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Rescue workers are searching for 49 men in freezing, remote waters off Russia’s east coast after their oil drilling platform capsized and sank amid fierce storms Sunday.

By nightfall, four men had been confirmed dead, and 14 others had been plucked from the churning, icy waters by the ship that had been towing the Kolskaya platform. But the search for the remaining men was hampered by freezing temperatures, a driving blizzard and strong winds.

Dmitry Dmitriyenko, governor of the Murmansk region in Russia’s north-west where 33 of the men come from, urged friends and families not to lose hope late Sunday, but admitted the chance of the men surviving in the one degree Celsius (33.8 Fahrenheit) water is approaching zero.

“This is a terrible disaster which took the crew unawares,” he said in a statement. “But there is still a chance.”

The Emergencies Ministry said that 67 people had been aboard the platform as it was being towed about 200 kilometers (120 miles) off the coast of Sakhalin, a large island just north of Japan in the North Pacific, that until the late 19th century was the Russian Empire’s most remote penal colony.

Airplanes and helicopters patrolled the area Sunday, but called their search off just after sunset. Ministry officials said two boats will continue the search throughout the night, and the air search team would return with another two ships in the morning.

The Transportation Ministry said the platform started sinking after a strong wave broke some of its equipment and the portholes in the crew’s dining room.

One 5-meter (16-foot) wave washed away its lifeboats, leaving the crew with no escape, and several hours later it sank, officials said.

There were no immediate reports of environmental damage _ unlikely as the platform was not drilling for oil when it capsized and carried a negligible amount of fuel.

The Kolskaya was built in Finland in 1985 and is owned by Russian offshore exploration firm Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka.

Sakhalin is a largely undeveloped area, dominated by pristine nature. Russia, United States, Europe and Japan have worked off its shores for a nearly decade, producing oil and gas. There have not been any previous significant accidents in the region.

As oil and gas fields in Eastern Siberia are becoming depleted, Russian oil and gas companies are starting to shift their focus to offshore projects, unveiling ambitious plans to tap the riches of the Arctic.

Earlier this year, Exxon Mobil and Russia’s largest oil producer Rosneft teamed up to jointly explore oil and gas fields in the Kara Sea with Exxon pledging $3.2 billion of investment on only three fields.

The Investigative Committee on Sunday opened a probe into the accident and said that it might have happened because of a breach of safety regulations, or due to the harsh weather conditions.

Alexei Knizhnikov, an energy policy official in Russia for the World Wildlife Fund, told the RIA Novosti news agency that energy companies ought to learn from the accident.

“This disaster should highlight the high risks of offshore projects,” he said. “It’s very difficult to conduct efficient rescue operations, whether it’s rescuing people or dealing with oil spills, in the weather and conditions of the Arctic.”

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An attorney for Bank of America says 13.2 million customers may be eligible for a settlement in a lawsuit claiming the bank charged excessive overdraft fees.

The final tabulation came Monday as a Miami judge considers whether to finalize a $410 million settlement during a hearing to consider any objections or other issues related to the deal reached in May.

The class-action lawsuit contends the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank processed its debit card and check payments in a way that triggered more overdrafts and therefore more fees. Even though it agreed to the settlement, the bank insists the overdraft system was proper.

The lawsuit covers people with Bank of America debit cards between January 2001 and May 2011.

New bank regulations prohibit this type of debit card fee unless customers approve.

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China’s high-flying economy is starting to lose altitude. The big question is whether the world’s economic superstar will descend gradually _ or so fast that it harms a fragile global economy.

China’s comedown is being engineered by its policymakers. They want to slow its growth rate just enough to cool inflation without sapping job growth.

It’s a delicate task.

“Nobody can say with any confidence” if they’ll succeed, says Barry Eichengreen, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

China’s explosive growth remains the envy of developed nations like the United States. It grew faster than any other major economy in the April-June quarter, according to The Associated Press’ latest quarterly Global Economy Tracker. Only Argentina’s much smaller economy matched China’s 9.5 percent annual growth rate.

By contrast, the U.S. economy grew at a 1.3 percent rate in the April-June quarter, before expanding 2.5 percent in the July-September period.

The AP’s Global Economy Tracker monitors economic and financial data in 30 countries representing more than 80 percent of global output.

Economists worry that China’s economy could suffer what they call a “hard landing.” A sudden plunge in China’s growth would harm the economies of the United States, Europe and small countries that need China to buy their coal, copper and other raw materials.

