A class-action lawsuit was filed Monday in a federal court in San Francisco accusing FarmVille creator Zynga of "illegally sharing the Facebook user data of its customers with advertisers and data brokers."

In a statement released by the lawsuit's co-lead attorneys, the filing claims Zynga violated federal law and its contract with Facebook by sharing the user data of players on games such as Farmville.

"This appears to be another example of an online company failing the American public with empty promises to respect individual privacy rights," said Michael Aschenbrener of Edelson McGuire LLC -- a co-lead attorney for the lawsuit -- in a statement.

The lawsuit seeks "monetary relief" for those affected as well as an injunction to "prevent continued privacy abuses," reads the statement.

Shares of Chinese tutoring company TAL Education Group are climbing after the initial public offering raised $120 million.

Shares had priced at $10 a share, the top of the expected range, suggesting strong demand for the company's stock.

Its shares rose $4.61, or 46 percent, to $14.61 in late morning trading Wednesday after rising as high as $15.70 earlier in the session.

The shares are trading under the symbol "XRS" on the New York Stock Exchange.

TAL says it is China's largest after-school tutoring service for K-12 students. Its IPO follows three strong first-day performances from Chinese companies since September.

China's interest-rate increase has less to do with the controversy over the value of its currency than with a straightforward effort to fight inflation— but it risks intensifying the currency battle nonetheless.

Many observers say China's move Tuesday to raise key rates is a textbook response to the country's strong growth, rising inflation and the risk of a dangerous property bubble. More increases are likely, they say, as China tries to slow the frenzied borrowing that helped it through the recent recession.

But the rate move—which comes just days before finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 industrial and developing nations meet in South Korea—has implications for China's currency, too. In most economies, higher interest rates attract foreign investors looking for better returns. The cash flooding into the economy boosts the local currency. But China's economy is mostly closed, limiting—though not eliminating—the impact of higher rates on the yuan.

The increase in interest rates could actually complicate matters for China on the currency front, said Nicholas Lardy, a specialist in China at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank. Given that Chinese interest rates were already above what developed countries are paying on one-year deposits, and that the market is betting that the yuan will rise over time, the rate increase could serve only to attract more investor money.

Investors suing Washington Mutual Inc., the former owner of the biggest U.S. bank to fail, won certification as a class-action case of their suit alleging shoddy lending practices.

Shareholders who lost money on stock purchased from October 2005 to July 2008 can proceed with claims under a single lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman in Seattle ruled Tuesday, according to court documents. The judge appointed the New York-based law firm Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann to lead the plaintiffs' case.

The lawsuit consolidates more than 20 cases filed against Washington Mutual that claim the bank secretly lowered lending standards, artificially inflated home-price appraisals and failed to disclose its deteriorating financial condition when the loans began to fail.

John Wolfe, an attorney representing Washington Mutual defendants, didn't immediately return a voice-mail message seeking comment.

The named plaintiffs in the case include Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, the largest single-profession pension plan in Canada, and four other pension groups, according to court documents.

They seek to represent tens of thousands of shareholders who lost money on three types of preferred stock purchased between October 2005 and July 2008 and certain securities offered by the bank in 2006 and 2007.

The shareholders argued the case should be granted class-action status because their claims are typical of what other investors experienced and are based on common legal issues.

WaMu filed for bankruptcy Sept. 26, 2008, the day after its banking unit was taken over by regulators and sold to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion. Before it failed, Washington Mutual Bank had more than 2,200 branches and $188 billion in deposits.

Thousands of people in Milwaukee are struggling to keep their homes as the city's Common Council calls for drastic action -- a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures.

Officials said more than 6,000 people are in the foreclosure process.

"There are about 5,000 homes currently now in foreclosure that are actually in the city's hands," said Urban Economic Development Association Executive Director Bill Johnson.

WISN 12 News spoke with a homeowner who is facing foreclosure after her husband lost his job.

The woman said the couple contacted their bank to see if they could work out a solution to no avail. She said they eventually had to file for bankruptcy as they desperately tried to modify their home loan.

The woman said the process took about a year, created mounds of paperwork and the couple received no communication from the bank.

Eventually, she said the bank told them they could modify the loan but the end result would cost them more than what their mortgage already was.