NEW YORK – Lawyers for a dissident group of Chrysler LLC lenders worked Monday to block the sale of the automaker’s most valuable assets to Italian automaker Fiat, saying that the government-brokered deal isn’t fair to Chrysler’s secured creditors.

The group wants to prevent the automaker from paying $8 billion in pre-bankruptcy costs owed to its suppliers, dealers and employees, saying it would reduce the amount the lenders deserve to recover if the proposed deal with Fiat fails.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said the union will sell its 55 percent stake in Chrysler as soon as possible to fund a trust that will take over the company’s retiree health care payments starting next year.

Banks’ lending rules stricter, Fed says

A larger share of banks has made it more difficult for people to obtain home mortgages over the last three months even as demand has grown, the Federal Reserve reported Monday.

The Fed’s new quarterly survey found that about 50 percent of U.S. banks tightened lending standards on prime mortgages, up from about 45 percent in the survey issued in early February.

Panel finds faults in contractor spending

A massive contract to support U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan received a withering review Monday, as a special board investigating waste and fraud in wartime spending was told of numerous deficiencies in the arrangement that has paid KBR Inc. nearly $32 billion since 2001.

Testifying before the bipartisan Wartime Contracting Commission, April Stephenson, head of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, said her agency has referred at least 16 reports since 2004 of suspected fraud or improper conduct stemming from the contract to government investigators.

Stephenson called the number of referrals “unprecedented” for a single military contract or program.

Furniture tip-overs on kids increases

A study finds childhood injuries from falling furniture and appliances are up more than 40 percent from levels seen in the early 1990s.

Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, base their conclusions on government data collected from emergency rooms across the country between 1990 and 2007. Senior author Dr. Gary Smith says the study shows increased safety efforts are needed.

The Nationwide Children’s Center for Injury Research and Policy says nearly 15,000 children younger than 18 visit emergency rooms for tip-over injuries each year. The researchers say the majority of the cases involve children younger than 7 hurt by televisions that topple.

Ridge ponders bid for Specter’s seat

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge is seriously considering a 2010 bid for the Senate seat held by Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter and will make his decision in the next two weeks, according to several sources familiar with his thinking.

If he ran, Ridge would likely face opposition in the Republican primary from former Rep. Pat Toomey, a conservative who came within two points of knocking off Specter in the 2004 GOP primary. Toomey has made it clear that he is in the race regardless of whether Ridge, who is considered to be a moderate, runs.

Mosquito with cold? Gateses hope so

Can tomatoes be taught to make antiviral drugs for people who eat them? Would zapping your skin with a laser make your vaccination work better? Could malaria-carrying mosquitoes be given a teensy head cold that would prevent them from sniffing out a human snack bar?

These are among 81 projects awarded $100,000 grants Monday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in a bid to support innovative, unconventional global health research.

Craigslist suspect faces R.I. gun charge

A medical student jailed in Boston on suspicion of killing a masseuse he met on Craigslist was charged Monday in an arrest warrant with pulling a gun on a stripper in a Rhode Island hotel.

The warrant accuses Philip Markoff of assault and weapons violations. Authorities had previously said Markoff was the suspect in the April 16 robbery attempt at a Holiday Inn Express in Warwick.