If Toyota fired the first shot in a new automotive-incentive war last week with its Independence Day marketing campaign, General Motors may have just fired the second round. And the magnitude and nature of the two initiatives say a lot about each automaker and its priorities in the U.S. market for the second half of 2011.

GM has just announced a test in Washington and Oregon of a free one-year insurance policy with the purchase of a new vehicle. The offer, now detailed on the websites for Chevy, Buick, Cadillac and GMC, “is designed to streamline the car-buying experience and add value by addressing affordability – one of the bigger challenges facing many buyers today,” GM said in a press release. The insurance includes both auto liability and physical-damage coverage and exceeds requirements in the two states.Continue reading...

Less than three years before New Jersey's New Meadowlands Stadium hosts Super Bowl XLVIII, “serious negotiations” are under way for the $1.6 billion shared home of the Giants and Jets to land a naming-rights sponsor, with MetLife potentially the leading contender, reports the Newark Star-Ledger.

Elsewhere in the Garden State, another stadium is getting a new corporate sponsor. High Point Solutions, a New Jersey supplier of routers, switchers and servers, in March agreed to a five-year, $1 million deal with Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, also according to the Newark Star-Ledger. Quinnipiac is home to close to 6,000 undergrads.

Now the owners of High Point, two brothers who the Wall Street Journal points out never got college degrees themselves, are sticking their company’s name on another university stadium in their corporate home state. This time it’s at NJ's Rutgers University, which has close to 40,000 undergraduates. 

"We're making up for lost time," said cofounder Tom Mendiburu to the Journal.Continue reading...

Chipotle raises prices.

Disney's Pixar nabs No. 1 spot at weekend box office with Cars 2.

Dunkin’ Donuts and LinkedIn IPOs boost Wall Street morale.

Duracell and Energizer miss out on personal-device boom.

Hulu weighs possible sale of site (without Comcast's approval) and looks to UK for content.

Jeep sponsors Dave Matthews festival.

JetBlue sponsors PBS kids’ summer-reading program.Continue reading...

AT&T deemed worst wireless carrier in the US by 58,000 Consumer Reports readers.

Citigroup loses US government backing.

Continental is "held responsible" for 2000 Concorde crash.

GetGlue secures $6 million backing to aid social entertainment expansion.

Google formally launches its e-book store, gets Australian pass on Street View charges.

Hertz to offer electric vehicle rental by the hour.Continue reading...

MetLife is in final negotiations to purchase AIG. [WSJ]

AMC purchases Kerasotes Showplace Theatres. [LA Times]

Verizon raises termination fee. [Washington Post]

Motorola launches a rewards program for loyal customers. [AdWeek]

Toyota seeks out lithium battery supply in Argentina. [WSJ]

Citigroup experiences a fourth-quarter $7.6 billion loss. [CNN Money]Continue reading...