In brief: Red Lion sells Sacramento hotel

Spokane’s Red Lion Hotels Corp. said Tuesday it has sold its Sacramento hotel for $9 million to a California company.

The Red Lion Hotel Sacramento at Arden Village will be renamed by the buyer, Northern California businessman Kumar Sharma. Sharma has been leasing and franchising the Sacramento hotel for more than a year.

As part of the deal, Red Lion will also operate a new franchise hotel with a Sharma subsidiary, Shri Vinayaka Hotel Inc. That company will franchise the former Woodlake Hotel Sacramento, a property Sharma also owns.

The new franchise hotel has 306 rooms and more than 60,000 square feet of meeting space, according to a Red Lion statement.

“This transaction supports our strategy to reduce debt, expand our franchise system and improve the competitive position of our hotels,” said Jon E. Eliassen, Red Lion’s president and CEO.

Hacker group claims theft of Apple IDs

LOS ANGELES – A hacker group known as AntiSec claims it stole the identification numbers for 12 million Apple devices and has posted information on a million of them on a website.

AntiSec alleges it gained access to a file containing the list of the Apple IDs after hacking into the computer of an FBI agent. It did not identify the agent or who the ID numbers belonged to.

AntiSec said it chose to release a portion of the Apple IDs list to get people’s attention to its claims that the FBI is gathering people’s Apple device details.

“Well we have learnt (sic) it seems quite clear nobody pays attention if you just come and say ‘hey, FBI is using your device detail,’ ” the group said in a note posted online.

U.S. home prices up 3.8 percent in July

LOS ANGELES – Home prices shot up 3.8 percent in July, making their largest year-over-year leap since 2006, according to real estate data provider CoreLogic.

The gain marks the fifth straight rise in the gauge, part of a positive swing following a year and a half of slumps. The last time prices rose so much was in August 2006, when they jumped 4.1 percent.

Without distressed sales – including foreclosures and short sales – national prices were up 4.3 percent compared with last July.

The report suggests that the real estate market is “clearly seeing the light at the end of a very long tunnel,” said CoreLogic Chief Executive Anand Nallathambi in a statement.