Reddy Ice Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2007 Results

Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2007 were $64.3 million, compared to $59.3 million in the same quarter of 2006. The Company's loss from continuing operations was $6.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2007, compared to $5.0 million in the same quarter of 2006. The Company's net loss was $6.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 versus $4.9 million in 2006. Diluted net loss per share was $0.30 in the fourth quarter of 2007, compared to $0.23 in the fourth quarter of 2006. Adjusted EBITDA, defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and the effects of certain other items, was $6.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2007, compared to $8.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2006. Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations was $7.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 versus $7.9 million in the corresponding 2006 quarter. Available Cash for the fourth quarter of 2007 was $3.4 million, compared to $2.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2006. A discussion regarding the presentation of Adjusted EBITDA and Available Cash in this press release, including reconciliations of Adjusted EBITDA to EBITDA and net income and the calculation of Available Cash, is set forth below in the section titled, "SUPPLEMENTAL DISCLOSURE REGARDING NON-GAAP FINANCIAL INFORMATION."

"We were challenged on several fronts in 2007, including unusually volatile weather in certain key months and increased cost pressures," commented Chairman and Chief Executive Officer William P. Brick. "Despite last year's difficulties, we enter 2008 with sound fundamentals and are well positioned to take advantage of opportunities, including further acquisitions and the continued implementation of our ongoing cost savings initiatives, as well as to respond to the challenges that we see on several fronts."

Revenues in the full year 2007 were $339.0 million, compared to $335.0 million in 2006. The Company's income from continuing operations was $9.4 million in 2007, compared to $15.9 million in 2006. Net income in 2007 was $10.3 million, compared to $14.7 million in 2006. Diluted net income per share was $0.47 in 2007, compared to $0.68 in 2006. Adjusted EBITDA was $83.8 million in 2007, compared to $88.7 million in 2006. Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations was $82.7 million and $86.0 million in 2007 and 2006, respectively. Available Cash for the full year 2007 was $46.1 million, compared to $55.5 million in 2006.

In connection with its ongoing acquisition strategy, the Company completed three acquisitions during the fourth quarter of 2007, bringing the total number of acquisitions in 2007 to twenty. No acquisitions have been completed to date in 2008. These twenty acquisitions, together with the acquisition of one facility in the fourth quarter which had previously been leased, had an aggregate acquisition cost of approximately $27.2 million. Annual revenues and Adjusted EBITDA associated with these twenty acquisitions, together with the leased facility acquisition, are approximately $17.0 million and $4.9 million, respectively.

news source : http://www.foxbusiness.com/

Michigan AG: Predatory Lending, Credit Top Consumers' Concerns

Michigan’s Attorney General Mike Cox recently said in a press release that issues involving predatory lending and personal credit topped Michigan's list of consumer concerns last year.

Cox’s assertion is based on 85,700 consumer complaints received by his office in 2007.

Ranking first in the top ten list of consumer complaints is the heading of “credit and financial concerns,” which means a larger portion of Michigan's consumer complaints last year were related to predatory lending, credit reports, finance charges and identify theft.

news source : http://www.dsnews.com/view_story.cfm?id=2101

Ringing Up Big Charges For "Free" Tones

What's wrong with the ringtones that come with the phone?" CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson asked teenager Kelsi Dolan.
"They're Beethoven!" Kelsi said. So imagine Kelsi Dolan's excitement when she got a text message on her brand new phone. "It said, 'you've qualified for a free ringtone,' and they sent it to me three times," Kelsi said. "So I asked my Mom if I could get it and she said 'no.' So I texted 'no' back."
But saying "no" wasn't enough. A charge for $19.99 showed up on her phone bill. When her mom tried to get it removed, her phone company told her it was a monthly subscription and it couldn't be stopped.
"I didn't even want a refund for the first month because I figured, 'okay, ya got me.'" Debbie Dolan, Kelsi's mother, said. "Fine I'll take the $20 hit. But when you're gonna keep doing it and you won't do anything to stop it?!" It's called "cramming," Attkisson reports: Charges for services you didn't order and don't want that can be next to impossible to stop. And it's not just happening to kids. Last year, the FCC ordered millions of dollars returned to angry cell phone customers who said they were scammed. Rebecca Anderson did nothing more than search the Web for free ringtones. Then she, too, got hit by monthly charges.
"I did not agree to any charges. I did not download anything," Anderson said. An innocuous-looking website run by a company called Ringaza. Peel away the layers of Ringaza and you find a man named Scott Richter, better known to some as "the King of Spam."
A few years ago, Richter was one of the biggest e-mail spammers in the world. He even paid a $7 million settlement over it. And now he's in the ringtone business. He didn't respond to our repeated interview requests.

