Finance news. My opinion.

+%3Cp%3E+Cell+phone+bans%2C+such+as+those+recently+recommended+by+the+National+Transportation+Safety+Board%2C+have+so+far+proven+useless+when+it+comes+to+actually+reducing+car+crashes%2C+according+to+the+Insurance+Institute+for+Highway+Safety.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EThe+Insurance+Institute+is+a+private+group+financed+by+auto+insurers.+The+National+Transportation+Safety+Board+recently+recommended+that+states+adopt+strict+rules+banning+all+non-driving-related+use+of+hand-held+devices+such+as+cell+phones+–+even+hands-free+–+while+driving.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%3Cp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%3Cp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EMany+states+already+have+bans+on+hand-held+cell+phone+use+and+on+texting+while+driving.+The+Insurance+Institute+has+studied+crash+rates+before+and+after+bans+were+enacted+in+various+states+and+also+compared+them+to+crash+rates+in+nearby+states+with+no+such+bans.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EWhile+the+bans+have+resulted+in+actual+reductions+in+phone+use%2C+they+have+not+resulted+in+any+reduction+in+crash+rates%2C+according+to+the+Institute.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EThe+Institute+found+similar+results+from+bans+on+text+messaging+while+driving.+In+fact%2C+in+a+strange+twist%2C+texting+bans+actually+resulted+in+more+crashes+in+several+states%2C+according+to+an+IIHS+study.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EThe+lesson%2C+Insurance+Institute+spokesman+Russ+Rader+said%2C+may+be+that+cell+phones+aren%27t+really+the+problem%2C+drivers+are.%3C%2Fp%3EGallery%3A+Safest+cars+from+the+Insurance+Institute%3Cp%3E%26quot%3BPart+of+it+is+that+distracted+driving+is+much+bigger+than+just+phones%2C%26quot%3B+he+said+%26quot%3Bso+focusing+on+phones+doesn%27t+deal+with+the+full+spectrum+of+things+that+distract.%26quot%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EFor+its+part%2C+the+NTSB+has+cited+various+studies+showing+a+connection+between+cell+phone+use+and+an+increased+likelihood+of+crashing.+An+NHTSA+study+indicated+that+distracted+driving+caused+about+3%2C000+crash+deaths+last+year%2C+although+it%27s+not+clear+how+many+of+those+crashes+were+related+to+hand-held+devices+as+opposed+to+other+distractions.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%26quot%3BWhat+we+know+is+that+the+best+course+of+action+is+a+three+pronged+approach+–+strong+laws%2C+strong+education+and+strong+enforcement%2C%26quot%3B+NTSB+spokeswoman+Kelly+Nantel+said+in+an+email.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EAutomakers%2C+including+Ford+%28%2C+Fortune+500%29%2C+General+Motors+%28%2C+Fortune+500%29%2C+Toyota+%28%29+and+Hyundai+%28%29+have+invested+heavily+in+creating+increasingly+sophisticated+hands-free+phone+systems+for+cars+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fpay-day-loans-4all.com%22%3Efaxless+pay+day+loans%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%21–+.+–%3E.+Most+of+those+systems+would+be+banned+under+the+NTSB%27s+proposal.+%28An+exception+would+be+GM%27s+OnStar+which+allows+users+to+make+calls+using+a+telephone+built+into+the+car+itself.+The+NTSB+proposal+would+specifically+allow+calls+on+that+sort+of+system+since+it+does+not+involve+a+handheld+phone.%29%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EFord+spokeswoman+Christin+Baker+objected+to+the+NTSB+proposal+citing+research+that+tracked+real-world+drivers.+The+research+showed+that+talking+on+a+phone+resulted+in+dangerous+incidents+only+when+drivers+took+their+eyes+off+the+road+and+their+hands+off+the+steering+wheel.+Voice-activated+systems+like+Ford%27s+Sync+would+prevent+that%2C+she+said.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EExperts+have+said+the+NTSB%27s+proposal+is+unlikely+to+become+law+in+many%2C+if+any%2C+states+due+to+strong+resistance+from+drivers+who+want+to+stay+in+communication+while+driving.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3ENew+technologies+that+help+alert+drivers+to+hazards+on+the+road+would+probably+do+more+to+actually+reduce+distracted+driving+crashes%2C+the+Insurance+Institute%27s+Rader+said.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E+%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3ESuch+technologies+include+forward+collision+warning+systems+that+alert+drivers+to+stopped+or+slow-moving+cars+or+pedestrians+ahead+of+them+and+lane+keeping+assistance+systems+that+warn+when+a+vehicle+is+drifting+out+of+its+lane.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EBoth+the+Insurance+Institute+and+the+U.S.+Department+of+Transportation+are+looking+at+ways+to+incorporate+safety+systems+like+these+in+their+assessments+of+car+safety.+As+of+now%2C+such+assessments+rely+almost+entirely+on+crash+tests.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3EThere+is+the+danger+that+drivers+might+over-rely+on+these+systems%2C+said+Rader%2C+canceling+out+their+benefits+by+just+paying+even+less+attention+to+the+task+of+driving.%3C%2Fp%3E%3Cp%3E%26quot%3BThat+is+the+thing+researchers+are+going+to+be+watching%2C%26quot%3B+said+Rader.+%26quot%3BHow+are+drivers+going+to+respond+to+these+systems%3F%26quot%3B%26nbsp%3B+%3C%2Fp%3E++%3Cp%3E%3Ca+href%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fmoney.cnn.com%2F2011%2F12%2F15%2Fautos%2Fiihs_cell_phone_bans%2Findex.htm%27+rel%3D%27nofollow%27%3ESource%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fp%3E+

