "At a [typical] wedding, where there are numerous ceremonies over at least three to six days, the opportunities for dancing are abundance," says Rinku, who has privately taught sequences to be performed at nuptials by wedding parties and families.

Bosco Caesar wasn’t the first Bollywood dance studio to go international. Shiamak Davar, a National Film Award-winning choreographer, set up an institute for the performing arts in Mumbai in 1992. He calls his brand of dance Bollywood Jazz.

Davar has because that opened other studios around India, as well as in Canada, Australia, and Dubai. It took some time for middle-class Indians to accept that their children preferred Bollywood dancing completely classical forms. "It’s taken about 10 years for working professionals to join the movement," Davar said. While youthful people still make up the bulk of his clientele, there is "definitely a rise in the professionals joining."

The strong success of B.C.D.C. in Dubai prompted the founders to consider expansion. The choreographers will soon take their company to the U.S. and Britain. "We have the partnerships in place and are set to go to London and New York but are just waiting for more final logistic issues to get sorted out," Martis says. They hope to have at least one studio in each city by the end of 2008.

"Bollywood dancing is no longer an object of ridicule," Martis says. "It’s serious business and, believe me, there’s no part funny about it."

Perhaps the most searing object of worship of the housing crisis is that of the "walk off"—homeowners, crushed by the burden of a mortgage much greater than the precise signification of their protect, who just walk away and abandon their homes.

Break the mortgage contract. Put the keys in the mail. See ya!

This behavior has been highlighted onward 60 Minutes: A couple was shown ready to abandon their $350,000 two-bedroom home. It has also been noted by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. And on Capitol Hill, Senator Barack Obama cited walk aways in introducing legislation intended to tackle the larger housing crisis.

Yet even as the housing market slumps and the number of foreclosures rises, the idea that there has been a spike in walk aways across the nation may be more highly wrought than real.

Walk aways "are not going to be anywhere near as large as most people think," said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. "Lenders are not going to forget about you."

Homeowners whose homes are "underwater"—worth less than their mortgages—are in addition likely to be deed the properties hindmost to lenders rather than cutting off all ties and walking away, said Rick Sharga, vice president for marketing at RealtyTrac, a foreclosure-data provider.

"There is less of a blatant walk away and more of a hand-shake deal between the lenders and the homeowners," Sharga said. In these cases, known as deeds in lieu of foreclosure, the lender takes possession of the property and has no further recourse to go after lost funds. This arrangement, while still not ideal for banks, is less costly than going through the foreclosure performance.

Lenders do not keep track of the number of people who have abandoned their homes, so there is no clear data on how widespread the problem may be.

The motivation for abandoning a home happens when borrowers can no longer afford their mortgage payments and the value of their homes are underwater. By the end of June, Moody’s Economy.com estimates that 10.6 million homeowners will have zero or negative equity. If the mortgage lender is simply going to foreclose on the home anyway, the credit hit from a foreclosure is seen as life less painful than one from bankruptcy.

As a result, a number of websites be delivered of popped up in recent months to cash in on this growing number of underwater homeowners by offering services to assist in the walk-away process. According to the owners of these sites, in that place is no shortage of customers.  

"The business is great and we’re looking to expand. It’s been moderately beautiful phenomenal," said Phillip Bellante, co-founder of San Diego-based HomeFreeMe.com.

To be certainly, walking away is quite unneighborly. An abandoned hearthstone is at risk of vandalism and falling into decrepitude, meaning that the value of properties next to it will too take a hit. Not only is walking away selfish, it’s also damaging.  

And assuming that your credit score won’t experience severe harm from walking away is a naive view, based on the assumption that "lenders do not or will not modify their behavior," said Glenn Schultz, head of nonconforming mortgage research at Wachovia.

The space of the real estate meltdown all but guarantees that banks will protect themselves from acquirement burned in the future.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, have already started to work on limiting incentives for walking away. In March, Fannie Mae announced that foreclosed borrowers won’t be proficient to get a mortgage from the lender for five years, and Freddie Mac said that foreclosures would count against the potential borrowers for seven years.

Schultz also expects Fair Isaac, the firm that developed the FICO score used by mortgage lenders to gauge a borrower’s credit worthiness, to solemnly reconsider how it measures abandoning a mortgage into its score.

So who exactly are the mortgage walkers?

Homeowners that analysts believe are most likely to cut their losses are those who took out subprime loans on investment properties. That group accounted for 5.3 percent of subprime loans originated in 2006 and 2007, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. This translates into roughly a little under 250,000 homes. The speculators most likely to dump houses are also ones who saw the biggest price drops, bringing this at-risk number down even more.