But carriers like Ringaza owe some of their success to carriers like Verizon Wireless ... which agree to add the charges to your regular phone bill. "If you believe that you've been charged in error or that you didn't subscribe, we'll credit that charge," said Verizon Wireless spokesman John Johnson. Johnson says if you suspect fraud, all you have to do is call. But it's not always that easy. "Verizon said that this was an outside carrier and they were not responsible for these charges," Anderson said. And in Dolan's case: "They told me they wouldn't take it off and they couldn't stop it.

---

---

It turns out the big carriers are making money off the deal. "What is Verizon's share?" Attkisson asked Johnson. "What kind of cut do you get from these bills?" "I don't have a percentage," Johnson said. "Does 30 to 40 percent sound accurate?" she asked. "It doesn't sound unreasonable, but again I don't know," Johnson said. It looks to the customers like Verizon or other companies may not be very responsive because they're getting a cut of the action. "Well, sometimes it looks that way and that really concerns us," Johnson said. Since CBS News first began working on this story, Verizon decided to change its policy. Customers can now block those unwanted charges. And Kelsi is still looking for the right ring tone ... one that's really free.

news source : http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/22/eveningnews/main3867197.shtml

Same Name, Wrong Credit Report

Viewers contact Seven On Your Side frequently, asking for help correcting mistakes on their credit reports. But one viewer's problem really caught our attention because the same mistake could happen to you. We discovered that court judgments can easily show up on the wrong person's credit report because they're filed using very little information.

Will the real Kenneth Kaliski please step forward? Said Kenneth Kaliski of Anderson, "I can't refinance this house until this judgment is removed."

A mix up with another Kenneth Kaliski stopped this Kenneth Kaliski from refinancing his home. Said Kaliski, "The mortgage lender said to me, do you know anything about this civil judgment? I said what civil judgment?"

Kaliski says he never lived at the address on the judgment and was not involved in the case, which he says he learned was a battle over a house payment.

Said Kaliski, "I have nothing to do with this. I'm an innocent victim here. This other person has a name similar to mine, its not me, they're a young couple."

So how did it get on his credit? Court clerks tell us credit bureaus routinely check court records for unpaid judgments.

Here's the problem. Court records are usually filed with just a name. Maybe an address, if your lucky. There's no social security number, no date of birth. If you have a common name, you could be out of luck.

Kaliski filed a dispute with the credit bureau TransUnion and it was removed from his credit. So we asked TransUnion how they verify who's who on judgments. The answer?

Steven Katz with TransUnion sent us this statement: "While TransUnion cannot discuss specifics of our verification process for security reasons, we do actively encourage consumers to check their three credit reports frequently to ensure that each appropriately reflects how they've managed their credit health over time. If consumers see an item on a report that they don't recognize, they should first consider going directly to the party reporting the item - the card issuer, mortgage lender, etc. If they still require assistance, they can file a dispute through TransUnion either directly via phone, online or in writing if they prefer. Details can be found at www.transunion.com."

Kaliski has now refinanced his home and believes court judgments should list more identifying information. Said Kaliski, "I believe there should be another resource for them to before entering a judgment onto somebody, have a more pertinent information on you than just a name and address."

But is that the answer? Court records are public. Court officials tell us more personal information could expose you to identity theft.

So for now, the answer may be to regularly check your credit to make sure Kenneth Kaliski's or any other judgments aren't on yours.

