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Police have arrested 14 Greenpeace activists who climbed aboard an oil rig off Greenland’s coast to protest deepwater drilling in the Arctic.

Four Greenpeace members are still onboard the Leiv Eiriksson oil rig, where they have locked themselves in two separate crane cabins, police and the environmental group said Saturday.

The rig is operated by Scottish oil group Cairn Energy, which has temporarily suspended its drilling due to the protest.

Police spokesman Morten Nielsen said those arrested will be taken to Nuuk, the semiautonomous Danish territory’s capital, and kept in detention. “I’m not sure whether we’re making more arrests today,” he said.

The activists launched five inflatable boats from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza early Saturday, bypassing the Danish navy and scaling the giant rig to demand that the company publish its plan for managing a potential oil spill in the freezing waters.

Greenpeace says Cairn Energy is not taking enough precautions to avoid accidents like the BP’s Gulf of Mexico blowout last year, saying the remoteness and the freezing temperatures in the area would make any spill cleanup extremely difficult.

Cairn insisted that it “seeks to operate in a safe and prudent manner” and that Greenland authorities have established stringent operating regulations similar to those in the North Sea quick guaranteed personal loans. It also said it has developed “an extensive emergency response and oil spill response plan” but that is not publicly available after a decision by Greenland authorities.

Cairn last month won permission to drill up to seven oil exploration wells off the Arctic island’s west coast.

Greenland’s government has called the Greenpeace action a publicity stunt that comes at the expense of Greenland’s “legitimate right” to develop its economy.

Earlier this week, two Greenpeace activists were arrested under the rig, hanging just a few meters from the drill-bit and preventing Cairn from starting drilling for four days.

Greenpeace says it has received a legal summons from Cairn’s lawyers for having cost the company up to $4 million for every day it could not drill and could face substantial fines for the security breaches. The lawsuit will be heard Monday in a Dutch court.

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Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and the CEO of Chrysler say it

The International Monetary Fund said it aims to complete the selection of a successor to Dominique Strauss-Kahn by June 30.

Countries will be able to nominate candidates for the managing director’s position between May 23 and June 10, the Washington-based IMF said in a statement today. The board will meet with all candidates if there are fewer than four and with a short list if there are more.

The procedure “allows the selection of the next managing director to take place in an open, merit-based, and transparent manner,” said Shakour Shaalan, the senior member of the 24- person board.

The IMF said the board’s objective is to select the managing director by consensus.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde emerged as the leading contender to replace Strauss-Kahn, who was indicted yesterday on charges including attempted rape, as European officials moved to maintain control over the institution.

Officials in emerging markets including Thailand, Russia and South Africa said the next IMF managing director should come from a developing nation even as they failed to unite behind one candidate the way Europe coalesced around Lagarde.

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In case you missed the recent media blitz, this week marked the one-year anniversary of Panera Bread Co.’s experimental pay-what-you-want nonprofit cafe in Clayton fast cash without a hassle.

Yes, one year later, the cafe is still kicking.

Based on its success, Panera’s foundation has transferred two more cafes to the nonprofit model

A loss of momentum on Wall Street, dropping commodity prices and worries over Europe’s debt problems caused Asian stock markets to sag Monday.

Oil prices fell below $99 a barrel as crude became more expensive for investors with other currencies amid gains in the U.S. dollar.

Doubts about the strength of the U.S. economic recovery have weighed on Wall Street and markets elsewhere recently. After sailing through their best first quarter since 1998, U.S. stocks are starting to lose some momentum.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index, a broad market benchmark, is up just 1 percent this quarter after jumping 5.4 percent in the first three months of the year. That weaker performance is in large part because of conflicting data about the health of the U.S. economy.

Sluggishness on Wall Street was a sign that “investors continued to worry about slowing global growth and European debt concerns,” said Ben Potter of IG Markets in Melbourne.

Meanwhile, the arrest Saturday in New York of International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn on attempted rape charges was unlikely to directly affect Asian markets.

But the incident might prove a distraction in Europe, where the the IMF and Strauss-Kahn have been heavily involved in trying to resolve debt crises in countries such as Portugal and Greece, said Jackson Wong, vice president at Tanrich Securities in Hong Kong.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropped 0.9 percent to 9,560.46 with banking shares incurring losses following comments last week by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano suggesting that Tokyo Electric Power Co. will need help repaying its debts. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. lost 1 percent. Mizuho Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. both lost 1.5 percent.

Edano said Friday that TEPCO may need adjustments to its loans to help it cope with financial losses incurred following twin natural disasters on March 11 _ an earthquake and subsequent tsunami that smashed into one of the company’s nuclear plants in northeastern Japan.