As for the rapidly growing websites, they also have the advantage of starting from a low base. The actual number of clients they’ve reported is still tiny: HomeFreeMe has had about 80 clients since launching in February, and Carlsbad, California-based YouWalkAway.com has served ready 200.

For his part, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reportedly held a meeting with top lenders and servicers last week and urged them to come up with a plan to help underwater borrowers. (Paulson was also said to express his frustration over the lack of granular data on these borrowers.)

The lesson here is that as banks and federal officials work to reduce incentives for walking away, and as lenders become more inclined to negotiate with delinquent borrowers, there is a good chance that we’ve already seen the worst of the walk aways.

It’s not unusual for Miley Cyrus to grace headlines, but, for once, attention on the tween sensation has taken a negative turn: A revealing photo of the 15-year-old media beloved has become the center of a media storm.

This morning the controversial photo was featured prominently on the homepage of the Drudge Report and was the stand over against page of the New York Post with an outsized headline: Miley’s Shame.

The photograph, taken through Annie Liebovitz for Vanity Fair’s June edition, depicts Cyrus—teen role standard and heavenly body of Walt Disney’s mammoth Hannah Montana franchise—baring her back and clutching a satin blanket to her chest.

For Cyrus’s part, she’s been as contrite as can be since fans (and their parents) began leveling criticism over the racy shots.  

"I took part in a photo discharge that was supposed to be ‘artistic,’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed," Cyrus related in a statement. "I in no degree intended for any of this to happen, and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply from one place to another."

But Disney has been less willing to admit wrongdoing, instead passing off the blame to Vanity Fair.

"Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines," Disney said in a statement.

A Vanity Fair spokeswoman countered, "Miley’s parents and/or minders were on the set all day. Since the photo was taken digitally, they saw it [at] the shoot, and everyone thought it was a beautiful and natural portrait of Miley."

The Hannah Montana franchise is expected to be worth $1 billion by the time Cyrus hits 18, including not just the flagship TV show, but concerts, a movie, merchandising, CD sales, and a book deal.

Brooks Barnes in the New York Times doubts that in today’s world, a single photograph such as the one shot by Vanity Fair could do much (if anything) to harm such a powerful right.

But this is the second time in the past week that Disney’s No. 1 good girl has had to deal with contentious images. Last week, snaps of teen star with her bra visible under a tank top hit the internet, even prompting Bill O’Reilly to call for a "conference" to discuss the photos.

"Somebody needs to pull in the reins of this talented little gal before her career stampedes off into the sunset," says Elizabeth Snead in the Los Angeles Times’ Dish Rag blog.

Even in hard times, life, for a moment anyway, be able to still partake of sweet with a mint. The desire to capture a global market in cheap impulse purchases is helping drive a huge deal in the candy business.

Mars has reached a deal acquire the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. on account of $23 billion. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway would provide financing for Mars and get a stake. Mars will pay $80 cash for each share of common stock and Class B stock of  Wrigley. Mars will provide $11 billion of the funding for the buyout. Goldman Sachs is providing $5.7 billion in a debt facility, and Berkshire Hathaway is providing $4.4 billion in subordinated debt.

Berkshire has also agreed to buy a minority stake in the Wrigley business for $2.1 billion.

"Those of you who know me, know that I have been a big cool of Wrigley’s business model for many years, and I love their products," Buffett said. "When you think of a business that’s easy to understand—with favorable long-term economics, and able and trustworthy management—you reckon of Wrigley. "

The deal would cessation the independence of Wrigley, which has been controlled by the Wrigley family for four generations. (For a history, see a slidehow here.} 

The buyout team matches the world’s most famous, most media-savvy investor with perhaps the world’s most secretive consumer circle. Mars, maker of M&M’s and Snickers, is a tightly controlled family-owned company. Or as Fortune put it more than a decade agone: "Mars is an enigma inside a mystery tied up in a bright candy wrapper."

The deal could spark other mergers. Wrigley had sought a merger with Hershey, but that fell asunder. More recently, Hershey and Cadbury Schweppes, which has spun from its soda and beverage employment, have held discussions over a possible combination, according to various reports.

Douglas McIntyre of the blog 24/7 Wall St. says a deal for Wrigley looks expensive: "On a per-share basis, Wrigley would be going for almost $80. The company’s stock has not been that high, ever."

A combination of the couple candy kings could certainly find cost savings in raw materials, especially at a time when commodity prices are rising, and it would have greater global marketing and distribution heft.

Candy is an alluring market because while there are only a few global brands, it is relatively fragmented with no one having much more than a 10 percent global share.

Jilted by Chrysler, disappointed by General Motors, investor Kirk Kerkorian has now turned his loving gaze toward Ford Motor.