On Tuesday, a Chinese government group said manufacturing grew in October at the slowest pace in nearly three years, partly due to weak export orders. It forecast that the economy would slow further the rest of the year.

The threat from a slower-growing Chinese economy comes as the United States is still struggling to recover from the Great Recession of 2007-2009. And an agreement last week to ease Europe’s debt crisis might not prevent the continent from sliding back into a recession that would ripple through the United States and other countries.

When surveyed this year by the Society of Actuaries, corporate risk managers in the United States, Canada and elsewhere said a slowdown in China posed the greatest threat to their business.

A hard landing wouldn’t just squeeze U.S. and European exporters. It could also destabilize Chinese society. And it could escalate global trade tensions.

Hampered by inflation above 6 percent and slowing exports, China’s growth is expected to decelerate from 10.3 percent last year to 9.5 percent in 2011 and 9 percent in 2012, according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF expects the global economy to grow 4 percent this year.

Developing countries emerged faster than other nations from the Great Recession. They’re now growing much faster than rich countries. According to the AP’s global tracker:

_The three fastest in the April-June quarter were China (a 9.5 percent annual growth rate), Argentina (9.5 percent) and Indonesia (6.5 percent).

_The laggards are from the industrialized world _ Japan (down 1.1 percent), Norway (up 0.3 percent) and Britain (up 0.6 percent).

_Growth is slowing worldwide. It weakened from a year earlier in 19 of 26 countries that reported April-June data.

China’s gaudy growth doesn’t mean much to Xie Jun, who runs a factory in the southern Chinese boomtown of Dongguan. He’s enduring a tough year.

His company makes and exports headphones, cell phones and computer accessories. It’s paying 30 percent to 50 percent more this year for chemicals, fuel and other raw materials. Labor costs have nearly doubled.

Xie’s customers are reducing orders, forcing him to lay off more than 10 percent of his staff at Dongguan Jincai Real Co. and leaving him with about 100 workers.

“I just feel hopeless,” Xie, 45, says. “It’s hard to say if it will get any better next year.”

China will likely account for nearly a third of global growth this year.

Exporting countries depend on China’s demand for raw materials and consumer goods. Mines in Australia and Chile supply coal, copper and iron ore. General Motors sells more vehicles in China than anywhere else, including the United States. China was the No. 3 destination for U.S. merchandise exports last year, behind Canada and Mexico.

China’s trading partners are watching warily to see whether it can avoid a hard landing. Economist Nouriel Roubini has defined a hard landing as a drop in annual growth to 5 percent or less. He says China must expand 8 percent a year just to keep enough people employed to “maintain its social and political stability cash advances pay day loan.”

Eswar Prasad, professor of global trade at Cornell University, puts the odds of a hard landing in China at 50-50.

Other analysts say they’re confident China’s policymakers will manage to reduce inflation gently without stifling growth too much.

The authorities “are well-aware of the risks,” says Bob Mark, who runs Black Diamond Risk Enterprises and has advised Chinese banks. “It’s not like they’re going to be blindsided.”

China’s central bank has raised interest rates five times since mid-2010 to try to shrink inflation. Even so, consumer prices jumped 6.2 percent from August 2010 to August 2011. That was fifth-fastest among the 30 countries in the AP’s global tracker. In the United States, by contrast, prices rose 3.8 percent in the 12 months ending in August.

News that China’s growth dipped to 9.1 percent in the July-September quarter from 9.5 in the April-June period was met with relief by some economists. Rajat Nag, managing director of the Asian Development Bank, says it suggests a soft landing ahead.

Eichengreen notes that Beijing’s communist authorities “have lots of levers they can pull, unlike U.S. authorities.”

Senior bureaucrats in effect run the economy. The government owns most of the biggest companies and banks. It controls the currency.

Officials can, for example, suppress the value of China’s currency, the yuan. A lower yuan makes Chinese goods cheaper overseas. The United States has long accused China of keeping its currency artificially low to give its exporters an unfair edge.

Chinese policymakers can also order state-owned banks to lend if the economy slows much. They can command local governments to keep workers busy building roads and bridges.

Roubini, a New York University economist who runs a research firm, thinks China’s authorities will use all those tools to keep the economy growing briskly through 2012. They’ll want to ensure a smooth transition next year, when a new president and premier will come to power.

But Roubini and others worry that the outlook after that is bleaker. He thinks China’s growth could sink to 5 percent or less in 2013 or 2014.

