Is Richard Branson a green hypocrite — or just a bad businessman?

Ireland's Sunday Business Post savages Virgin chief Richard Branson for the $3 billion pledge he made two years ago to invest all the profits from his air and rail-transport businesses into cleantech. The Post notes that Branson's green technology of choice, biofuels, has fallen out of favor, as scientists and politicians debate whether we should be fueling our tanks or feeding people with the source materials for vegetable-derived energy. The Post, in other words, is accusing an entrepreneur of being an entrepreneur. Hardly stinging. If one really wanted to bring Branson down, one might have pointed out how the normally savvy media spinner just highlighted the food-vs.-energy debate when, for a photo op at a test flight powered by coconut and palm oil, he drank some of the fuel out of a coconut. (Photo by Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images)

Back to our regularly scheduled Xeni Space Pr0n

Save your blog drama for Obama. Boing Boing starship trooper Xeni Jardin posted close-up photos of fun-loving Virgin billionaire Richard Branson's new space tourism plane, Eve, from yesterday's big debut event. More »

Helio-Virgin deal might involve multibillion-dollar Sprint investment

Helio backer SK Telecom, the Korean wireless giant, is in negotiations to purchase Virgin Mobile USA. The plan: combine the two properties and then invest enough in Sprint Nextel to get all three companies working together. Sprint already runs the network over which Helio and Virgin run their cell-phone services. Complicating the deal: T-Mobile's rumored interest in buying Sprint. "Part of something is better than all of nothing," a source close to Helio tells us. More »

While Wikipedia burns, Jimmy Wales and women in bikinis save "world on fire"

We were right: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales really did skip off to Richard Branson's Caribbean getaway in early March, even as a scandal unfolded over his governance of the world's most comprehensive list of gay animals. The powwow on Necker Island, which included Google's Larry Page, Tesla Motors chairman Elon Musk, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and VC Vinod Khosla, discussed global warming. Branson asked: "Is the world on fire?" More »

Virgin Mobile IPO fails to pop

Some IPOs — like Google and VMWare—are impressive from the start. Others — like Vonage, which has fallen 85 percent since going public — fall flat. Virgin Mobile, with its cherry brand name and backers, should have had a sparkling debut. And yet it didn't. More »

Sir Richard Branson has dumped his Virigin Megastores — those emporia of old-school CDs — into the lap of Zavvi Entertainment Group. Stores in the United Kingdom will be rebranded "Zavvi" as early as November. Not even the ringle can keep Branson in the music retail business. [Gamesindustry]