UPI NewsTrack Business

First-time homebuyers driving recovery

CHICAGO, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- First-time homebuyers purchased 47 percent of the homes sold in the past year, the National Association of Realtors said Friday.

That's up from 41 percent in the previous year and 36 percent in 2006, the group said.

Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist, said the federal tax credit for first-time buyers appears to be pushing the housing market toward recovery.

"Given the success of the first-time buyer tax credit to date, and the need for qualified buyers to continue to absorb inventory that will include additional foreclosures over the coming year, we are hopeful about the impact of the expanded tax credit because it will stabilize home prices," he said. "In fact, the credit is working better than first projected."

NAR predicted 2.3 million to 2.4 million sales to first-time homebuyers in 2009.

The group's affordability index, measuring house prices against incomes, is expected to hit a record high in 2010, then head down as prices go up.

"We've seen a steady downtrend in housing inventory for well over a year and home prices appears to be in the early stages of stabilizing," Yun said.

With expansion of the tax credit to additional buyers through the middle of next year, and barring major unforeseen events impacting the economy, home prices should rise

3 percent to 5 percent in 2010, with wide geographical differences, Yun said.

-0-

New terms reached in Google book suit

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- An amended settlement between Google and U.S. publishers would allow others to compete with its planned digital library of out-of-print books, analysts say.

The original settlement struck between the Internet giant and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers drew government criticism that it didn't do enough to protect the copyrights of authors and their heirs to proper compensation. But a new settlement filed Friday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco may change that, The New York Times reported.

The settlement is being hammered out to resolve a 2005 lawsuit over Google's plans to digitize out-of-print books from major American libraries.

The newspaper said the revisions mostly address "orphan" works whose rights holders are unknown or can't be found. The proposal would set up a compensation system designed to make it easier for companies other than Google to offer their own digitized versions of older library books. The Times said under the deal, a provision criticized as ensuring that no other company got a better deal with authors and publishers than Google's was dropped.

Google's catalog would also reportedly be limited to books published in the United States, Britain, Australia or Canada.

-0-

4 jailed in online bank customer scam

LONDON, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- Four men have been jailed by a British court after admitting to an Internet fraud in which nearly $1 million was stolen from NatWest bank customers.

A judge at London's Southwark Crown Court Friday handed down sentences of up to 4 1/2 years to the four gang members, one of whose leaders was identified as Uzbekistan national Azamat Rahmanov, The Herald reported.

Rahmanov pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud and transferring criminal property. He faces deportation after his jail term. Also pleading guilty to the same charges was Portuguese national Recardo Pereira, 36, who admitted to looking after bank accounts that received money automatically transferred a computer virus implanted NatWest customers' computers, the newspaper said.

Two others, including a former Angolan political refugee, were also jailed after admitting involvement.

Prosecutors said bank customers were fooled by authentic-looking screen pages appearing with NatWest's logo, in which victims were encouraged to type in their passwords, pin codes and telephone numbers. The Herald the information was transmitted to servers in Ukraine and customers' accounts were drained without their knowledge.

NatWest's parent company, the Royal Bank of Scotland, has recouped about a quarter of the stolen money, the newspaper said.

-0-

Shrimpers, processors do battle

DULAC, La., Nov. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. shrimpers and their processors are sniping at each other as the industry faces growing pressures, analysts say.

Louisiana shrimpers allege processors engage in price-fixing and mislabel imported shrimp as "domestic." Processors dismiss the claims and say they are dealing with a significant drop in demand, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Annual shrimp supply has outstripped demand by as much as 600 million pounds per year, the Journal quoted U.S. Department of Commerce data as showing, with roughly a six-month supply of shrimp now in cold storage -- a figure well above normal.

The number of shrimpers in Louisiana has shrunk to about 4,700 from as many as 16,500 in 1989 as imports have risen, the newspaper reported. It said angry shrimpers have picketed processing plants, called a strike and have marched on the state Capitol in Baton Rouge demanding protection from the government.

Re-labeling imported shrimp as domestic, which is generally considered better-tasting, "is probably happening, though I don't have proof," Danny Babin, a shrimp processor from Houma, La., who represents processors on a state task force aimed at improving the shrimp industry, told the Journal.