The utility has been struggling for two months to bring a radiation leak from the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi plant under control. TEPCO has sought a 2 trillion yen ($24.8 billion) loan to tide it through the initial emergency period. It also expects to pay 50 billion yen ($620 million) in initial compensation to nearly 80,000 residents evacuated from around the plant. Overall damages are expected to be much higher.

South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.5 percent to 2,110.99, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 1.2 percent to 23,000.44. Benchmarks in Australia, Singapore and Taiwan were also lower, while those in New Zealand and the Philippines rose.

Falling commodities prices were keeping stock investors at bay, said Wong. Oil, for example, was nearly $114 a barrel at the end of April but is now below $100 per barrel. A slump on Wall Street on Friday also weighed on investor nerves.

On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 100.17 points to close at 12,595.75. The S&P 500 fell 0.8 percent to 1,337.77, and the Nasdaq lost 1.2 percent to 2,828.47.

Benchmark crude for June delivery was down 98 cents to $98.67 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract settled at $99.65 per barrel Friday, up 68 cents.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.4089 from $1.4110 in late afternoon trading Friday in New York. The dollar strengthened to 80.95 yen from 80.84 yen.

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Spain’s underlying inflation rate accelerated in April at the fastest pace in more than two years, adding to evidence of pressure on prices as the European Central Bank signals it will continue to raise interest rates.

Core consumer prices, which exclude energy and fresh food, gained 2.1 percent from a year earlier, after a 1.7 percent increase the previous month, the National Statistics Institute in Madrid said today. That was the highest rate since December 2008. Headline inflation, based on European Union calculations, was 3.5 percent, matching an initial estimate on April 29.

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said on May 9 the world’s central bankers are united in fighting inflation after the Frankfurt-based bank raised interest rates in April for the first time in almost three years us fast cash. Euro-area inflation is already in breach of the ECB’s 2 percent ceiling, accelerating to 2.8 percent in April, and Spanish inflation is outpacing the regional average even as the indebted economy struggles to emerge from a three-year slump.

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China reported a more-than-estimated $11.4 billion trade surplus for April as U.S. officials pushed at talks in Washington for faster gains in the yuan.

Today’s number, released by the customs bureau, compared with a surplus of $140 million the previous month and $1.68 billion a year earlier. Import growth slowed to 21.8 percent in April from a year earlier while exports grew 29.9 percent.

At the start of the two-day Strategic and Economic Dialogue yesterday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said China has been making progress “towards a more flexible exchange rate” and weaning its economy off a dependence on exports. The yuan has strengthened this year to the highest levels since 1993 and the fastest inflation since 2008 may encourage officials to allow more gains to pare import costs.

“The yuan is facing great appreciation pressure” because of inflation, Ma Jun, chief China economist at Deutsche Bank AG, said before the data. Political relations with the U.S. play “a very delicate role” in the nation’s currency policy, he said.

The median forecast of 27 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a $3.2 billion surplus.

The People’s Bank of China set the yuan’s reference rate at a record high of 6.4988 per dollar yesterday and allowed the currency to strengthen 0.9 percent in April, the biggest monthly gain this year.

‘Unjust’ Manipulation

Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, urged the U.S. administration to press China on the currency issue and also said Congress should pass legislation to protect American workers from an undervalued yuan. Brown and Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican from Maine, have proposed a measure to allow additional sanctions to address currency issues.

“The Obama Administration has a unique opportunity during this meeting to urge Chinese officials to stop the unfair and unjust currency manipulation that threatens American manufacturing and eliminates American jobs,” Brown said in a statement. “China’s unfair currency manipulation has gone on for far too long, and it’s clear that legislation is needed to level the playing field.”

The U.S. has delayed its semi-annual foreign-exchange report, which had been due on April 15, until after this week’s meetings. The previous report, due on Oct. 15, 2010, was released on Feb. 4 and declined to brand China a currency manipulator while saying the No. 2 U.S. trading partner has made “insufficient” progress on allowing the yuan to rise.

China argues that its currency is not a key cause of global economic imbalances, and highlights the role of U.S. restrictions on Chinese purchases of high-technology products in lopsided trade between the two nations.

April Inflation

In China, consumer prices rose 5.4 percent in March, the most in 32 months, and may have climbed 5.2 percent in April, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. The statistics bureau will release inflation data in Beijing tomorrow.

Exports rose to $155.7 billion in April and imports climbed to $144.3 billion, the customs bureau said today. The median forecast in Bloomberg News surveys was for a 29.5 percent gain in overseas sales and a 28.9 percent jump in inbound shipments.

