The News Magazine Theme 640 problem with the background not displaying in Internet Explorer has been fixed.
The package has been updated to version 1.5.4.
You can download the updated package from the downloads page.
If you have made modifications to your copy and prefer to manually apply the fix, edit style.css and change:
body { background: #545454 url(images/bg.gif)no-repeat;color: #000000;font-size:75%;font-family: Georgia,Arial,Tahoma,Verdana; }
to
body { background: #545454 url(images/bg.gif) no-repeat; color: #000000; font-size:75%; font-family: Georgia,Arial,Tahoma,Verdana; }
The problem is that there’s no space between url(images/bg.gif) and no-repeat

Thanks a bunch! I went through my css looking for the issue, but couldn’t get it right.