You can check your credit reports once a year for free. If your report lists any debt that is not yours, you can dispute it to have it removed. Credit reports usually come with dispute forms. Fill it out and send it back with any documentation showing the debt is not yours

news source : http://www.wspa.com/midatlantic/spa/

Asian stocks mostly lower on US holiday; Australia hit by ANZ provisions UPDATE

SINGAPORE (Thomson Financial) - (Updates with closing figures throughout)

Asian stocks closed mostly lower in subdued trade Monday with Wall Street closed for a public holiday and Australia falling after the third-largest bank Australia and New Zealand Banking Group said it would book losses on bad loans and exposure to a US bond insurer.

'We're in an environment where the market doesn't deal with disappointment very well,' said Justin Gallagher, head of sales trading at ABN Amro in Sydney.

'If you're in the financial sector you're probably under a little bit more scrutiny than some of the other sectors. That safe haven tag (the banks) have enjoyed for a long time is not appropriate at the moment.'

The S&P/ASX 200 closed down 0.9 percent at 5,558.4 and the All Ordinaries was down 0.8 percent at 5,634.0.

ANZ slid 6.1 percent to 22.46 Australian dollars, after Chief Executive Michael Smith said the bank was taking a 200 million US dollar one-off loss provision relating to a troubled US monoline bond insurer.

The Nikkei closed up 0.1 percent at 13,635.40, shedding most of its early gains. The broader Topix was down 0.1 percent at 1,332.99.

The Hang Seng closed down 1.6 percent at 23,759.25, ending a four day winning streak.

'There is still no evidence that the housing and financial sectors in the US are getting better, so investors will remain cautious,' said Francis Lun, general manager at Fulbright Securities.

Elsewhere, the Kuala Lumpur Composite closed down 1 percent at 1,412.83 and the Philippines Composite lost 0.6 percent to 3,163.25. The Singapore Straits Times closed down 0.2 percent at 3,083.34 and the Jakarta Index closed down 0.1 percent at 2,684.70.

India's Sensex provisionally closed down 0.4 percent at 18,048.17.

The Shanghai Composite bucked the downtrend, gaining 1.6 percent at 4,568.15.

The official Shanghai Securities Journal reported that Bank of China Investment Management Co and AXA SPDB Investment Managers have won approval to launch two new open-ended stock funds.

Separately, nine fund management firms were reportedly given the go-ahead to offer wealth management services to institutions.

The Kospi rose 0.1 percent to 1,696.24 and the Taiwanese Taiex was up 0.2 percent at 7,890.90.

ANZ slumps

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.2 percent at 12,348.21 on Friday after data showed declines in consumer confidence and factory activity in the New York area.

Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy cut its outlook for 2008, citing weak customer traffic in January, adding to the gloom.

Investors are looking ahead to US consumer price data due this week as well as results from Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer.

A homebuilder survey due on Tuesday and housing starts due Wednesday are expected to show continued stress in the housing market.

Meanwhile, investors will keep a close eye on the bond insurance market after New York Governor Eliot Spitzer warned last week that the big monoline insurers need to take swift action to recapitalize and keep their crucial Triple A ratings.

ANZ is the first bank to disclose losses related to the recent downgrades of the bond insurers.

CEO Smith said the bank expects losses arising from the global credit crunch to wipe out profit growth this year, describing the crunch as 'a financial services bloodbath.'

The bank's revelations have caught the market by surprise, said ABN Amro's Gallagher.

'I guess the problem the market is having is that we've been led to believe that everything is okay and that certainly isn't the case. We're seeing evidence now that the bad and doubtful debt provisioning is a bit conservative,' he said.

'While they are saying there is no subprime exposure, that's almost irrelevant in the sense that there are other issues coming to the surface that are having a similar impact.'

ANZ said it's also exposed to other bad loans including 90 million Australian dollars lent to a commercial property group and 50 million dollars lent to a resources group. That brings its total potential losses to more than 360 million dollars.

Other Australian banks fell in sympathy with ANZ. Commonwealth Bank shed 5.1 percent to 44 dollars, National Australia Bank closed down 3.7 percent to 29.51 dollars and Westpac Banking Corp fell 3.7 percent to 22.50 dollars.

Toshiba rallies

In Tokyo, Toshiba closed up 5.7 percent at 829 yen, on reports it's considering abandoning its HD DVD format for high definition DVDs as it's losing the battle for market dominance to rival Sony Corp's Blu-ray format.

