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• Wal-Mart abandons online movie service
  Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has closed an online movie download service it launched less than a year ago. The retreat for Wal-Mart, which accounts for about 40 percent of all DVD sales, follows the company's 2005 decision to abandoned efforts to build an online DVD rental service. The world's largest retailer instead turned its rental service over to Netflix Inc. Wal-Mart still operates a music download service and continues to sell CDs and DVDs at retail stores and over the Internet for shipping by mail.
• Economy fears, Bhutto assassination deflate stocks
  Wall Street skidded Thursday after the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and after the Commerce Department's durable goods orders exacerbated concerns about the U.S. economy. The major indexes each lost well over 1 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average fell 192 points. Bhutto's assassination raised the possibility of increasing political unrest abroad, always an unsettling prospect for investors who have already been contending with domestic economic concerns for months. Oil prices rose following the news, and that unwelcome inflationary trend only added to Wall Street's uneasiness. Meanwhile, the government said orders for durable goods -- big-ticket items from commercial jetliners to home appliances -- rose by just 0.1 percent last month. Economists had been looking for a rise of 2.2 percent. Still, November saw the first rise in durable goods orders in the last four months.
• DeKalb Medical hiring 125 new employees
  A $21 million expansion at DeKalb Medical is prompting the hospital to hire 125 workers, including 72 registered nurses. DeKalb Medical is currently expanding and renovating its three campuses, North Decatur, Lithonia and downtown Decatur. New facilities at the three locations will include six additional labor and delivery rooms as well as a nursery at North Decatur, 13 patient rooms at the Hillandale campus in Lithonia and long-term care rooms in the downtown Decatur location. DeKalb Medical also has partnered with radiation oncologist Dale McCord for construction of a new $5.4 million cancer treatment center at the Lithonia location. Now under construction, the new cancer center will be open for patients late next year or in early 2009, according to medical center spokesman Mike Tu.
• Wachovia chief foresees another tough year
  As a brutal year in the financial services industry comes to a close, Ken Thompson says he believes Wachovia Corp. is prepared to weather the ongoing storm in the nation's housing and credit markets. But the chief executive of the nation's fourth-largest bank admits his industry is in for another rough year. "I'm expecting a slower-growth year than we've experienced anytime over the last five or six years," Thompson said Thursday in an interview. "We're still in the midst of a housing correction, which is impacting the real economy, but I do not expect a recession."
• Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday's old interior decor
  Atlanta locations of casual dining chain Ruby Tuesday are ditching the kitsch in favor of an updated, contemporary look. The Maryville, Tenn.-based company, which has 35 restaurants in metro Atlanta, has launched a nationwide makeover of its more than 600 locations that will include the retirement of its signature decor — Tiffany-style lamps, polished brass and walls of curios — for a design that includes commissioned paintings, upholstered seats and earth-tone color schemes. Thirty of the metro Atlanta stores have been remodeled, with the remaining locations to be completed soon, said Mike Roder, vice president of operations for the company.
• Apple reportedly plans online movie rental service
  Apple Inc. is preparing to announce next month the long-rumored launch of a movie rental service through its online iTunes Store, as well as a groundbreaking licensing deal of its anti-piracy technology — moves that could dramatically boost the appeal of digital movie distribution, a newspaper reported Thursday. News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox is one of the first studios that has agreed to make its films available for rent digitally through iTunes, according to a Financial Times report that cited unnamed sources. Apple also has agreed to license for the first time its copy-protection platform called FairPlay so the technology would be built into Fox DVD releases, allowing users to easily transfer the movies from the disc to a computer or an iPod for playback.
• Drop in housing prices hits metro Atlanta
  Home prices dropped at a record pace this fall, with even Atlanta joining the ranks of losers over the past year, according to a report issued Wednesday. Miami surpassed Tampa as the big city where values were falling fastest in October. But the news was gloomy across the board, even in formerly healthy markets, according to the respected S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report. "No matter how you look at these data, it is obvious that the current state of the single-family housing market remains grim," Robert Shiller, one of the economists who developed the home price report, said in a statement.
• Feds' favoritism probe looks at ATL entrepreneur
  Federal investigators are looking into how Atlanta entrepreneur Michael R. Hollis landed a series of hefty government contracts to run the Virgin Islands Housing Authority without any known experience in public housing. The inquiry into Hollis is part of a larger investigation into whether U.S. Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson has steered contracts to friends in violation of federal law prohibiting political favoritism. Hollis is known around Atlanta as the wunderkind who started the now-defunct airline Air Atlanta at 29 before owning an AM radio station and then 32 gas stations. As a trustee on the board of Grady Memorial Hospital, he is now trying to raise money to save the financially ailing hospital where he was born.
• Got a Wal-Mart gift card? Using it may be difficult
  Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, said Wednesday it is having problems processing gift cards. In a statement, Wal-Mart said once it discovered the problem, it investigated and found that a "third-party verifier's systems had an inadvertent processing error." The retailer said the error caused delays in gift card verifications. "We are working with the supplier to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and we apologize for the inconvenience to our customers," the store said in the statement.
• Hotel magnate Hilton to leave bulk of fortune to charity
  Hotel magnate Barron Hilton will give $2.3 billion, the bulk of his fortune, to charity, officials said Wednesday. Hilton, the 80-year-old grandfather of Paris Hilton, bequeathed the money to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, a charity founded by his father in 1944. "We are all exceedingly proud and grateful for this extraordinary commitment," Hilton's son Steven M. Hilton, president and chief executive of the foundation, said in a statement.