Rescue workers are searching for 49 men in freezing, remote waters off Russia’s east coast after their oil drilling platform capsized and sank amid fierce storms Sunday.

By nightfall, four men had been confirmed dead, and 14 others had been plucked from the churning, icy waters by the ship that had been towing the Kolskaya platform. But the search for the remaining men was hampered by freezing temperatures, a driving blizzard and strong winds.

Dmitry Dmitriyenko, governor of the Murmansk region in Russia’s north-west where 33 of the men come from, urged friends and families not to lose hope late Sunday, but admitted the chance of the men surviving in the one degree Celsius (33.8 Fahrenheit) water is approaching zero.

“This is a terrible disaster which took the crew unawares,” he said in a statement. “But there is still a chance.”

The Emergencies Ministry said that 67 people had been aboard the platform as it was being towed about 200 kilometers (120 miles) off the coast of Sakhalin, a large island just north of Japan in the North Pacific, that until the late 19th century was the Russian Empire’s most remote penal colony.

Airplanes and helicopters patrolled the area Sunday, but called their search off just after sunset. Ministry officials said two boats will continue the search throughout the night, and the air search team would return with another two ships in the morning.

The Transportation Ministry said the platform started sinking after a strong wave broke some of its equipment and the portholes in the crew’s dining room.

One 5-meter (16-foot) wave washed away its lifeboats, leaving the crew with no escape, and several hours later it sank, officials said.

There were no immediate reports of environmental damage _ unlikely as the platform was not drilling for oil when it capsized and carried a negligible amount of fuel.

The Kolskaya was built in Finland in 1985 and is owned by Russian offshore exploration firm Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka.

Sakhalin is a largely undeveloped area, dominated by pristine nature. Russia, United States, Europe and Japan have worked off its shores for a nearly decade, producing oil and gas. There have not been any previous significant accidents in the region.

As oil and gas fields in Eastern Siberia are becoming depleted, Russian oil and gas companies are starting to shift their focus to offshore projects, unveiling ambitious plans to tap the riches of the Arctic.

Earlier this year, Exxon Mobil and Russia’s largest oil producer Rosneft teamed up to jointly explore oil and gas fields in the Kara Sea with Exxon pledging $3.2 billion of investment on only three fields.

The Investigative Committee on Sunday opened a probe into the accident and said that it might have happened because of a breach of safety regulations, or due to the harsh weather conditions.

Alexei Knizhnikov, an energy policy official in Russia for the World Wildlife Fund, told the RIA Novosti news agency that energy companies ought to learn from the accident.

“This disaster should highlight the high risks of offshore projects,” he said. “It’s very difficult to conduct efficient rescue operations, whether it’s rescuing people or dealing with oil spills, in the weather and conditions of the Arctic.”

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Sony’s long-awaited PlayStation Vita portable game machine has hit stores in Japan as thousands of game enthusiasts lined up at shops from early in the morning.

Sony is predicting brisk sales, even though Saturday’s launch may have missed some holiday shoppers. A successful debut would help the company offset the rest of its struggling business.

The device is a touch-interface and motion-sensitive handheld seen as a successor to the PlayStation Portable. Vita’s launch will heat up competition with rival Nintendo Co.’s 3DS.

Many of the purchasers Saturday had made advance orders on the Internet so they can start playing immediately.

The PS Vita goes on sale in North America and Europe on Feb. 22.

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Facebook has opened its new Timeleine feature to all 800 million of its users, the social network announced on Thursday morning.