Analysts said the move would mark the end of a long battle over next-generation DVD formats between Toshiba and the Blu-ray camp led by Sony Corp and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.

On Friday, Wal-Mart announced it would shift to exclusively selling movies on Blu-ray.

Weekend reports said losses for Toshiba could reach tens of billions of yen if it decides to pull out.

Sony closed up 1 percent at 4,900 yen.

TFN.newsdesk@thomson.com

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news source : http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/02/18/afx4665713.html

Beat the credit card blacklist

CREDIT-CARD companies are to start sharing information in the spring that will help them weed out prudent and therefore “unprofitable” customers for the first time.

Banks have been talking to industry bodies for several months about a new initiative that will enable them to identify consumers who clear their balances in full every month, or who constantly switch to 0% deals. Such customers make the banks no money because they do not pay punitive interest charges of up to 28%.

The disclosure follows Egg’s controversial decision to cancel the cards of 160,000 customers this month. It claimed they were “high risk” – in other words, they had missed payments or borrowed beyond their means.

However, hundreds of Egg customers came forward to say their cards had been cancelled even though they had never missed a payment, or cleared their balances in full every month.

This raised speculation that Egg, owned by America’s Citigroup, had cancelled the cards simply because it was not making money from them – and this will become much easier under the new initiative.

At present, the only information banks share includes when a card was issued, when it was closed, the balance and whether or not there have been any missed or late payments. From the spring, however, customers can be vetted by lenders to see if they pay off their balance in full each month, and make use of promotional 0% deals.

Card firms will also be able to see more signs of “high risk” behaviour such as withdrawing cash with a credit card, and big changes in a customer’s credit limit.

The sharing of this additional “behav-ioural” information will conclude a two-year project overseen by Apacs, the UK payments authority, to help lenders better judge risk.

However, consumer groups warn the move – the first change for more than a decade – could mean more customers are denied credit.

Steve Willey, head of credit cards at Moneysupermarket, the price-comparison site, said: “Though this information is meant to help lenders make more informed decisions, there is a danger they could use it to deny customers who aren’t necessarily a risk.”

Credit-card providers such as Barclaycard, HSBC and others have already tightened their lending criteria in response to the credit crunch by asking customers who don’t use their cards to justify why they need them.

Lloyds TSB charges some customers a £35 “inactivity fee” if they have not used their cards in 12 months.

Equifax said its latest survey, conducted just before the credit crunch, showed a 10% increase in the number of credit-card rejections over the past year.

Neil Munroe at the credit-reference firm said: “Minor misdemeanours, such as missing a telephone-bill deadline, which may have been overlooked in the past, may not be now.”

Although the “behvioural” information will be made available in the next couple of months, some industry insiders say it is already being circulated under a “principle of reciprocity”, where banks will pass information between each other if another bank is prepared to disclose a similar level of information.

Here we answer your questions.

What information is currently kept on me by credit reference agencies? The number of credit cards you’ve applied for, when they were issued, when they were closed, the balance and whether or not there were any missed or late payments.

They also hold information about how many bank accounts and loans you have, what your credit limit is, how many times your credit file has been checked by lenders, and any county-court judgments against you.

What information is kept on me by my bank? Banks have more detail about the way you use cards. This behavioural data includes how much of a balance you pay off each month, and how often you use your card.

So is that why Egg could throw out customers who had a good score from the credit reference agencies? Yes. There is no guarantee you will have a good credit score with your bank even if a credit-reference file labels you as low-risk. This is because lenders have their own rating system which uses “behavioural” information. It will also weigh information differently from credit-reference firms or other banks.

What will the new initiative mean in practice when I apply for a card? A lender you have never used before will now have a better idea of the way you use your card and could, for example, decide it does not want to offer a card to a customer who simply makes use of promotional 0% deals, or pays off their balance in full each month as this will not make them any profit.

Isn’t data sharing against the rules? No. Sandra Quinn of Apacs said: “When you sign up to a credit card, you are giving permission for the firm to pass on this information to other providers.”

