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Instead of eyeing up an undervalued company or distressed asset, David Rubenstein snapped up a 13th century copy of Magna Carta – the only one in private hands – for more than £10m.

Perry Kucinich, 52, was found face down by another brother, Larry, at about 9 a.m., said Powell Caesar, a spokesman for the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s office.

There were no signs of foul play, Caesar said. An autopsy was being performed Wednesday.

Larry Kucinich had taken his brother shopping Tuesday and then took him home but couldn’t get an answer when he tried calling him Wednesday, Caesar said. He told officers his brother had a history of mental illness and had stopped taking his medication, according to a police report.

Dennis Kucinich took a flight from Washington to Cleveland after learning of the death, said his office press secretary, Natalie Laber.

“He was very close to Perry and he’s taking this very hard,” Laber said.

Kucinich, 61, is a six-term congressman from Ohio who is making his second bid for his party’s nomination; he sought the nod in 2004. He registers in low single digits in polls and has raised little money for what is considered another long-shot run. Kucinich, who is known for his liberal views, has attracted a devoted following.

In a statement, Kucinich said his brother was a talented artist who recently had some of his works on display at a local art gallery.

“He had extraordinary insights. Although he struggled with mental illness, with the help of his family and friends, he was able to lead a productive life,” Dennis Kucinich said.

ThinkFilm opens the pic, which is on the Oscar shortlist of 15 docs, on Jan. 11.

The image in question is a news photo of two U.S. soldiers walking away from the camera with a hooded detainee between them.

An MPAA spokesman said: “We treat all films the same. Ads will be seen by all audiences, including children. If the advertising is not suitable for all audiences it will not be approved by the advertising administration.”

According to ThinkFilm distribution prexy Mark Urman, the reason given by the Motion Picture Assn. of America for rejecting the poster is the image of the hood, which the MPAA deemed unacceptable in the context of such horror films as “Saw” and “Hostel.” “To think that this is not apples and oranges is outrageous,” he said. “The change renders the art illogical, without any power or meaning.”

The MPAA also rejected the one-sheet for Roadside Attractions’ 2006 film “The Road to Guantanamo,” which featured a hooded prisoner hanging from his handcuffed wrists. At the time, according to Howard Cohen, co-president of Roadside Attractions, the reason given was that the burlap bag over the prisoner’s head depicted torture, which was not appropriate for children to see.

“Not permitting us to use an image of a hooded man that comes from a documentary photograph is censorship, pure and simple,” said producer, writer and director Gibney. “Intentional or not, the MPAA’s disapproval of the poster is a political act, undermining legitimate criticism of the Bush administration. I agree that the image is offensive; it’s also real.”

ThinkFilm plans to appeal the ruling, although Urman admitted that he “doesn’t know what that entails. I’ve only appealed ratings before.”

If ThinkFilm ignores the MPAA and uses materials that have not been approved, it runs the risk of having the rating revoked, which is what happened earlier this year to “Captivity.”

The “Taxi” ad art is actually an amalgam of two pictures. The first, taken by Corbis photographer Shaun Schwarz, features the hooded prisoner and one soldier. Another military figure was added on the left. Ironically, the original Schwarz photo was censored by the military, which erased his camera’s memory. The photographer eventually retrieved the image from his hard drive.

The company also said China’s government-controlled investment vehicle has invested $5 billion to help replenish its capital.

China Investment Corp., which also owns a stake in private-equity firm Blackstone Group LP, will control no more than 9.9 percent of Morgan Stanley once its investment converts to common shares in 2010.

“The writedown Morgan Stanley took this quarter is deeply disappointing — to me, to our colleagues, to our board and to our shareholders,” said Chairman and Chief Executive John Mack. “Ultimately, accountability for our results rests with me, and I believe in pay for performance, so I’ve told our compensation committee that I will not accept a bonus for 2007.”

The company, which has raised $150 million and built a 200,000-square-foot factory here, is developing a new manufacturing process that “prints” photovoltaic material on aluminum backing, a process the company says will reduce the manufacturing cost of the basic photovoltaic module by more than 80 percent.

Nanosolar, which recently hired a top manufacturing executive from I.B.M., said that it had orders for its first 18 months of manufacturing capacity. The photovoltaic panels will be made in Silicon Valley and in a second plant in Germany.

While many photovoltaic start-up companies are concentrating on increasing the efficiency with which their systems convert sunlight, Nanosolar has focused on lowering the manufacturing cost. Its process is akin to a large printing press, rather than the usual semiconductor manufacturing techniques that deposit thin films on silicon wafers.

Nanosolar’s founder and chief executive, Martin Roscheisen, claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. That is the price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal.

“With a $1-per-watt panel,” he said, “it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.”

According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said.

The first Nanosolar panels are destined for a one-megawatt solar plant to be installed in Germany on a former landfill owned by a waste management company. The plant, being developed by Beck Energy, is expected to initially supply electrical power for about 400 homes.

By a 5-to-0 vote, the Fed approved a plan that would tighten provisions meant to protect borrowers and apply them to a far larger share of home loans – whether from banks, mortgage companies or other lenders – than under current regulations.

