IBT Staff Reporter

Risks of a recession have increased, but the Federal Reserve must be cautious in supporting the economy because global forces that have kept inflation in check are receding, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Monday.

Hartford Financial Services Group Inc will start selling life and retirement products to small business owners who already buy its commercial insurance, and on Monday named the former head of its Japanese unit to run the operation.

Negotiators for the United Auto Workers union and General Motors Corp were back at the bargaining table on Monday after breaking in the early hours of the day, as thousands of GM factory employees went to work without a new contract.

Lines of Britons bent on getting their money out formed at Northern Rock Plc's bank branches for a third working day on Monday in defiance of reassuring words from government and management.

Female consumers are spurring much-needed growth in Chinese consumption and helping offset the country's high savings rate, a source of tension with its trading partners.

Eli Lilly & Co, the U.S. maker of antidepressant Prozac and erectile dysfunction drug Cialis, said its China sales were rising about 26 percent a year, on track to become the company's tenth biggest global market by 2010.

Six months after grabbing Oscar glory for his eco-documentary An Inconvenient Truth, former Vice President Al Gore collected an Emmy Award on Sunday for his fledgling youth-oriented cable network, Current TV.

Spanish-owned mobile phone operator O2 secured a deal to sell the iPhone in Britain after agreeing to give Apple 40 percent of the revenues it will make from customers using the device, the Guardian said.

Gold rose on Monday and stayed within sight of a 16-month high of $717 an ounce struck last week with expectations running high for the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.

Oil shrugged off early losses to head back near $80 on Monday, within sight of its record high, as the market focused on a Federal Reserve meeting that is widely expected to cut interest rates.

Stocks fell on Monday as savers demanded their money back from embattled British bank Northern Rock, adding to global credit concerns before an expected U.S. interest rate cut this week.

National City Corp said on Monday it expects a third-quarter mortgage banking loss of around $160 million, the high end of its forecast, hurt by slumping housing demand and tighter capital markets.

Dutch bank ABN AMRO NV reiterated its 2007 earnings per share target of 2.30 euros ($3.19) on Monday despite current market turmoil and said it has very limited exposure to the subprime market.

All options will be considered to save embattled bank Northern Rock, British finance minister Alistair Darling said on Monday as fears of a crisis threaten to spoil Prime Minister Gordon Brown's first year in power.

Microsoft suffered a decisive antitrust defeat in Europe on Monday, sending its shares down 2 percent in pre-market trade. A European Union court backed a European Commission ruling that Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, illegally abused its market power to crush competitors.

Europe's top competition regulator said on Monday she wanted to see a significant drop in the market share of Microsoft after the U.S. software giant lost an appeal against an EU antitrust ruling.

British bank Northern Rock Plc said on Monday it had not yet drawn any funds from an emergency facility it had arranged with the Bank of England.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Monday he is concerned about the fallout from a U.S. housing bubble but added it's unclear whether that might cause a broader upheaval in the global economy.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the industry's largest trade group, plans to unveil on Tuesday a proposal to increase U.S. federal oversight of imported food and ingredients, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on Monday.

Large-scale cultivation of transgenic crops is a necessity if India is to feed a growing population and use more of its farmland for industry and homes, a senior government official said on Monday.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf plans to quit as army chief to become a civilian leader, removing a main objection to his proposed re-election in October, a senior ruling party official said on Monday.

Nokia said on Monday it is buying U.S. cellphone screen advertising firm Enpocket as the world's top handset maker pushes into a market which is seen ballooning in coming years.

Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.'s $1.3 billion bet on subprime lending hit a sour note on Monday, when the world's largest brokerage confirmed job cuts at its First Franklin Financial Corp. unit.

Goldman Sachs on Monday forecast U.S. oil prices will surge to $85 by the end of the year, and said crude could climb as high as $90 due to tight supplies.

A U.S. delegation will begin formal negotiations with Chinese officials in Beijing this week on deals to improve food and drug safety following a series of health scares that have shaken confidence in Chinese-made goods.

Clarifying a controversial comment in his new memoir, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he told the White House before the Iraq war that removing Saddam Hussein was "essential" to secure world oil supplies, according to an interview published on Monday.

Sterling fell to its lowest level in a year on a trade-weighted basis and the yen strengthened on Monday as problems at Britain's Northern Rock bank heightened risk aversion and led investors to pare back carry trades.

Deutsche Telekom mobile phone division T-Mobile USA will use the purchase to expand growth and market presence.

Negotiators for the United Auto Workers and General Motors Corp agreed to a break in contract talks on Monday after a marathon 16-hour bargaining session that raised expectations the union and the top U.S. automaker were nearing an agreement.