Kerkorian’s investment vehicle Tracinda Corp. has built a 4.7 percent stake in Ford and has announced its intention to buy as many similar to 20 million more shares, or nearly another 1 percent, at a premium of 13.3 percent in addition Ford’s closing stock price on Friday.

The announcement comes just days after Ford showed signs that it was turning a corner by announcing an unexpected profit for the first quarter. (For an interactive look at Ford’s bumpy road to profitability, click here.)

And indeed, unlike some past auto investments, the stake being taken by Kerkorian is an endorsement of the changes that Ford is making.

"Tracinda believes that Ford management under the leadership of chief executive officer Alan Mulally will continue to show significant improvements in its results going forward," the company said in a statement.

At a time when few believe that Detroit be able to save itself, Kerkorian’s faith in the industry, at the date of 90, is remarkable.

In 1995, he made each unsuccessful takeover bid for Chrysler. After Chrysler agreed to be acquired by Daimler-Benz in 1998, Kerkorian sued but lost in a Delaware strive to gain. When Daimler later put Chrylser up for sale be unconsumed year, Kerkorian tried to present a bid.

Between Chrysler engagements, Kerkorian became the biggest individual shareholder in General Motors in 2005. He successfully pressed G.M. for a seat on the board, but he was less successful in trying to persuade the automaker to enter into an allianace with Renault of France and Nissan Motor of Japan.

Will the third time be the charm?

The uproar over a Vanity Fair photo of 15-year-old Miley Cyrus raises a question: Was it simply the outcome of a pushy photographer and naïve star or is part of an effort to position the ‘tween sensation toward a more mature image?

Parents and fans were outraged when the racy photos of the pop star, beloved by young audiences for her role as Hannah Montana, came to light. Cyrus issued an immediate apology. Disney blamed Vanity Fair. The magazine said that Miley, her parents, and handlers had seen and signed off on the photos.

Still, Vanity Fair is notorious for boundary pushing when it comes to its starlet subjects. Rachel McAdams, for example, once walked off the cover shoot for Vanity Fair’s 2006 Hollywood Issue when Tom Ford asked her to pose nude.

Lindsay Lohan was the subdue of a January 2006 cover story (that featured its fair share of risqué snaps), and ended up denying admissions of bulimia and drug abuse the author claimed she had made.

"It’s very hard for anyone to dictate what’s going to happen at a shoot, especially with photographers like Annie Leibovitz," says Michael Pagnotta, president of Reach Media and the former media advisor to Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. "The situation probably wasn’t managed being of the class who proactively as it should have been before or during by her handlers."

But Howard Bragman, founder of media and public relations agency 15 Minutes, says the photo shoot was likely part of a besides calculated strategy to unroll Cyrus’s image.   

"The bigger question is, why is she doing Vanity Fair in the first place?"  Bragman says. "What is the course plan? If she’s there, it’s got to be for a thinking principle."

Miley Cyrus wouldn’t be the first example of a juvenile Disney star chomping at the bit to move away from not old audiences and family fare.  

Tired of her role in 7th Heaven, a 17-year-old Jessica Biel posed for Gear magazine apparently to distance herself from the family-oriented television show.  

Lindsay Lohan got her start in Disney movies such as Parent Trap and Freaky Friday. After breaking into older roles she too posed for suggestive photos in the June 2004 Vanity Fair, just near the front of her 18 natal day.

And in August Hillary Duff, former star of hit Disney show "Lizzie Maguire," appeared in her first risqué photo spread for Maxim at the age of 19.  

Bob Guccione, who was the publisher of Gear storehouse when Biel posed topless, believes that Cyrus’s handlers are eager to advance her toward mainstream Hollywood before her 15 minutes are up.

"Children’s market phenomena are like magnesium flares: they are brilliant for a short period of time then go away," says Guccione. "Smart marketers are planning for the eventual end."

Regardless of the intent of the controversial shots, it is widely believed that at 15, Cyrus is far to young to start affecting past her Disney days.   

"Slow is fast enough," Pagnotta says. "Higher profile media opportunities like these are very tempting, but she’s not 18, she’s 15, and that’s a big three years for herself and her fan base.  The gap between what the Vanity Fair congregation and the Hannah Montana audience expect is still much too spacious."

Bragman believes that Cyrus has only scratched the surface of the Hannah Montana brand, and that fracture away from her young audiences would destroy substantial revenue potential from a remarkably lucrative franchise.

For Disney, the controversy over the Vanity Fair photo points to the difficulties of having an enormous weal center in the volatile form of a 15-year-old girl.

Cyrus has even now had issues with photos in the past, most recently one circulating on the internet of her pulling down a tank be eminent to reveal a green lace bra.

"Disney and her reproach. will certainly survive this,"  Bragman says. "But I think Disney’s going to exercise a little more control from now on."