Could I be thrown out? Banks could cancel your card even if you have a good credit rating on your file if they don’t like your behaviour. They do not have to explain why or give details of the score they hold for you.

Alternatively, a bank could reduce your credit limit if you do not use your card enough or if you hold a number of cards.

If your credit limit is reduced, a bank is unlikely to demand you pay off the balance above the new limit. Instead it will gradually reduce your limit as you reduce the balance on the card.

If your card is cancelled, the lender will stop allowing you to make additional purchases on the card. It will allow you to continue making payments to reduce the balance until it is settled.

FIRMS THAT MARK YOUR CARD

- Barclaycard has lower credit limits for those who have never held a card before.

- Barclaycard and HSBC customers who do not use their cards for more than a year may be contacted and asked if they wish to continue holding it.

- MBNA charges £10 if you have a positive balance on your card.

- Halifax will start to reduce your credit limit if you have lots of credit cards.

- Lloyds TSB has introduced a £35 annual fee for customers who have not used their card for 12 months.

- Coop customers have complained that their credit limits have been cut after making large purchases.

HOW TO CLEAN UP YOUR FILE

- You can check your file by contacting Callcredit, Equifax and Experian. It costs £2 for each file to be looked into.

- If you regularly take advantage of 0% deals, and then forget to cancel a card at the end of the promotional period, your lender may reduce your credit score.

- If you missed repayments on an account you have subsequently paid off, check this has been removed from your file. Lenders take the number of searches on your credit file into consideration.

- If you spot an error, write to the credit-reference agency to ask it to remove or change the entry, explaining why it is wrong and sending evidence. The agency has 28 days to act, and the entry is marked as ‘disputed’ in the meantime.

news source : http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/

Credit Card Follies

(Political Animal) CREDIT CARD FOLLIES....What's a bank to do when its profits fall thanks to the subprime debacle and a slowdown in consumer borrowing? You guessed it:

Hundreds of thousands of Capital One and Bank of America cardholders have been notified in recent months that their interest rates are going up — in some cases to as much as 28% — even though they haven't been missing payments.

...."They need to raise rates because they can't raise fees anymore," [David] Robertson said. "It's politically untenable."

Politics also seems to be behind a subtle shift in language that's appeared in the terms and conditions of several top card issuers. Increasingly, lawmakers have been taking a skeptical view of banks' long-standing insistence that they can raise people's rates at any time for any reason.

Citibank announced last year that it would no longer make this claim. Instead, the bank now says people's rates may rise because of "general market conditions." Similarly, Capital One introduced language last year asserting that cardholders' rates could go up "if market conditions change." More broadly, BofA declares that credit card rates could increase due to "market conditions, business strategies or for any reason." [Italics mine.]

...."The card issuers are moving from a risk-management strategy to a revenue-generating strategy," [Robertson] said. "Credit cards are consistently the most profitable retail banking product," Robertson observed. "The growth is not there anymore. And with a recession coming down the pike, there's no expectation of more spending by consumers. The industry needs to raise prices to keep profits where they need to be."

The net result of this, of course, will be to scare the crap out of every credit card owner in the country, which will lead to even less consumer borrowing, which in turn will lead to even bigger problems for the banks. In other words, credit card issuers aren't just evil, they're stupid too. If Democrats in Congress had any guts at all (I know, I know), they would have long since introduced legislation to put an end to this and dared Republicans to vote against it. The campaign ads practically write themselves, don't they?

news source : http://www.cbsnews.com/

Truvo, Graydon cooperate on credit reports

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news source : http://www.telecom.paper.nl/news/article.aspx?id=202434&nr=

Egg raises prospect of credit card clampdown

Confusion over the reasons behind Egg's cancellation of thousands of credit cards has led to speculation over the possibility of more banks following suit.

Egg, which is owned by the US bank Citigroup, wrote to 160,000 customers last week to tell them their credit cards would be withdrawn and they had just over a month to stop using the cards, while allowing them to continue with monthly payments to clear balances.

Citigroup said that it had taken the decision after an extensive credit review and had targeted customers with a higher than acceptable risk profile. However, a number of those customers have complained that they had not exceeded their credit limit or missed payments. Some are concerned that their ability to apply for credit in the future will be harmed.

