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The federal agency in charge of product safety announced the recall of 2.1 million cribs Monday, citing defective hardware that can cause toddlers and infants to suffocate.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission said parents should immediately stop using Stork Craft drop-side cribs, which are made by Stork Craft Manufacturing Inc., of British Columbia, Canada.

About 1.2 million of the cribs have been distributed in the United States and 968,000 units distributed in Canada.

The recall includes about 147,000 Stork Craft drop-side cribs with the Fisher-Price logo, the CPSC said.

The cribs were sold at major retailers including Sears and Wal-Mart and online at Amazon.com and Target.com between January 1993 and October 2009.

The CPSC said the cribs’ drop-side, which is attached with plastic hardware, can detach unexpectedly and create a space between the crib wall and the adjacent mattress. Infants and toddlers can become trapped in the space and suffocate or fall to the floor, the agency said.

There have been 110 documented incidents of drop-side detachment, including 67 in the United States and 43 in Canada. Among those, four resulted in suffocation and 20 resulted in falls that caused injuries ranging from concussion to bumps and bruises.

It was the second time Stork Craft cribs were recalled this year. In January, about 535,000 were recalled amid safety concerns.

Safety advocates have urged federal regulators to impose tougher standards on companies that make drop-side cribs and some have called for an outright ban. "CPSC is working on new federal rules to make all cribs safer," said agency spokesperson Scott Wolfson.

Before Monday’s announcement, more than 5 million cribs, bassinets and play yards had been recalled since the beginning of 2007, according to CPSC.

This includes the recall of 400,000 drop-side cribs by manufacturer Simplicity in July, as the result of some fatalities, according to the CPSC. The agency also said that 600,000 drop-side cribs were recalled by Delta Enterprise in October electronic check payday advance. The recalls were prompted by concerns that infants and toddlers could get trapped by the mechanism of the crib and suffocate.

"This has certainly been a hazard that we’ve been aware of for some time," said Nancy Cowles, director of Kids In Danger, a Chicago-based advocacy group. Drop-side cribs have been associated with "dozens of deaths" over the years, she added.

Toys "R" Us, one of the largest retailers of nursery furniture, said it has decided to stop placing orders for drop-side cribs and expects to stop carrying them by the end of 2009.

Jennifer Albano, a Toys "R" Us spokesperson, said the company supports proposed standards that would, among other things, require that cribs no longer be manufactured with a drop-side.

Albano said a consortium of crib manufacturers, consumer safety advocates and a products standards organization met with the CPSC in March to discuss the possibility of changing voluntary production standards for cribs as part of ongoing efforts to improve safety.

However, no official decision has been made and Toys "R" Us does still have some drop-side cribs in stock, Albano said.

Major retailers in the United States and Canada sold the recalled cribs including BJ’s Wholesale Club, J.C. Penney, Kmart, Meijer, Sears (SHLD, Fortune 500), USA Baby, and Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) stores and online at Amazon.com (AMZN, Fortune 500), Babiesrus.com, Costco.com, Target.com (TGT, Fortune 500), and Walmart.com from January 1993 through October 2009 for between $100 and $400.

The cribs were manufactured in Canada, China and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, the legislature in Suffolk County, N.Y., at the eastern end of Long Island, banned sales of the drop-side crib in October.  

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GATINEAU, QUE.–Canadian television could get skinnier.

Some of the nation’s broadcasters are suggesting Canadians be offered a "skinny basic" package of TV channels, a smaller but cheaper version of the basic channels available today.

They made their arguments Tuesday during hearings before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, though cable and satellite providers are vehemently against the idea.

For consumers, the proposition might mean giving up channels on the current basic package and paying a low fee set by the CRTC for a smaller set of channels consisting of local, regional and some national programming.

It is one of several ideas Canada’s conventional broadcasters are offering to help their ailing industry, at a time when falling advertising revenue and the splintering of ad dollars among scores of channels have made local programming unprofitable.

"We know it can work. We know, on a cost basis, it can be done by cable companies," said Steven Guiton, chief regulatory officer at CBC/Radio Canada. "And that’s why we think it’s realistic."

When pressed for details of such a proposal, Hubert Lacroix, president and CEO of CBC/Radio Canada, said the state-owned broadcaster is holding its comments for a separate set of CRTC hearings scheduled for early December.

The CRTC’s commissioners quizzed CBC officials on the subject repeatedly, and threw questions about a basic package at officials of Bell Canada, who also appeared before the commission.

Both Monday and Tuesday, CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein seemed almost to beg the broadcasters and their rivals, the cable and satellite carriers, to negotiate a deal among themselves and come to him for approval. The carriers have refused to negotiate, saying they have nothing to gain.

