Cleanup, government fines, lawsuits, legal fees and damage claims will likely exceed the $40 billion that BP has publicly estimated, according to an Associated Press analysis. But they'll be far below the highest estimates made over the summer by legal experts and prominent Wall Street banks, such as Goldman Sachs, which said costs could near $200 billion.

BP will survive the worst oil spill in U.S. history for several key reasons: it has little debt; its global businesses are forecast to generate $26 billion next year in cash flow from operations; the environmental impact of the spill isn't as bad as feared; and the government seems unlikely to ban BP from Gulf drilling. To bolster its finances, BP has cut its dividend, issued debt and sold more than $21 billion in assets.

"It could have been a lot worse," says Tyler Priest, a University of Houston petroleum historian who serves on President Obama's oil spill investigation committee. "BP is going to come back from this."

Many influential investors appear to agree. According to Thomson Reuters, 23 firms with $1 billion or more invested in the stock market, including BlackRock Investment Management, Managed Account Advisors and Rydex Security Global Investors, more than doubled their holdings of BP stock from July through September.

A California woman is under arrest as part of a federal crackdown on people working at financial research firms who illegally feed inside information to investors.

Winifred Jiau is scheduled to appear Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco.

Manhattan prosecutors say the 43-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday at her home in Fremont, Calif.

She is charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Authorities say she gave two portfolio managers at separate hedge funds information about upcoming earnings reports for Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and Nvidia Corp.

The government said she was paid more than $200,000 for early information about the two technology companies.

Facebook likes big numbers - it now has more than 500 million users, each one of whom can have as many as 5,000 friends. Yet as a privately held company, its ownership base must remain small, or it will have to disclose publicly its financial results.

A surging shadow market in the privately held shares of Facebook is making such restraint difficult and could spur the company to go public - even as its executives try to tamp down speculation about an initial public offering - much as similar pressure helped push Microsoft and Google toward their own initial public offerings.

The frenzied trading in Facebook, as well as in Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn, has caught the eye of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York Times DealBook first reported on Tuesday that the agency had asked for information about trading in all four companies.

While it is unclear what exactly the S.E.C. is focusing on, legal experts say that one clear area of inquiry relates to a federal law that establishes a limit for private companies of fewer than 500 shareholders. Once a company has 500 shareholders, it must register its private shares with the S.E.C. and publicly disclose its financial results.

Facebook is well aware of this issue. In 2008, the S.E.C. allowed Facebook to issue restricted stock to employees without having to register the securities, a move that would have required the company to publicly disclose financial information.

Alcatel-Lucent SA has agreed to pay more than $137 million to settle charges brought against it by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.

The SEC late Monday accused the Paris-based telecommunications company of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to foreign government officials to illicitly win business in Latin America and Asia.

Alcatel, a top supplier to U.S. and European phone companies, agreed to pay more than $45 million to settle the SEC's charges. It will pay an additional $92 million to settle criminal charges announced by the Justice Department.

A representative for Alcatel couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The SEC's complaint said Alcatel's bribes went to government officials in Costa Rica, Honduras, Malaysia and Taiwan between December 2001 and June 2006.

The SEC complaint said all of the bribery payments were undocumented or improperly recorded as consulting fees by Alcatel subsidiaries and then consolidated into the company's financial statements. The complaint also says leaders of several Alcatel subsidiaries and geographical regions either knew or were severely reckless in not knowing about the misconduct.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused unknown Martek Bioscience Corp. investors of insider trading ahead of the company's announcement last week of its $1.09 billion sale to Royal DSM NV, according to recent court filings.

On Dec. 21, Netherlands-based Royal DSM said it would pay $31.50 per share for Columbia, Md.-based Martek, marking a 35 percent premium to its stock value on Dec. 20. Martek makes nutritional supplements for infant formula and Royal DSM makes nutritional supplements, vaccine ingredients and industrial chemicals. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.

In a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan on Dec. 22, the SEC said unknown buyers bought 2,615 call option contracts between Dec. 10 and Dec. 15, through a UBS Ltd. account. The options were sold on the same day the buyout deal was publicly announced, putting those buyers in a position to gain $1.2 million in profit.

There was no information made public about the deal prior to the companies' Dec. 21 announcement.

The SEC wants the court to require the buyers to return the profits and pay a fine. On Dec. 23 the court agreed to freeze assets in the UBS account and ordered the buyers to come forward. A hearing date of Jan. 6 was set.