At the heart of the problem is how China has stoked its expansion. It hasn’t encouraged its consumers to drive the economy with their spending, as Americans do. Instead, it’s juiced growth by pushing exports and investing in factories, roads, railways and real estate.

Such investments account for about half of China’s gross domestic product, a broad gauge of economic activity. That is a wildly lopsided share that suggests China is investing in far more construction than it needs.

In most major countries, consumer spending, not investment, drives the economy. Last year, for example, consumers accounted for more than 70 percent of GDP in the United States, 63 percent in Britain, 58 percent in Germany and 57 percent in Japan. In China, consumer spending represented just 39 percent of GDP.

Behind China’s investment boom are bank loans that might never be repaid, because the projects aren’t expected to throw off enough revenue.

Roubini’s research firm estimates that China has wasted $1.4 trillion since 2008 on investments that will likely end up as bad debts.

Optimists say China is merely planning for the future. A growing middle class will eventually occupy the new houses, ride the new trains, fly from the new airports and drive new cars on the new highways. The new factories will make goods to meet rising demand at home and abroad.

But demographics pose another problem. China is aging fast. Largely, that’s because of population control policies that limit most families to one child. This year, 8.9 percent of Chinese were 65 or older. By 2021, 12.9 percent will be.

“A significant slowdown is coming because their labor force is aging,” Eichengreen says. By 2015 or 2016, he says, China’s growth could slow to 5 percent or 6 percent.

Economists have urged China to rely more on its consumers and less on exports and dubious investments. In Dongguan, factory owner Xie would agree.

“I am thinking about focusing more on the domestic market next year,” he says. “At least we have 1.3 billion people. It is a big market.”

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TORONTO

China and the European Union on Friday called off a summit of their leaders next week so European officials can remain at home for talks on the continent’s debt crisis.

The one-day meeting planned for Tuesday in the eastern Chinese city of Tianjin will be rescheduled to a later date, the Chinese government and the European Council announced.

The meeting was scheduled to include Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, EU President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and other officials from the two sides. Several hundred European and Chinese businesspeople also were to have held a conference while the leaders met paydayloans.

Friday’s cancellation came after European leaders scheduled meetings through the weekend to seek a solution to the continent’s debt crisis.

In a phone call with van Rompuy, Wen said the most important thing is to prevent the debt crisis from spreading and “a serious economic recession,” according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

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A political consultant stole more than $1 million from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg because he wanted to buy his father’s house, a prosecutor said Monday.

Republican consultant John Haggerty didn’t have the money to pay for the house, but he did have “access to one of the largest mayoral campaigns this city has ever seen. … And with it, the mayor’s money,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Brian Weinberg told jurors as Haggerty’s trial opened.

Prosecutors say Haggerty got Bloomberg to underwrite an elaborate 2009 poll-watching effort run by the state Independence Party but then mounted only a meager operation and used most of the money instead to buy the house. Haggerty says he did the job he was paid for and didn’t do anything illegal guaranteed unsecured personal loan.

Bloomberg, an independent, was running for re-election and was the Independence Party’s top candidate.

Defense lawyer Raymond Castello said the campaign used Haggerty as a scapegoat after questions arose on whether the campaign had followed campaign-finance law.

He said the mayor donated over $1 million to the Independence Party in order to maintain a distance from what could be seen as a questionable practice.

“This case is about winning at all costs,” Castello said. “That’s what Michael Bloomberg is all about.”

Bloomberg is expected to testify in the trial.

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A stock trader dubbed the Octopussy because he reached for so much inside information was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison and a California finance researcher convicted in a separate but related insider trading case received a four-year prison term as two judges tried to send a stern warning to Wall Street.

“Insider trading is very, very hard to detect. Because of that, it has to be dealt with harshly,” U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan said as he gave 34-year-old Zvi Goffer one of the longest prison terms ever handed down in an insider trading case. He added: “These crimes are not going to be tolerated, certainly not in my courtroom.”

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said it was important that each sentence send a tougher message to deter inside trading than previously thought necessary.

“It’s hard to detect but easy to commit so the temptations are great,” Rakoff said as he sentenced Winifred Jiau, 43, of Fremont, Calif., who has remained imprisoned for nine months because it was determined that the Taiwan-born researcher was a risk to flee. Still, the sentence was only half of what was called for by federal sentencing guidelines.