The cable and satellite carriers are dead set against the idea of a smaller basic cable package. Bell Canada said its own basic service – which is larger than the one broadcasters are suggesting – is a loss-making venture that attracts few customers cash till payday.

"There’s little take-up, so what’s the point?" asked Mirko Bibic, Bell’s vice-president for regulatory and government affairs.

Rogers Communications Inc. argued a slightly different position on Monday: that a basic TV package, such as the one suggested by the CBC, would remove channels from Canadians and force them to replace them at a cost, leading to a widespread consumer backlash.

Pam Dinsmore, vice-president, regulatory, for Rogers Cable, said a "skinnier" package is a customer-friendly way of loading additional fees onto consumers.

Earlier, in a formal presentation to the CRTC, CBC/Radio Canada used the example of Quebec’s Vidéotron as a possible model. Under that system, consumers pay a cheaper rate for a more basic package and extra for non-basic, specialty channels.

CBC also argued Tuesday for the right to negotiate a fee for its local signals.

The CRTC has twice rejected proposals by broadcasters for so-called "fee-for-carriage," but is hearing from both sides in the debate for a third time.

Broadcasters including the CBC, Global and CTV are asking the federal government to step in and find a way to force cable and satellite providers such as Rogers Communications, Bell Canada and Shaw to sit down and negotiate a fee to carry local TV.

The carriers want to keep the status quo, which is profitable for them. However, broadcasters say their current business model is "broken" and losing them money as advertising declines.

If broadcasters win before the CRTC, the cable and satellite providers have said they would have no choice but to pass the cost on to consumers in the form of what they call a TV "tax."

The hearings continue until Nov. 27.

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China should keep the yuan stable, in part because that is beneficial for a global economic recovery, a Commerce Ministry spokesman said on Monday.

The yuan’s exchange rate has little to do with its trade imbalance, spokesman Yao Jian told a news conference.

He added that it was unfair to urge just one country to increase the value of its currency, as other currencies fall in value.

Yao was speaking shortly after International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said a stronger yuan is part of the reforms that Beijing needs to implement to increase domestic consumption and help ease global imbalances.

(Reporting by Aileen Wang and Jason Subler; Editing by Ken Wills)

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The U.S. Federal Reserve is best equipped to supervise the largest, most complex firms, a top U.S. Treasury official said on Friday.

“No regulator had a perfect record leading up to the crisis,” Deputy Secretary Neal Wolin said in prepared remarks to the American Bar Association’s banking law committee. “But in our view, the Federal Reserve is the agency best equipped for the task of supervising the largest, most complex firms.”

The comments came three days after Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, proposed consolidating bank supervisory powers in a single agency, stripping the Fed of its role as a direct bank supervisor.

Wolin did not mention Dodd by name in his comments, but said the Fed’s supervisory role gave it a deep understanding of and timely access to information about the banking sector, payment systems and capital markets no credit check payday loan.

“Stripped of its supervisory role, the Fed would not have timely and complete information in a crisis,” he said.

The Fed, the U.S. central bank, has drawn sharp criticism from some lawmakers for its handling of the financial crisis, particularly its controversial decisions to extend emergency loans to firms such as AIG, which it did not directly supervise.

(Reporting by Emily Kaiser; Editing by Neil Stempleman)

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Oilfield services leader Schlumberger Ltd reported lower quarterly earnings on Friday, hurt by weaker energy prices and slowing exploration spending.

Third-quarter net profit sank to $789 million, or 65 cents per share, from $1.54 billion, or $1.25 a share, a year earlier. The results beat the analysts’ average estimate by 2 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue slumped by about a quarter to 5.4 billion. Oilfield services revenue sank 22 percent to $4.95 billion.

“Our outlook for the remainder of 2009 assumes a continued modest recovery in North American gas drilling but no significant improvement in service pricing,” Chief Executive Officer Andrew Gould said in a statement.

(Reporting by Christopher Kaufman in New York and Braden Reddall in San Francisco; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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As the deadline passes on a U.S. tax amnesty program that has lured thousands of wealthy Americans to declare offshore assets, attention now turns to prosecutions of those who kept their holdings hidden.

The Internal Revenue Service’s amnesty program, which ends at 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday, has seen 7,500 individuals come forward over six months, getting in before the IRS pursues them. In exchange they get vastly lowered penalties and in most cases protection against criminal prosecution.

For those who failed to turn themselves in, the Justice Department is pursuing criminal cases.

The U.S. government has already opened cases against about 150 clients of UBS AG, names it obtained when the Swiss bank paid $780 million to settle a criminal suit in February after admitting it helped Americans skirt the law.

In August, UBS settled a related civil case by agreeing to turn over about 4,450 client names.

Government officials say the issue is bigger than UBS and any one country.

“The IRS has new momentum in this entire area and in the coming months our efforts will only intensify,” IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said on Wednesday. He added that the government will be “scouring” the amnesty forms for clues of other financial advisors who aided evaders.