The proposed rules underscore the more assertive role the Fed is now prepared to take in regulating lending, a big shift from the central bank’s approach in the past. In general, the rules are meant to deter unscrupulous lenders from persuading people that they can afford loans that ought to be out of their reach. By extension, the rules are also intended to keep would-be buyers from deceiving themselves about the debt burdens they can shoulder.

“Our goal is to promote responsible mortgage lending, for the benefit of individual consumers and the economy,” said the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke.

World health experts now agree a pandemic is inevitable and will spread rapidly, wiping out up to 7.4 million people globally and triggering rapid food shortages.

Australia is expected to be among the first countries hit because of its proximity to Asia and high levels of international traffic.

But Woolworths and Coles, the nation’s two major supermarket chains, will run out of stock within two to four weeks without a supply chain – or even faster if shoppers panic.

This has prompted a team of leading nutritionists and dietitians from the University of Sydney to compile “food lifeboat” guidelines to cover people’s nutritional needs for at least 10 weeks.

Their advice – published in the Medical Journal of Australia – would allow citizens to stay inside their homes and avoid contact with infected people until a vaccine becomes available.

The lifeboat includes affordable long-life staples such as rice, biscuits, milk powder, Vegemite, canned tuna, chocolate, lentils, Milo and Weet-Bix.

Jennie Brand-Miller, professor of human nutrition at the University of Sydney and co-leader of the study, believes it is common sense to stockpile food before a pandemic strikes.

“It’s really not a question of if: it’s a question of when,” she said.

“We are going to have an epidemic. Chances are it will be avian flu (bird flu) but it might be something else.

“It will spread very rapidly just like flu does normally because it’s a highly contagious organism, except this will be a really lethal one. What we suffer from is a false sense of security that someone else is looking after all this.”

While there are emergency plans within governments, hospitals and the food industry, individuals will still need to take personal precautions in a disaster, she said.

The most important message for the Australian public is to avoid going out in public when the pandemic hits, the research found.

“We know that once it becomes a highly transmissable virus it will probably fly around the world within three weeks,” Prof Brand-Miller said.

The changes created “a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food,” particularly in the developing world, said Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The agency’s food price index rose by more than 40 percent this year, compared with 9 percent the year before – a rate that was already unacceptable, he said. New figures show that the total cost of foodstuffs imported by the neediest countries rose 25 percent, to $107 million, in the last year.

At the same time, reserves of cereals are severely depleted, FAO records show. World wheat stores declined 11 percent this year, to the lowest level since 1980. That corresponds to 12 weeks of the world’s total consumption – much less than the average of 18 weeks consumption in storage during the period 2000-2005. There are only 8 weeks of corn left, down from 11 weeks in the earlier period.

Prices of wheat and oilseeds are at record highs, Diouf said Monday. Wheat prices have risen by $130 per ton, or 52 percent, since a year ago. U.S. wheat futures broke $10 a bushel for the first time Monday, the agricultural equivalent of $100 a barrel oil.

Diouf blamed a confluence of recent supply and demand factors for the crisis, and he predicted that those factors were here to stay. On the supply side, these include the early effects of global warming, which has decreased crop yields in some crucial places, and a shift away from farming for human consumption toward crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing with the world population, and more is diverted to feed cattle as the population of upwardly mobile meat-eaters grows.

“We’re concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world’s hungry,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. She said that her agency’s food procurement costs had gone up 50 percent in the past 5 years and that some poor people are being “priced out of the food market.”

To make matters worse, high oil prices have doubled shipping costs in the past year, putting enormous stress on poor nations that need to import food as well as the humanitarian agencies that provide it.

The ECB’s action has succeeded in cutting short-term lending rates, although they are still above the 4% ECB refinancing rate..

In Frankfurt on Tuesday morning the two-week Euribor average of interbank unsecured lending rates did fall to 4.452%, compared to rates for two-week euro money market rate of 4.949% for interbank borrowing which has been in place over the past few days.

The amount banks charge each other for two-week loans in euros dropped a record 50 basis points to 4.45 percent, the European Banking Federation said today. The rate had soared 83 basis points in the past two weeks as banks hoarded cash in anticipation of a squeeze on credit through the year-end.

“These are strong-arm tactics intended to show the market they’re seriously committed to breaking the deadlock,” said Marc Ostwald, a fixed-income strategist at Insinger De Beaufort SA in London. “The ECB is helping to bankroll banks out of a problem that they themselves created.”

The decline is the first sign attempts by policy makers to revive interbank lending are succeeding since the Federal Reserve last week announced the biggest coordinated central bank action since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. More than $70 billion of losses on securities linked to U.S. subprime- mortgages have left banks reluctant to lend to each other.

The ECB loaned a record 348.6 billion euros ($501.5 billion) for two weeks at 4.21 percent today, almost 170 billion euros more than it estimated was needed. Bids were received from 390 banks, ranging from 4 percent to 4.45 percent. The central bank first offered extra cash on Aug. 9, when it lent 95 billion euros of emergency funds. Banks also borrowed about 2.4 billion euros at 5 percent yesterday, the most since Sept. 26, the ECB said.