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Maybe that Twitter IPO is a good idea after all, now that the Pope is on board with the service.

Pope Benedict XVI tweeted for the first time today. "Dear Friends, I just launched News.va," he wrote. "Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus."

The News.va he wrote about is the new Vatican news site that includes articles, a calendar, radio and video from the Vatican's media services. The Pope used an Apple (AAPL) iPad today to launch the Web portal, which is in Italian and English, the site reports.

He sent his tweet from the Vatican News Twitter account, which only has about 14,200 followers (although that's up from 12,000 before the Pope's message). 

Remember Pepsi? For a while, it seemed like even PepsiCo (PEP) forgot about its signature product. And Pepsi slipped to No. 3 in the soda wars this spring behind Coke and Diet Coke -- a humiliating dive for the company.

So finally, PepsiCo is focusing again on Pepsi, unveiling its first new advertising campaign for the brand in three years, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The problem is that unlike Coca-Cola (KO), which is mainly still a beverage company, PepsiCo has diversified to become a food and beverage operation. Frito Lay is its biggest profit engine, and it juggles a diverse line of brands, including Doritos, Lays, Gatorade and Tropicana. 

An all-leather motorcycle? Harley-Davidson (HOG) has one, but it's not for sale.

The company has a vast archive of weird memorabilia and is putting some of it on display for a new exhibit in its Milwaukee museum. If you're looking for a summer road trip destination, Harley has it covered.

The new exhibit, called "Collection X: Weird, Wild Wonders of the Harley-Davidson Museum," include rare prototype bikes and a rocket engine for drone missiles in the Vietnam War, The Associated Press reports.

The museum also features a 1920s leather aviator face mask, a tiered "cake" from the early 1900s that displays racing trophies and handmade kidney belts for riders. There's a 1978 prototype of a liquid-cooled motocross bike and a three-wheeled cross between a motorcycle and a car. 

 

By Jeanine Poggi, TheStreet

 

Safety in retail stocks is a bit of an oxymoron.

 

The sector has been wrought with fear, as sales fell in May for the first time in 11 months, and companies face rising sourcing costs and shaky consumer sentiment.

 

But relatively speaking, the best place to ride out this summer's inflationary pressures is in luxury, according to analysts.

 

Goldman Sachs' (GS) U.S. luxury department store same-store sales index increased 13.2% in May, a significant acceleration for March-April trends of 7% to 8% and February's 11.8% increase.

 

By Ted Reed, TheStreet

 

When you really think about it, bankruptcy court has become a place where miracles happen.

 

It's a place where the Obama administration, in perhaps its greatest achievement, fixed GM (GM) and Chrysler.

 

Also in bankruptcy court, Delta (DAL)transformed itself from a bloated regional airline into an international airline that was, briefly, the world's biggest. Additionally, in a courtroom merger, US Airways (LCC) and America West, two small, weak, near-death airlines remade themselves as a financially fit survivor.

 

This brings us to the subject of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

 

We talk about it on the way up, but we rarely talk about it on the way down.

 

I am talking about the price of cotton, which has plummeted to become one of the worst of all the horribly performing commodities after a truly stellar run. On Monday, cotton was down the limit, yet did you hear anyone mention it? I didn't.

 

This retreat, something that was self-correcting on the basis of new plantings, has wiped out the big gains of the year -- the ones that threatened to crush Polo Ralph Lauren (RL), VF Corp. (VFC) and Phillips-Van Heusen (PVH) as well as Under Armour (UA), Jones Group (JNY) and Lululemon Athletica (LULU). Nobody seems to care, even as these companies have put through price increases that look like they have stuck, according to retailers.

 

These companies are going to have amazing margin expansion because they are not going to roll back those price increases. Why did we hear about margin contraction for months when cotton was on the way up but nothing as it has come down? And "come down" certainly is a dainty term for this crash.

 

 

Investors are feeling frazzled, which is completely understandable. The selling pressure seen over the past few months has resulted in one of deepest oversold conditions since the late 1990s. Serious stuff.

 

People who were just beginning to feel optimistic again got broadsided and sought the safety of U.S. Treasury bonds. But this is no refuge, as I've noted in recent blog posts. I expect the combination of higher inflation, re-accelerating economic growth and uncertainty regarding the fight over the U.S. debt ceiling to weigh on bond prices.

 

But there are consequences of this event even for people not invested in T-bonds: Long-term interest rates are headed higher. Here's why and how you can take advantage. 

 

By Stan Luxenberg, TheStreet

 

During the past 12 months, the consumer price index rose 3.6% and oil prices climbed. Seeking to benefit from rising prices, investors scrambled to buy Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS.

 

Inflation-protected funds, which invest in TIPS, returned 8% in the past year, outpacing the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index by nearly 3 percentage points, according to Morningstar.

 

Should you join the crowd and buy inflation funds? Perhaps. Many financial advisers argue that inflation funds make good choices for investors who seek to protect their purchasing power. But now some advisers have become lukewarm about TIPS, arguing that they have gotten a bit expensive. A vocal minority says investors should avoid TIPS altogether.

 

By Olivia Oran, TheStreet

 

The recent FTC probe into Google's (GOOG) dominance in the Web search market, which alleges Google has abused its market leading position by engaging in anti-competitive behavior, prompts the question: Is Google too big in search?

 

"Any company that gets nearly all of its money from one product is vulnerable," said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester. "The idea that they need to diversify their business is certainly valid."

 

If Google's position in the search market is threatened at all by the lawsuit, the pressure on the company to expand into new areas becomes intense. Google, which generates about 90% of its revenue from its core search business, is already diversifying into display and mobile ads.

 

But one area where Google has been unable make a name for itself is social networking, which is dominated largely by Facebook.

 

 

By Ted Reed, TheStreet

 

More and more, America's key transportation manufacturers like Boeing (BA) and GM (GM) are looking to China to add sizzle to their shares.

 

Boeing's recently released current market outlook, the leading annual forecast of air transportation growth, underscores China's importance. Boeing said 2010-30 air traffic within China will grow at 7.5%, compared with 7% in the Asia Pacific region, 4% in Europe and 2.3% in North America. In 2010, the Asia Pacific region was the world's biggest air travel market for the first time, Boeing said.

 

Meanwhile, a new report by Standard & Poor's notes that China auto sales reached 18 million in 2010, compared with 11.5 million in the U.S. China was easily the world's largest light-vehicle market.

 

By Don Dion, TheStreet

 

Here are five exchange-traded funds to watch this week.

 

1. PowerShares DB U.S. Dollar Index Bullish Fund (UUP)

 

The U.S. dollar received some welcome strength during the second half of last week as jittery market action drove investors to safety. Further aiding the greenback's ascension were comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who continued to write off the likelihood of additional quantitative easing.

 

QE2 is scheduled to end on June 30. The anticipation leading up to that date, combined with general market turmoil, could result in some interesting action from dollar-tracking UUP in the days ahead.