Analysts believe the move, which comes a year after Lloyds TSB said it would impose a £35 annual charge on account holders who do not use their cards, may prompt other banks to scrutinise their credit card books.

"You may see other banks looking at the profitability of the card businesses in a different way," said Doug Taylor, spokesman at Which?, the consumer group.

Egg yesterday defended its actions, claiming only the accounts of customers with poor credit records were closed. "Only those whose credit scores deteriorated in the months before Egg was acquired by Citigroup last May were affected," said Rachel Roe, an Egg spokeswoman.

Experian, the credit checking company, said the cancellation would not damage customer credit ratings. Any account stopped will be recorded on credit reports as "settled", the same record that would be carried if the customer cancelled the account themselves.

Steve Willey, head of credit cards at moneysupermarket.com, said that Egg had caused confusion by not communicating clearly its reasons for cancelling customer credit cards.

news source : http://www.ft.com/

NovaGold Enters into $30 Million Credit Facility

NovaGold Resources Inc. (TSX: NG)(AMEX: NG) today announced that it has entered into an agreement with The Bank of Nova Scotia for a C$30 million credit facility maturing on July 30, 2008. The proceeds borrowed under the credit facility will be used by NovaGold Resources Inc. ("NovaGold") for general corporate purposes.

The credit facility will bear variable interest based on The Bank of Nova Scotia's Canadian prime rate, or United States base rate. The loan is secured only against certain marketable securities held by NovaGold Canada Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of NovaGold. NovaGold Canada Inc. has also guaranteed the obligations of NovaGold related to the credit facility.

The credit facility provides the usual and customary representations and warranties, and covenants and negative covenants restricting the amount of indebtedness. Advances under the credit facility are subject to customary conditions.

"With this $30 million credit facility, we are pleased to strengthen our relationship with Scotiabank, one of North America's leading financial institutions," said Don MacDonald, Senior Vice President and CFO of NovaGold. "We look forward to working with Scotiabank as we continue to advance our portfolio of projects and examine new opportunities."

About NovaGold

NovaGold is a gold and copper company engaged in the exploration and development of mineral properties in Alaska and Western Canada. Production is scheduled for 2008 at the 100%-owned Nome Operations in Alaska, which includes the Rock Creek, Big Hurrah and Nome Gold deposits. NovaGold owns 50% of the Donlin Creek gold project in Alaska, one of the world's largest gold deposits, with Barrick Gold (50%). NovaGold also owns 50% of the Galore Creek copper-gold-silver project in British Columbia with Teck Cominco (50%). Also in Alaska, NovaGold is earning a 51% interest as manager of the high-grade Ambler copper-zinc-silver-gold project in partnership with Rio Tinto. NovaGold has one of the largest resource bases of any exploration or development-stage precious metals company. NovaGold trades on the TSX and AMEX under the symbol NG. More information is available online at www.novagold.net or by e-mail at info@novagold.net.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation; anticipated dates for receipt of permits and approvals, construction and production, and other milestones; anticipated results of drilling programs, feasibility studies and other analyses; estimated timing and amounts of future expenditures, and NovaGold's future production, operating and capital costs, operating or financial performance, are forward-looking statements. Information concerning mineral resource estimates also may be deemed to be forward-looking statements in that it reflects a prediction of the mineralization that would be encountered if a mineral deposit were developed and mined. Forward-looking statements involve various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from NovaGold's expectations include fluctuations in gold and other commodity prices and currency exchange rates; uncertainties relating to interpretation of drill results and the geology, continuity and grade of mineral deposits; uncertainty of estimates of capital and operating costs, recovery rates, production estimates and estimated economic return; the need for cooperation of government agencies and native groups in the exploration and development of properties and the issuance of required permits; the need to obtain additional financing to develop properties and uncertainty as to the availability and terms of future financing; the possibility of delay in exploration or development programs or in construction projects and uncertainty of meeting anticipated program milestones; uncertainty as to timely availability of permits and other governmental approvals; and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in NovaGold's Annual Information Form for the year ended November 30, 2006, filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities, NovaGold's annual report on Form 40-F filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and other information released by NovaGold and filed with the appropriate regulatory agencies.

