Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 9, 1993                   TAG: 9307090357
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IN BUSINESS

SAN FRANCISCO - Two Silicon Valley companies were charged this week under a new law making commercial counterfeiting a felony instead of a misdemeanor.

In announcing the indictments for software piracy, acting U.S. Attorney Michael Yamaguchi said they were the first under the tougher copyright law signed by President Bush in November.

Prosecutors said the defendants made thousands of copies of computer software belonging to Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash. - Associated Press

Business giants send kids to camp

In what has been described as the first such collaboration of its kind, Fortune 500 companies in five states will offer their employees' children something new: science and technology summer camps.

The summer program is an offshoot of an ongoing national child care collaborative initiated by Work Family Directions, a $40 million referral and resource provider in Brookline, Mass.; IBM; the Allstate division of Sears, Roebuck & Co.; Exxon Corp.; Eastman Kodak Co.; Johnson & Johnson; Travelers Corp.; Motorola Inc.; and NationsBank Corp.

The companies consider family issues among the most pressing concerns workers and their employers face. - Boston Globe

Rockwell buys space device from Russians

LOS ANGELES - Rockwell International Corp. has signed an $18 million agreement with a Russian firm in the first post-Cold War purchase of space hardware from a former Soviet republic, company officials said.

NPO Energia, a semi-private enterprise based in Moscow, will build a docking device to be installed aboard space shuttle Atlantis, which was built by Rockwell. Atlantis will use the device to dock with the Mir space station during a research mission scheduled for June 1995. - Los Angeles Daily News

Savings bond sales stage a turnaround

WASHINGTON - Sales of U.S. savings bonds in June edged 1.4 percent higher from a month earlier, breaking a string of four declines, the government said Thursday.

Sales totaled $798 million last month, up from $787 million in May but down 13.2 percent from $919 million a year ago. Sales reached $2.55 billion in January before falling to May's 18-month low, pushed down largely by the Treasury Department's decision to reduce the minimum guaranteed rate on the securities from 6 percent to 4 percent, effective March 1.

Savings bonds held for five years or longer earn the minimum guaranteed rate or the average of market-based rates for the period, whichever is greater. The latest market-based rate, set May 1, is 4.78 percent. It is effective until Nov. 1.

The value of savings bonds held at the end of June reached $166.5 billion, up from $145.4 billion a year ago. - Associated Press

Mortgage rates hit their lowest level yet

WASHINGTON - Interest rates on 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to a record low of 7.19 percent this week, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. said Thursday.

The latest average was down from 7.23 percent a week earlier. It was the fourth consecutive decline and was the lowest since the corporation began calculating a weekly average in April 1971.

On one-year adjustable rate mortgages, lenders were asking an average initial rate of 4.56 percent, down from 4.58 percent last week and the lowest since Freddie Mac began tracking ARM rates in 1984. - Associated Press