A top U.S. prosecutor recently said cases will be brought every few weeks. Private lawyers say the cases are crucial for deterrence.

“The criminal tax prosecutor’s job is to keep a handful of cases in the media so that everyone will see that there is at least that potential for being prosecuted,” said Mark Matthews, a former IRS deputy commissioner for enforcement who now counsels private clients.

He said to keep the momentum going, the government will need to shift resources beyond UBS.

“This story has understandably focused on one financial institution and one country, but the truth is this was a global offer,” for amnesty, Matthews said.

Indeed, IRS announced on Wednesday it was broadening its international presence, opening new offices in Beijing, Sydney and Panama City.

Clients of other banks have come in under the amnesty program, including those of UBS rival Credit Suisse and London-based HSBC, lawyers said.

“The IRS has done a very good job of scaring the hell out of everybody,” said Ken Rubinstein, a lawyer with his own firm who counsel clients in tax matters. He said he expects more prosecutions to keep the heat on offshore bank customers.

The precedent set by the UBS case will allow the government to get more information from other countries and banks, he added. 

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The nation’s service sector expanded in September for the first time in more than a year, according to a report from a purchasing managers’ group released Monday.

The Institute for Supply Management’s non-manufacturing index rose to 50.9 last month from 48.4 in August. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected a reading of 50, which is the point at which the index reflects expansion.

It was the second consecutive month of improvement in the index, which last indicated expansion in August 2008.

The services sector, which includes businesses such as banks, airlines and restaurants, makes up the bulk of economic activity in the United States.

The ISM’s new orders index, which measures requests for services such as construction labor, rose 4.3 points to 54.2. The business activity index added 3.8 points to 55.1 last month.

Both measures are now at their highest levels since before the recession began, according to Tim Quinlan, an economic analyst at Wells Fargo.

Those gains "suggest that businesses outside of manufacturing are transitioning from recession to recovery," Quinlan wrote in a research report.

The index that measures employment in the sector edged up less than one point to 44.3, but it remains well below the level indicating job growth in the sector.

"Jobs are still a major concern," said Ryan Sweet, senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com. "The employment index is weak and points toward a very slow improvement in the labor market."

Still, the larger-than-expected rise in the overall number could mean that U.S. gross domestic product will come in at a 3% annual rate of growth during the third quarter, according to Sweet.

Prices paid by service sector firms fell sharply in September. The prices index sank 14.3 points to 48.8, indicating a significant reversal and decrease in prices paid from August, according to the report.

The ISM said 15 of the 18 service sectors in the survey expect to derive some benefit from the government’s economic stabilization program.  

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Global finance chiefs made little headway on Sunday in overcoming long-standing disagreements over how much power rich nations should cede to major developing countries at the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF’s 186 member countries, however, did find some common ground, agreeing the institution should develop a set of principles by April to guide nations as they get ready to pull back on extraordinary recession-battling measures.

“We’re not out of the woods but we’re well on our way,” said Youssef Boutros-Ghali, Egypt’s finance minister and chair of the IMF’s policy-steering committee. “Exit strategies are being discussed but they are nowhere near being implemented now until we firm up the recovery in the world economy.”

The IMF, which has committed about $175 billion in loans to countries around the world this year, says it will need more resources if it is to oversee the recovery of the global economy and help prevent future crises.

But this depends on giving emerging market economies a greater say. If a member’s voting share is increased, they are required to increase how much money they provide the Fund.

IMF members aim to conclude talks on voting power by January 2011.

“The task of realigning quota shares with current global realities remains politically vexing,” the IMF’s board said in a report weighing in on the issue at the Fund’s semiannual meeting here.

While the steering committee supported an agreement struck just more than a week ago by the Group of 20 nations to shift at least 5 percent of the IMF’s voting power to developing economies, emerging powers said it was not enough pay day loans.

Major emerging economies are demanding the developed world shift no less than 7 percent of its share to growing powers, like China.

“We can only hope that over-represented advanced countries will realize that they may do great harm to the Fund if they attempt to block or delay quota and voice reform,” Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega told the meeting.

He said the Fund needed to change so it could “cease to be regarded as mainly an American-European institution.”

The demand for a 7 percent shift is meeting resistance from the developed world, particularly European nations, which do not want to give up too much of their own power.

Finance Minister Anders Borg of Sweden, which currently holds the European Union presidency, warned that Europe could become less generous in its financial support of the Fund if it lost influence over it.

“Adequate participation in the decision-making process … is a prerequisite for our taxpayers’ continued support of large financial contributions,” he said.

GROWING DEMAND 

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Pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. is pushing further into the renewable-energy market, announcing today a plan to purchase the largest solar power farm in Canada from U.S. solar manufacturer First Solar Inc.