news source : http://money.cnn.com/news/

Get Your Free Credit Report -- Without the Hassle

We all have the legal right to see our credit-score reports for free, but getting them can be complicated.
Teresa Yakes learned the hard way just how complicated it is to get one of those reports. When she was struggling in May to avoid bankruptcy and working with a debt consolidation company, her lawyer told her to get her free credit-score report online. Yakes went to what seemed to her like the obvious place: freecreditreport.com. (Its Web page even features a smiling blond woman holding a giant orange card that says FREE CREDIT SCORE & REPORT.)
Weeks later, Yakes discovered that the site now expected her to pay a fee every month. "I thought, 'screw that,'" Yakes says. "It's supposed to be freecreditreport.com."

To be sure, freecreditreport.com's home page says in a box underneath the blond woman that if you order your free report at the site, you'll also begin a subscription to Triple Advantage Credit Monitoring. That not only gives you those promised "free" reports, but also checks them daily at a fee of $14.95 per month if you don't cancel your membership within a 30-day trial period.
"We do put that information in to make sure the consumer understands," says Kelly Poffenberger, a spokesman for the Dublin credit-reporting agency Experian Group, which owns freecreditreport.com.

Whether they understand what they're getting or not, many consumers are choosing to pay to see their credit scores these days, and agencies are earning gobs of money by selling services that take the concept of monitoring to new heights.

Experian, for example, raked in $450 million in revenue during full-year 2007 from products such as Triple Advantage Credit Monitoring, compared with $100 million five years ago. Meanwhile the company's rival, Equifax(EFX - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), made $150 million in 2007, compared with $40 million five years ago, according to Michael Meltz, an analyst at Bear Stearns. "It's a big business," Meltz says.

It's happening even though the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 requires the agencies to notify consumers of their right to see their credit files for free. Despite that mandate, only 22% of nearly 5,000 people surveyed between March and June 2006 had gotten free credit reports around six months after they became available nationwide, according to the Federal Trade Commission's 2006 Identity Theft Survey Report, which was released in November.

So, how do you get the free kind of credit report? You can go to AnnualCreditReport.com, call 877-322-8228 or fill out the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mail it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. These are the only official channels to make a request for a free annual credit report.

You can order copies of your reports at once from all three agencies -- Experian, Equifax, and Chicago-based TransUnion -- if you want to keep an eye out for changes in your file or as a protection against the risk of someone using your personal information to obtain credit. You can also order one free report from a different agency every four months.

Consumer advocates say that doing these basics alone is the most sensible way to watch your credit score.

"We don't feel necessarily that it's worth it," to pay extra for credit monitoring services, says Linda Foley, founder of the San Diego nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center. She points out that even daily monitoring services can't make up for the time lag between when someone has taken out credit in your name and when the issuers report that to agencies.

And other billers, such as utilities or hospitals, might not say anything to the credit-reporting agencies all the way until an unpaid bill in your name goes into collections, Foley adds. Instead of paying the agencies for a false sense of security, Foley recommends setting up your own, free credit monitoring service by ordering one report at a time every four months.

If you're looking to do this, consumer advocates warn to steer clear of the numerous sites that might seem to exist in order to offer free reports but then invite you to buy other related services. A 2007 Consumer Reports WebWatch analysis of 24 such Web sites found that nine were owned by or closely connected to TransUnion; eight were owned by or otherwise closely connected to Experian. The list includes TransUnion's TrueCredit.com and Experian's ConsumerInfo.com, among others; you can find the other 22 named here.

"If you go to TrueCredit itself, we tell you [on the home page] there's a free trial, but it's never promoting the product or the services as free," says Steve Katz, a spokesman at TransUnion. "It clearly lays out the cost."

Officials from all three agencies say consumers should find out about their credit scores by using the more full-fledged monitoring services available for sale.

"We have a lot of demand from consumers who want to take a much greater step than just getting their free report and taking a look once a year," says Chris Atwood, vice president of Equifax Personal Solutions. "Some consumers feel they want the ultimate in protection, regardless."

news source : http://www.thestreet.com/