Take-Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for PS2 was again the top-rented videogame in the U.S., according to Rentrak’s preliminary Home Video Essentials data. Rentrak said the title, in its 13th week, earned an additional $452,418 for a total of $11.1 million to date. Need for Speed Underground 2 for PS2 from Electronic Arts (EA), in its 10th week, was again #2, earning an additional $237,615, for $3.52 million. EA had 2 other SKUs in the top 10: The Xbox version of Need at #5 (down one, $142,537 in the week, $2.18 million to date) and NFL Street 2 for PS2 at #7 again in its 5th week ($121,289 and $525,330). The only other Xbox game in the top 10 was Microsoft’s Halo 2 at #4 (down one in its 11th week, $164,275 and $4.54 million). Activision had 2 games in the top 10, both for PS2: Call of Duty: Finest Hour at #6 (down one in its 10th week, $135,634 and $1.93 million) and Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 at #9 in its 16th week ($98,624 and $3.21 million). Rounding out the top 10 were one PS2 title each from LucasArts Entertainment, THQ and Atari: Respectively, Mercenaries at #3 (up 3 in its 2nd week, $207,438 and $348,108), WWE Smackdown! Vs. Raw at #8 (up 2 in its 12th week, $106,557 and $2.15 million) and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 at #10 in its 9th week ($98,464 and $1.56 million).

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued the final results of its antidumping (AD) duty administrative review of stainless steel sheet and strip in coils from Mexico for the period of July 1, 2002 through June 30, 2003.

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued its final results of the expedited countervailing (CV) duty review for hard red spring wheat from Canada for the period of August 1, 2001 through July 31, 2002.

Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment’s thriller The Forgotten was the #1-rented DVD in the U.S. for the week ended Jan. 23, according to Rentrak’s preliminary Home Video Essentials data. Rentrak said the title earned $7.39 million. Touchstone Disney’s thriller The Village - - last week’s #1 DVD -- dropped to #5, earning an additional $5.96 million, for $14.76 million to date. Also new in the top 10 were Universal Home Video’s Friday Night Lights at #2 ($7.30 million), New Line Home Entertainment’s Cellular at #4 ($6.12 million) and Warner Home Video’s Catwoman at #6 ($5.80 million).

According to a U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel (USA-ITA) Textile Development Memo, on January 25, 2005, the government sent to the Court of International Trade (CIT) a notice stating its intention to file an appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) challenging the CIT"s preliminary injunction enjoining the Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements (CITA) from taking further action on threat-based China safeguard petitions. (See ITT's Online Archives or 01/04/05 news, 05010405, for BP summary on the CIT injunction.)(USA-ITA TDM, dated 01/26/05, www.usaita.com.)

Fourth-quarter sales in Corning’s Display Technologies sector, which includes LCD glass, rose 5% from the 3rd quarter to $311 million on a more favorable yen-dollar exchange rate, stable pricing and 2% volume growth, CEO James Houghton told analysts in a conference call Wed. Earnings in the quarter from the Samsung Corning Precision Glass (SCPG) joint venture rose to $73 million, from $68 million in the 3rd quarter, he said. Net income in the display segment rose 6% to $151 million. For the year, display operations posted record sales exceeding $1.1 billion, an increase of 86% from 2003 sales, Houghton said. Citing preliminary estimates gleaned from “an aggregate” of industry sources, Houghton said there was very strong 4th-quarter demand in factory shipments of notebook PCs, LCD PC monitors and LCD TVs. For the year, LCD TV shipments more than doubled to 9.2 million, and LCD TV penetration grew to 5% at the end of 2004 from 3% at the end of 2003, he said. Excess industry inventory “was by and large digested by the end of the year,” Houghton said. He attributed the inventory improvement to aggressive pricing declines by LCD panel makers and retailers. For example, he said, average panel prices for 17” LCD monitors fell by about $60 at the factory level in Aug.-Oct., and similar price reductions followed suit at retail in Oct.-Dec. Of Corning’s overall LCD glass product mix at the end of 2004, “Gen-5” and larger glass accounted for almost 65% of the company’s total “family” volume, including that of SCPG, Houghton said. That proportion was up significantly from 40% at the start of 2004, he said. A small portion of the 2004 volume was in “Gen-7” glass, he said. Corning announced recently that SCPG has begun shipping “significant quantities” of Gen-7 glass, Houghton said.

Tiger Telematics’s Gizmondo Europe division picked MapInfo’s Envinsa location services platform for the Gizmondo handheld entertainment device. It said the global location-based services (LBS) provided for Gizmondo would include mapping, routing and geocoding. Envinsa will also be used to provide data for location-based games including the previously announced Colors. And the platform will be used to give “closest participating store” information for users opting into the new added- value Smart Adds system to be launched for the device this year, Gizmondo Europe said. Envinsa is available now for key markets globally and will be used to support Gizmondo service rollouts first in the U.K., Germany, France, Spain and Italy, with other markets -- including the U.S. and Australia -- to follow at an unspecified date. MapInfo CEO Mark Cattini said Envinsa was now “being deployed in organizations throughout the world to locate new customers, better service existing customers and improve operational efficiency across the entire organization.” Gizmondo Managing Dir. Carl Freer said the LBS functionality was “just one of the areas that sets us apart” from other handheld entertainment devices. Gizmondo started shipping in the U.K. and the company said launches in N. America and continental Europe will follow this spring. Offering what may be the first optimistic forecast from the U.S. investment community, TerraNova analyst Boris Markovich said in a research report that “if the company can ship over 3 million units in its first year, we estimate it could garner as much as 10% of the handheld gaming market, making it the 3rd serious [new] mobile platform development option in the market,” along with the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). Markovich noted that Gizmondo Europe recently said it had signed 3 deals that together should bring more than one million units of the handheld to 5 countries in the Asia- Pacific region. He said that with the launch of the Gizmondo in Europe in Feb. and the U.S. in April, “the company already has almost 2 million units planned for its first year.” He said that, “in earlier printed reports, the company has gone on record with some preliminary plans for up to 3.5 million units in the first year.”

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has published in the January 25, 2005 Federal Register its antidumping (AD) duty order on certain crepe paper products from China. The ITA also states that the International Trade Commission (ITC) has made a final negative critical circumstances determination (thereby reversing the ITA's preliminary affirmative critical circumstances determination).

The lack of common international standards is hampering the use of electronic invoices, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said this week. E-invoicing can create substantial savings for businesses, aid the transition to paperless commerce, and help fight corruption, UNECE said. Despite laws and regulations to encourage e-invoice use, however, more than 95% of U.S. and European bills are still paper, it said. To address the lack of standards for layout and data elements, legal requirements and the XML message, the UN Centre for Trade Facilitation & Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) launched a project to review its rules on invoicing for international trade and adapt them to the business and regulatory requirements of e-invoicing. Contributors to the project include the International Air Transport Assn., Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and the European Committee for Standardization, UNECE said. Preliminary results could be out in late June.

Sprint and Nextel said they had made Hart-Scott- Rodino filings with the FTC and Dept. of Justice, preliminary to work by both agencies on the pending merger.