The Israeli-born Goffer, who lives in Brooklyn, was convicted with two others in June in a conspiracy to pay bribes to coax confidential information out of two shady lawyers at a Manhattan firm. The arrests were part of what prosecutors called the biggest hedge fund insider trading case in history. In all, more than two dozen people have been convicted in the probe.

The sentencings Wednesday came weeks before the scheduled sentencing next month of Raj Rajaratnam, a one-time billionaire hedge fund founder who was convicted on insider trading charges earlier this year. Prosecutors say he made more than $50 million through illegal trades and are seeking a prison term of more than 24 years.

When the charges against Rajaratnam and Goffer were announced in the fall of 2009, prosecutors said they had made unprecedented use of wiretaps, in part because white collar criminals were starting to use techniques to cover up their crimes that made them resemble common criminals.

The wiretaps eventually led to a separate probe of researchers in the securities industry who enable illegal secrets to be passed between hedge fund managers and employees of public companies. Jiau was among 13 people arrested last year in that probe.

At his sentencing, Goffer apologized to investors in the stocks in which he had an unfair advantage, saying: “They didn’t have the information I had.”

He began crying when he apologized to his brother, Emanuel, who was convicted at trial along with him and is awaiting sentencing. A third defendant, Michael Kimelman, also awaits sentencing.

“He knows I love him,” he said of his brother. Zvi Goffer said he didn’t always understand the seriousness of the crime but had awakened to its tragic consequences.

“Now today I have to face it and I am terrified,” he said.

The sentence caused Goffer’s wife to break down in sobs.

“What am I going to do?” she called out in court at one point. “It’s not fair!” A woman beside her then shouted a profanity, causing Sullivan to rise from the bench and threaten to bring in U.S. marshals to make arrests.

“This is a courtroom, not a street corner,” he said. “I am not going to tolerate this.”

Goffer was convicted by a jury that viewed evidence that he had arranged to pay two attorneys nearly $100,000 in 2007 and 2008 for inside tips on mergers and acquisitions.

During the two-week trial, prosecutors introduced evidence that Goffer gave conspirators prepaid cellular telephones in an effort to reduce detection by law enforcement.

The judge said Goffer had repeatedly demonstrated that he knew he was breaking the law and didn’t care.

“It’s a game that you and others seem to find exciting,” he said, adding that Goffer had a gambler’s mentality that led him to “double down and go to trial” when he would have shaved three years off his prison sentence by accepting responsibility before trial and admitting his crimes.

“You went for broke. You gambled and lost on that, too,” Sullivan said.

Before starting his own firm, Goffer worked for nine months for Rajaratnam.

Jiau was convicted of charges that she conspired to accept cash and gifts to feed inside information to hedge funds.

Jiau, a U.S. citizen, worked for two years as a consultant for Primary Global Research, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company.

Prosecutors said she earned more than $200,000 by selling “tomorrow’s news today” about earnings and performance of publicly traded companies. The information, they say, was communicated in code with her co-defendants, sometimes using “cooks” to refer to tipsters, “recipe” for the inside information and “sugar” for what she was paid for

Lawyers for both Jiau and Goffer said their clients were left in financial ruin and their careers were destroyed.

Jiau told Rakoff she was “sorry for being here.”

She also apologized to her dog, a Golden Retriever named Hunter who is being cared for by friends, saying: “I’m sorry I broke my promise to take care of you and be with you.”

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Twenty-five of the 100 largest U.S. corporations paid their chief executives more last year than they paid in federal income taxes, according to a report released Wednesday.

The nonprofit Institute for Policy Studies says the 25 CEOs averaged $16.7 million in salary and other 2010 compensation.

Most of the companies they ran, meanwhile, came out ahead at tax time. They collected tax refunds that averaged $304 million, based on a review of public filings. The think tank says the 25 firms that paid out more in CEO compensation than U.S. taxes reported average global profits of $1.9 billion.

The institute, based in Washington, describes itself as a community of public scholars that works with social movements to promote democracy and challenge corporate influence and military power.

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DuPont Co. has told federal officials it is willing to stop the sale of a new herbicide that is blamed for damaging trees in many parts of the country and is the subject of several lawsuits.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged DuPont’s offer to pull Imprelis from the market in a letter sent Wednesday to DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman. At the same time, the EPA said it was evaluating the validity of DuPont’s claims that studies relating to Imprelis that it has turned over to federal regulators are confidential business information and cannot be disclosed to the public.

In a separate letter, the EPA said DuPont may have misbranded the herbicide because label directions and warnings are inadequate to protect non-target plant species from being harmed by the weedkiller.

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