New-home market sales sizzling hot
Washington
Sales of new homes soared to an all-time high in June as the red-hot housing market kept sizzling.
The Commerce Department reported that single-family home sales jumped to a record annual pace of 1.37 million units in June, up 4 percent from May.
Meanwhile, orders for big-ticket manufactured goods posted a strong 1.4 percent increase last month and the Federal Reserve’s latest snapshot of business activity showed the economy was steaming ahead in June and early July.
Suit filed over game’s hidden sexual content
New York
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and its Rockstar Games subsidiary are being sued in federal court in Manhattan over hidden sexual content in their popular “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” video game.
The lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York on Wednesday is seeking class-action status for purchasers of the games. A Take-Two Interactive spokesman didn’t immediately have a comment on Wednesday.
The plaintiff, Florence Cohen, claims in her lawsuit that she purchased the game for her teenage grandson in or about late 2004 when the game was rated “M” for mature by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and was damaged when it came to light that sexually explicit scenes believed to be inaccessible by players were left in the game by developers.
A Dutch programmer cracked the code that locked players out of the explicit scenes and has distributed software on the Internet that allows players to access that content. The game’s rating has since been changed to adults only.
Wal-Mart sues former executive
Little Rock, Ark.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sued former vice chairman Tom Coughlin on Wednesday, seeking to void his multimillion-dollar retirement package amid company allegations that he misspent the company’s money before resigning from its board of directors.
The world’s largest retailer had previously disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it was terminating Coughlin retroactively for “gross misconduct.” The lawsuit, filed in Bentonville, home to Wal-Mart headquarters, seeks to formally sever the pact.
Coughlin was Wal-Mart’s second-in-command before his retirement last year and left his board seat when the company disclosed in March that it was handing documents over to the Justice Department showing that $500,000 had been misspent. A federal grand jury is now investigating.
McDonald’s signs deal with DreamWorks
Los Angeles
Ronald McDonald is ditching Mickey Mouse for Shrek.
McDonald’s Corp. said Wednesday it has signed a two-year, nonexclusive deal to promote DreamWorks Animation SKG films beginning with the release of “Shrek 3” in 2007.
McDonald’s previously said it wanted to try a new approach to marketing partnerships when its exclusive 10-year deal with The Walt Disney Co. expires next year.
“Ten years is a very long time,” said Larry Light, global chief marketing officer at McDonald’s. “The world changes more than once in 10 years. I don’t anticipate that we’ll be making 10-year deals in the future with anybody.”
Disney wasn’t immediately available to comment.
Financial terms of the new agreement were not released. It also ends DreamWorks’ promotional arrangement with Burger King.
Attorney says ‘Sims 2’ should be re-rated
San Jose, Calif.
Fresh from the fallout over some sex scenes hidden in a violent video game, an anti-game crusader is pressuring Electronic Arts to take action against those who modify another game, “The Sims 2,” so that it can display naked characters.
Jack Thompson, a Florida attorney who has tangled often with the makers of video games, has written a letter to EA and a number of politicians alleging that teen-rated “The Sims 2” game should be the next on the list to be re-rated as an “adults only” game. That’s because the game can be altered, or “modded,” to show naked characters. Normally, the game blurs, or pixelates, the images of characters when they change their clothes, take showers or go to the bathroom in the simulation of ordinary life.
Jeff Brown, spokesman for EA, said, “Reasonable people recognize what mods are. A consumer who chooses to use a mod does so without any kind of agreement with the company. There is no nudity. There is nothing improper or vulgar in ‘The Sims 2.’ “
Thompson alleges that the mod for making the characters naked is available for downloading over the Internet and that EA is doing nothing to curtail the availability of the mod.
Citigroup chairman says he’ll stay on
New York
Sanford “Sandy” Weill said Wednesday that he intends to stay on as chairman of Citigroup Inc. until the financial institution’s annual meeting next April.
The announcement, in a note to Citigroup staffers, ended days of speculation that Weill would leave to start his own hedge fund.
Weill, 72, was the main architect of Citigroup, the nation’s largest financial institution with $1.55 trillion in assets. In 2003, Weill handed over day-to-day management functions to Chief Executive Officer Charles Prince..
Test version of new Windows Vista released
Redmond, Wash.
Microsoft Corp. released the first major test version of the Windows Vista operating system on Wednesday, giving a limited number of programmers and technology professionals the opportunity to test drive the program.
The “Beta 1” of Windows Vista was being delivered to more than 10,000 developers and others who will test the software and provide feedback. It’s the successor to Windows XP, which launched in October 2001.
The beta version does not have all the features that will be in the final product scheduled to hit store shelves in late 2006. Rather, it focuses on fundamentals such as security and overall manageability.
It includes new user account protection so that users are given only the privileges required to do their work. This mirrors a similar security scheme used by Apple Computer Inc.’s Mac OS X and the Linux operating system.