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In one Northern Oklahoma county, oil and wind don’t mix.

That’s where plans by St. Louisan Tom Carnahan’s Wind Capital Group LLC for a large wind farm have run into a roadblock — claims by the Osage Nation that it would interfere with the tribe’s rights to tap oil and gas deposits.

The 15,600-member tribe sued Wind Capital in federal court in October to block the project, which would consist of 94 turbines spread across 15 square miles in Osage County, just northwest of Pawhuska. Power would supply Springfield (Mo.)-based Associated Electric Cooperative Inc., which provides power to regional and local electric cooperative systems in Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma.

The case is scheduled for trial in 10 days. On one level, it pits green power versus fossil fuels. More specifically, it’s a contest between Wind Capital’s rights to erect 400-foot towers on a piece of the tall grass prairie in northern Oklahoma and the tribe’s rights to tap petroleum deposits beneath it.

“The crux of the case rests on the legal standing of the mineral estate and the tribe’s right to develop the minerals as they see fit,” Chris White, Osage Nation’s executive director of governmental affairs, said in an interview.

The dispute exists because Oklahoma is among the states where surface ownership of the land can be separated from rights to oil, natural gas and minerals deposits. Today, some states today are looking at whether to make wind rights separate from surface rights.

The Osage Nation, a tribe whose heritage reaches back hundreds of years, has controlled mineral rights to the 1.5 million acres in Osage County since 1906. Last year, oil and gas companies who lease mineral rights from the tribe produced $360 million worth of petroleum, White said.

Millions of dollars in royalties are distributed to some 4,000-plus tribal members, which own shares in the mineral estate that have been passed down for more than a century. Payments also help finance roads and schools in the county, according to the lawsuit.

Osage Nation officials claim the wind farm will interfere with development of oil and gas properties, which involves installing a network of pipes to gather the petroleum that’s produced.

St. Louis-based Wind Capital, which has leased 8,500 privately-owned acres for the Osage wind farm, disagrees.

In its legal filings and public comments, Wind Capital says it believes petroleum production and wind power can co-exist in the area. The company has promised to comply with the law that gives Osage Nation reasonable access to as much of the surface as necessary to produce oil and gas.

Shortly before the lawsuit was filed, the company said in a letter to the tribe that each turbine will require a foundation of only about 50 feet in diameter paydayloans. In total, the letter said, its equipment would occupy just 1.5 percent of land under lease, leaving plenty of room for oil exploration and production.

“The actual footprint of the wind farm facility is very small in relationship to the total project boundaries,” company executives said in the letter.

Construction was scheduled to begin Nov. 19, according to Wind Capital. A company spokesman said Friday that “pre-construction activities” are underway, but declined additional comment citing the pending lawsuit.

While the Osage Nation had sought an injunction to stop the wind farm, it was Wind Capital that asked the judge to hear the case so quickly.

The company, which operates five wind farms in northwest Missouri, said lenders are reluctant to release funds for construction with the lawsuit pending. And the project hinges on federal production tax credits, so work must be complete by the end of next year. The tax credits, equal to 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, were most recently approved as part of the 2009 federal Recovery Act.

Officials said the lawsuit “jeopardizes the very existence of the wind facility.”

The parties disagree on whether the project would interfere with current oil and gas production. The Osage Nation says it will, while Wind Capital believes the matter involves only “possible future oil and gas exploration.”

Clashes between mineral rights and surface rights owners aren’t new in places like Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. But traditionally they’ve been disputes between oil and gas companies or lease holders and farmers and ranchers. Only more recently have wind companies and the petroleum industry fought over access to the same real estate.

In Oklahoma, the legislature passed a law earlier this year to address the oil industry’s concerns about wind farms on producing properties and existing oil and gas leases.

Among other provisions, the Exploration Rights Act of 2011 requires wind developers to provide oil and gas companies or leaseholders 30 days notice of intent to construct a wind farm.

The Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association issued a notice to members outlining the industry’s concerns about wind energy development in oil- and gas-producing areas.