The new feature replaces a user

Stock indexes swung from gains to losses and back again Tuesday afternoon, after the Federal Reserve cautioned that Europe’s financial crisis still poses a threat to the world’s economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 7 points, or 0.1 percent, to 12,028 as of 3 p.m. Eastern time. It had risen as high as 126 points earlier Tuesday after two strong auctions of European debt reassured investors.

The Federal Reserve portrayed the U.S. economy as slightly healthier but cautioned that it remains vulnerable to the European debt crisis. “Strains in global financial markets continue to pose significant downside risks to the economic outlook,” the Fed said in a statement.

The Spanish government was able to sell short-term debt at much lower interest rates Tuesday compared with a month ago, a signal that markets are becoming less fearful about the government’s ability to repay its debt.

In its first sale of short-term bills, the European Financial Stability Fund raised 1.9 billion euros ($2.6 billion) from investors at an average rate of 0.22 percent. That’s below the rate Germany pays for the similar bills. “This is an amazing success,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a note to clients.

The Dow sank 162 points Monday when Moody’s and Fitch warned that the fiscal agreement reached last week among European leaders fell far short of what was needed to contain that region’s debt crisis.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that retail sales rose for the sixth straight month in November. Sales increased just 0.2 percent, below what analysts had expected. But the government also revised the previous month’s slightly higher. That was the encouraging part, said Tim Hoyle, director of research at Haverford Investments. “It reassures you that the economy is going in the right direction,” Hoyle said cash advance to savings account.

Energy companies led the market higher as crude oil rose back above $100. Exxon Mobil Corp. rose 2 percent, Chevron Corp. 1.5 percent. Drugmaker Pfizer added 2.1 percent, the most of the 30 companies in the Dow. Pfizer said it plans to buy back up to $10 billion of its own stock.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index dropped 2 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,233. The Nasdaq composite fell 14 points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,598.

The Vix, a measure of stock market volatility, fell to 25. It has dropped 10 percent in December. The index remained above 30 from early August until last week. Hoyle said a sustained fall in the Vix usually is followed by a rise in stock prices. The recent trend “sets us up for a little Santa Claus rally between now and the end of the year.”

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.95 percent from 2.02 percent late Monday after an auction of new 10-year notes drew strong demand.

Urban Outfitters jumped 6 percent, the most in the S&P 500 index, after the retailer said its sales were rising faster than analysts were expecting. The Philadelphia-based company owns Urban Outfitters stores, Anthropologie and Free People.

Sprint Nextel Corp. rose 1 percent as it looked like its rival AT&T Inc. would be unable to pull off an acquisition of T-Mobile USA. Sprint agreed to drop a lawsuit against AT&T now that the deal appears to be in jeopardy. Sprint had been lobbying to stop it.

Electronics retailer Best Buy plunged 15 percent. The company said its third-quarter income sank 29 percent as it cut prices on tablets and TVs to drive sales and traffic during the busy holiday season.

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Lee Enterprises, owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other newspapers, filed for prepackaged bankruptcy early today in an effort to refinance about $1 billion in debt.

The bankruptcy was expected. Two weeks ago, the Davenport, Iowa-based publisher announced it would file for bankruptcy “on or about Dec. 12″ as part of a debt refinancing plan it had successfully negotiated with creditors.

Lee filed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in the Wilmington, Del., bankruptcy court, becoming the latest newspaper publisher saddled with debt to seek the court to help its finances. Though based in Iowa, the publisher is incorporated in Delaware.

The company said that the bankruptcy will have no impact on its business and that its papers will continue to publish. Vendors, advertisers, subscribers, employees and the company’s operations will not be affected.

In its bankruptcy filing, Lee lists $1.15 billion in assets and $994.5 million in liabilities.

When the publisher announced its bankruptcy plans, Lee said had secured agreements with nearly all of its creditors, which it predicted would allow an exit from bankruptcy in 60 days or less.

The filing is unusual in that the company plans to shed no debt and pay a higher interest rate to all lenders.

In return, lenders agreed to extend the loans - now due in April - until at least December 2015. The plan also preserves most of the stock’s value, allowing Lee to continue trading on the New York Stock Exchange during the bankruptcy process.

Lee also previously said it would cede a 13 percent ownership stake to three creditors, Goldman Sachs, Monarch Master Funding Ltd., and Franklin Templeton/Mutual Quest Fund.

The newspaper publisher says the refinancing plan is needed to keep it in business.

“Our ability to operate as a going concern is dependent on our ability to obtain approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the refinancing plan approved by creditors and to generate cash flows and maintain liquidity sufficient to service our debt,” the company said Friday in its annual report.

Though the refinancing plan will increase its higher interest payment - it would pay an average of 9.2 percent interest rate on its debt versus 5.1 percent currently - the publisher said it can pay that level of interest while also paying down the principal.