“The price factors that have boosted the import bill recently are expected to ease markedly due to the recent sharp correction in global commodity prices,” Deutsche Bank’s Ma said.

Commodities had their worst weekly plunge since December 2008 last week, with oil declining 15 percent. Higher fuel and raw-material prices had contributed to the nation recording its first quarterly trade deficit since 2004 in the January-to-March period.

Companies benefiting from the nation’s trade gains this year include Cosco Pacific Ltd., part of China’s largest shipping group. Cosco said it more than doubled first-quarter profit, helped by a 20 percent increase in throughput at its container terminals after it added facilities to cope with rising exports of toys, furniture and auto parts to the U.S. and Europe.

–Victoria Ruan. Editors: Nerys Avery, Paul Panckhurst

To contact Bloomberg News staff on this story: Victoria Ruan in Beijing at +86-10-6649-7570 vruan1@bloomberg.net

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The data breach that hit Sony’s PlayStation Network resulted from a “very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber-attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes,” a Sony executive said.

In a letter to members of the House Commerce Committee released Wednesday, Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC, defended the company’s handling of the breach.

Sony first disclosed the attack last week and said it may have compromised credit card data, email addresses and other personal information from 77 million user accounts. On Monday, Sony said data from an additional 24.6 million online gaming accounts also may have been stolen.

The company has shut down the affected systems while it investigates the attacks and beefs up security. Hirai said Sony is working “around the clock to get the systems back up and to make sure all our customers are informed of the data breach and our responses to it.”

Addressing criticism that the company waited too long to inform customers, Hirai said Sony waited until it had a solid understanding and confirmation of the extent of the attack and its implications.

“Throughout the process, Sony Network Entertainment America was very concerned that announcing partial or tentative information to consumers could cause confusion and lead them to take unnecessary actions if the information was not fully corroborated by forensic evidence,” he wrote.

Although Sony began investigating unusual activity on the PlayStation network on April 19, it did not notify consumers of the breach until April 26.

Hirai’s letter said the company knows who is responsible for the attack and is working with outside security and forensics consultants and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The letter also noted that the breach came on the heels of large-scale, coordinated denial-of-service attacks launched by a loose international group of hackers called Anonymous against several Sony operations in retaliation for a complaint filed by the company against a hacker in U no fax payday loan.S. District Court in San Francisco.

On Sunday Sony discovered that intruders had planted a file named “Anonymous” on one server that had been breached, Hirai said. Late last year, Anonymous distributed hacking software to be used against companies that stopped doing business with the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks after it released thousands of classified government documents.

Hirai’s letter added that Sony may not have immediately detected the PlayStation breach in part because its security teams were busy trying to defend against the denial-of-service attacks.

“Whether those who participated in the denial-of-service attacks were conspirators or whether they were simply duped into providing cover for a very clever thief, we may never know,” Hirai wrote.

Hirai was one of three Sony executives who bowed in apology for the data breaches for several seconds at the company’s Tokyo headquarters on Sunday.

His letter was in response to an inquiry by Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., who chairs the House Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, and Rep. G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, the subcommittee’s top Democrat.

Sony officials were invited to testify at a subcommittee hearing on data breaches held Wednesday, but did not appear.

One witness, David Vladeck, director of Federal Trade Commission’s bureau of consumer protection, during his testimony called for legislation that would require companies to implement reasonable data security policies and procedures, and notify consumers in the event of a breach.

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A failure. An embarrassment. A joke.

In the bruising world of Ontario politics, opponents would sometimes hang those harsh criticisms on Mike Harris.

But the former premier is facing some of the same brickbats from shareholders such as the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, proxy groups like Glass Lewis & Co. and advocates of corporate governance over his performance leading the board at auto parts powerhouse Magna International.

Underlining their disdain, proxy advisers say Magna shareholders should snub Harris and other directors when their re-election comes up for a vote at the annual meeting next Wednesday. They have little regard for his expertise and the practical skills he acquired in governing the country’s biggest province for almost seven years.

Patriot Coal Corp. says it started 2011 with a money-losing first quarter.

Patriot said Thursday it lost $15.3 million, or 17 cents per share, from January through March. Patriot earned $4.26 million, or 5 cents per share, in the same period of 2010.

Revenue rose to $577 million, compared with $467.25 million in the same period of 2010.

Operating costs rose to $516 million, compared with $433.5 million in the first-quarter 2010. Patriot says accounting for underpriced coal contracts cost it $18.6 million in the quarter.

Interest expenses more than doubled to $22.9 million, from $9 million a year earlier.

Creve Coeur-based Patriot operates coal mines in West Virginia and Kentucky.

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