Enbridge, the country’s biggest distributor of natural gas, said it will spend $100 million this year on its solar strategy, and expects its newly acquired Sarnia Solar Project to be fully operational by the end of this year.

"The Sarnia Solar Project is right in the sweet spot of Enbridge’s renewable energy strategy," said Enbridge president and chief executive officer Patrick Daniel. "It has risk and return characteristics which are fully consistent with Enbridge’s low-risk business model, and similar to our crude oil pipeline business."

The projects were originally owned by California solar manufacturer OptiSolar Inc., which had obtained 20-year contracts with the Ontario Power Authority to sell its solar electricity into the provincial grid for 42 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Those contracts were obtained under an older renewable-energy standard offer program (RESOP), which has since been replaced with a new feed-in tariff (FIT) program launched last month.

But OptiSolar ran into trouble during the economic downturn, so in April sold the rights to its Ontario solar projects to Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar empire payday loans. Since then, First Solar has built more than 65 per cent of the 20-megawatt project, which on sunny days can put out enough power to meet the needs of 3,200 homes.

On average, the Sarnia Solar Project will produce 30 million kilowatt-hours annually, equating to revenues of $12.6 million a year for Enbridge. The company already owns four wind-energy projects in Canada totaling 260 megawatts, including a 190-megawatt wind farm in Bruce County.

"Subject to certain conditions, Enbridge may participate with First Solar in future solar energy projects at the Sarnia site," the company said.

First Solar will continue to supply its thin-film solar modules to the Sarnia Solar Project. The RESOP program, unlike the new FIT program, does not have local content rules that make it difficult to use foreign-made solar equipment.

Enbridge won’t be alone in owning a massive solar farm in Ontario. Toronto-based SkyPower Corp. and joint-venture partner SunEdison LLC from Maryland have completed a 9-megawatt project near the town of Stone Mills. It is the first phase of a 19-megawatt solar farm called First Light.

Several other multi-megawatts solar farms in Ontario are under construction or in early development.

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Hungary’s central bank will probably cut the benchmark interest rate to the lowest in 18 months today to help the first European Union country to secure a bailout last year overcome its worst recession in 18 years.

The Magyar Nemzeti Bank in Budapest will lower the two-week deposit rate to 7.5 percent from 8 percent, a third consecutive monthly reduction, according to 10 analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Two expect a cut to 7.25 percent. The decision will be announced at 2 p.m.

Policy makers have trimmed 1.5 percentage points off the key rate since July and have said they will continue to ease monetary policy as long as financial stability is maintained. The central bank expects the recession to slow inflation to its target next year.

“The current market situation provides sufficient room for the continuation of the easing cycle, without any threat to financial stability,” Gyorgy Barta and Sandor Jobbagy, economists at the Budapest-based unit of Intesa SanPaolo SpA, said in a note to clients.

Twenty of the 53 central banks tracked by Bloomberg eased monetary conditions in the past three months to fight the recession, including east European countries such as Russia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic in August and September.

IMF Bailout

Hungarian policy makers held rates unchanged between January and June to protect the slumping currency. Investors sold off the forint and the country’s stocks and bonds last year, citing concern about the nation’s ability to repay its debt.

Hungary in October secured a 20 billion-euro ($29 billion) emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund, the EU and the World Bank and the central bank lifted the benchmark rate to 11.5 percent from 8.5 percent in an emergency move.

Policy makers rolled back that increase by July, when they resumed rate cuts after a six-month pause as the forint strengthened from a record low against the euro in March. The currency has gained 14 percent since then, making it the fourth- best performer in the past six months of the 26 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg.

CDS

Hungarian credit default swaps linked to five-year bonds, the cost of protection against a default, fell to 215.5 basis points on Sept. 25 from as much as 638 basis points in March and 408 basis points on April 14, when Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai took over after the recession toppled his predecessor.

Hungary will be able to return to market financing after measures to curb the budget gap regained investor confidence, Bajnai said in an interview on Sept. 23.

“If there’s no sudden downturn in the markets, then I would expect Hungary to be able to fund itself,” he said. “Hungary has understood this crisis, turned around its economy. Hungary will be one of those economies in 2011, 2012 that will come out of this crisis fastest in the region.”

The economy will probably contract 6.7 percent this year and 0.9 percent next year before returning to growth in 2011, according to the central bank. The recession means there is “no inflationary pressure” and the annual rate of consumer price increases is set to fall to the bank’s 3 percent target next year, the central bank said in the minutes of last month’s rate- setting meeting.

The annual inflation rate unexpectedly fell to 5 percent in August from 5.1 percent in July as an increase in the value- added tax rate had a less pronounced impact as retailers were reluctant to pass on the increase to customers because of slumping demand.

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