Analysts predict no change in interest rates\nWASHINGTON -- The Federal Reserve, finally starting to see the hoped-for rebound in the economy, is expected to leave interest rates unchanged at its last meeting of the year, allowing consumers and businesses to enjoy the lowest rates in decades into the new year.\nAnalysts uniformly are predicting that the Fed's target for the federal funds rate, which has been at a 45-year low of 1 percent since June, will not be changed today even though the economy finally seems to be emerging from an extended period of lackluster growth.\nThe funds rate is the interest that banks charge each other for overnight loans. Commercial banks' prime interest rate, the benchmark for millions of consumer and business loans, moves in lockstep with changes in the funds rate. The prime rate has been at 4 percent since June.
Internet phone service deal by Time Warner>b\nKANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Time Warner Cable announced a deal Monday with Sprint Corp. and MCI Inc. to offer phone service using the up-and-coming voice-over-Internet technology, one of the surest signs yet that cable companies are assaulting the local phone industry.\nWhile other cable companies sell phone service to their customers in selected markets, this deal is the first time the "voice-over-IP" technology will power nearly nationwide phone service by a cable company.\nThe technology will let Time Warner customers make calls with their regular phones, but the calls will travel as packets of data over the cable line that feeds into the house, rather than going through traditional, circuit-based phone wires.\nAt a switching station, the calls will be transferred to either the MCI or Sprint phone networks and into the traditional format that reaches most phone users. Though the quality of voice-over-IP calls often aren't quite up to the standard of the traditional telephone networks, the technology is improving.
Exxon Mobil charged $9.6 million for oil spill\nLAGOS, Nigeria -- A Nigerian court ordered oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. to pay $9.6 million in damages to three southern Nigeria communities for a pipeline spill, officials said Monday.\nThe Irving, Texas-based company's local subsidiary, Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, said it would appeal the decision ordering it to pay the money to the towns of Bonny, Brass and Andoni.\nThe Niger Delta villages are near the site of the January 1998 pipeline rupture that spilled between 40,000 and 100,000 barrels of crude into the region's river and marshlands. Much of Nigeria's oil is pumped from the region. Justice Abdullahi Mustapha of Lagos's Federal High Court ruled the spill caused environmental damage to the communities, court papers showed.