Lee’s newspapers turn an operating profit, and Lee has been making its debt payments. But the company, one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains, has been struggling for months to refinance the debt before it comes due in April.

Like other newspaper chains, Lee piled on debt to make acquisitions, then only to suffer from declining circulation and advertising revenue brought on both by the sluggish economy and the migration of advertising revenue and readers to the Internet.

Without refinancing, Lee would not have the cash to repay the maturing debt.

An effort to issue junk bonds in the spring failed, forcing the company to negotiate a refinancing plan this summer with creditors. Those negotiations led the refinancing plan with two groups of creditors.

One group holds about $865 million in debt secured by properties that Lee owned before 2005. Most of that debt was assumed that year when Lee bought St. Louis-based Pulitzer Inc., then the owner of the Post-Dispatch, for $1.5 billion.

The company said 94 percent of those debt holders have agreed to the deal. At one point, Lee hoped to borrow money to redeem the debt of those creditors not consenting to the refinancing, but those plans fell through.

A second group of creditors holds $138 million in debt, which Lee inherited with the Pulitzer deal. That debt is secured by the old Pulitzer properties, including the Post-Dispatch. All of those creditors agreed to the deal.

To deal with creditors not agreeing to the refinancing, the Lee has resorted to a prepackaged bankruptcy, in which a company works out terms with most creditors in advance. This allows the debtor to quickly reorganize and emerge from bankruptcy. The company then uses the bankruptcy proceedings to force its plan on lenders who didn’t agree to the refinancing.

In order to gain approval of the prepackaged plan, at least 50 percent of each class of creditors must vote to approve it, and those voting for it must own two-thirds of the dollar amount of the debt.

Dissenters can object, but they must convince the court that the deal is not fair and equitable.

Lee newspapers have a combined daily circulation of 1.3 million and Sunday circulation of 1.6 million, as of the end of September. Lee also owns nearly 300 specialty publications, including the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, Ladue News, and Feast and St. Louis’ Best Bridal magazines.

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Federal authorities are investigating a suspected embezzlement of potentially millions of dollars from a St. Louis area medical practice, according to a source close to the investigation.

The FBI and U.S. attorney’s investigation comes on the heels of the termination by Metropolitan Urological Specialists PC of Dunard Morris, who until recently served as its chief executive. The investigation focuses in part on whether money was diverted from the firm’s bank loans, the source said. The amount of missing money isn’t known but could be millions, the source said.

The medical practice also maintains that Morris subleased a $5,475-a-month luxury apartment using company funds without approval of the firm’s board of directors.

During the last two years, the company has shown signs of cash flow problems, including the buildup of about $1 paydayloans.3 million in delinquent federal, state and local taxes, interest and fees, St. Louis County records show.

Asked about the federal investigation, U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan said Thursday, “I don’t want to prejudge anything, but it is a matter that has our interest.”

Morris did not return phone calls Thursday. One of his lawyers, Patrick Smith at DLA Piper law firm in New York, has declined to comment. “I’m not authorized to talk with you,” he said. Morris’ local counsel, Richard Sindel, declined to comment.

Metropolitan’s attorney, Mayer Klein, said the medical firm “terminated” Morris in mid-September but would not detail why. He did confirm that the company is investigating the missing money.

“There were some concerns with regard to prior management, and we’re working with everyone involved

An investigator has denied any role in the death of ailing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky while he was imprisoned in a Moscow jail for tax evasion.

Oleg Silchenko, a senior investigator at the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Department, made his first public appearance at a news conference Thursday.

Magnitsky was imprisoned in 2008 and died of untreated pancreatitis in Nov. 2009. His family blame Silchenko for his continued detention.

Grilled by reporters, Silchenko said he had no powers to recommend the ailing lawyer for extra medical treatment and believed Magnitsky could have pressured witnesses if released us fast cash.

Silchenko is top of a list of dozens of Russian officials barred by the United States from entering the country for his alleged role in the death.

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ST. LOUIS

It’ll be a little easier for companies in St. Louis City and County to play in the global economy after the region’s Foreign Trade Zone was expanded to include all of both counties.

In an announcement Monday morning, city and county officials said that their application has been approved to grant Foreign Trade Zone status to the whole area. Previously, the region’s Foreign Trade Zone has been roughly 800 acres around Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

Foreign Trade Zone status makes it easier and quicker for companies to get reduced customs duties on goods they ship to or from the U payday loan.S. The goal, said St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley, is to help grow exporting, manufacturing and logistics companies in the region

Slay and Dooley applied to the Commerce Department for the larger trade zone last fall. The approval makes St. Louis one of a few dozen regions to have the new, expanded, status.

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