Locally, there’s been no conflict between wind and petroleum interests. Missouri has no significant petroleum production. And in Illinois, there’s little, if any, overlap with the oil producing area in southern Illinois and wind farms located in the northern part of the state.

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TOKYO — Honda Motor Co. is recalling 27,000 cars in Canada, and 304,000 vehicles globally, for airbags that may inflate with too much pressure in a crash, send metal and plastic pieces flying and cause injuries or deaths.

Honda said there have been 20 accidents so far related to this problem, including two deaths in the U.S. in 2009.

The Japanese automaker announced the recall Friday, which affects the Accord, Civic, Odyssey, Pilot, CR-V and other models, manufactured in 2001 and 2002.

Photos: A sea of Hondas left behind after Thailand flood

More: After harsh reviews, Honda scrambles to redo Civic in 2013

The recall spans 273,000 vehicles in the U.S., some 27,000 in Canada, nearly 2,000 vehicles in Japan and another 2,000 in other countries. It affected 359 vehicles in Europe — 200 in Germany, 158 in Israel and one in Great Britain, according to Honda.

The latest recall is an expansion of recalls for the same problem in 2008, and again carried out in 2009, as well as last year. The recall now covers about 2 million vehicles worldwide, according to Tokyo-based Honda.

Honda spokesman Hajime Kaneko said the cause for the latest recall was the use of incorrect material in the chemical used to deploy airbags.

The initial cause of the recall was excessive moisture in the inflator propellant, which is part of what inflates the airbag.

But that problem was found later to affect more vehicles than initially estimated, as incidents didn’t stop, and the recall was expanded to account for the possibility that the problem was caused by a defective stamping machine used during production, he said.

Honda is extremely sorry about the recalls but believes the problem has now been taken care of, with no more recalls linked to this problem expected, he said.

Also included in the latest recall are 912 airbag service parts sold for installation in vehicles for collision repair and other reasons, Honda said.

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A series of blasts in central Iraq apparently targeting street vendors and day laborers killed 10 people on Saturday, police officials said.

The first two bombs were planted in the early morning in a spot where day laborers gather in the mostly Sunni village of al-Zaidan, near the town of Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad. They killed seven people and wounded 11 others, the officials said.

Hours later, three bombs exploded near the kiosks of vendors selling CDs and military uniforms in central Baghdad, killing three people and wounding eight others.

Health officials at Abu Ghraib’s general hospital and at Ibin al-Nafis hospital in Baghdad confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they w not authorized to release the information.

Violence has ebbed across Iraq, but deadly bombings and shootings still occur almost daily as U.S. troops prepare to leave by the end of the year.

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Deutsche Telekom and AT&T vowed Thursday to press ahead with the planned sale of the German company’s T-Mobile USA unit to the U.S. cell phone operator despite concerns raised by American authorities.

Nevertheless, AT&T said it plans to take a pretax accounting charge of $4 billion in the current quarter to reflect the break-up fees that would be due to Deutsche Telekom if regulators block the deal.

The two companies said they had withdrawn applications to the Federal Communications Commission regarding the merger and intended to seek its approval again “as soon as practical.”

They took the step to consider “all options at the FCC and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice,” which filed a lawsuit in August to stop the deal, AT&T said in a statement.

“Both companies are continuing to pursue the sale of T-Mobile USA to AT&T,” Deutsche Telekom stressed.

Both U.S. agencies worry that the deal would hamper competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.

Deutsche Telekom AG and AT&T Inc. made their move after the chairman of the FCC earlier this week came out against the merger.

Julius Genachowski made his position known in a document he circulated to fellow commissioners Tuesday.

He recommended sending AT&T’s proposed $39 billion takeover of T-Mobile to an administrative law judge for review and a hearing. That’s what the FCC does when it opposes a merger.

In a research note Thursday, Jefferies International analyst Ulrich Rathe said the withdrawal of the FCC application, as well as the opposition by the Justice Department, indicate that “the companies are already well into working out a new version of the deal.”

The analyst, who rates Deutsche Telekom “Buy,” said the charge confirms the break-up fee will be difficult for AT&T to avoid if the deal is not completed.

In Frankfurt, Deutsche Telekom shares closed down 0.6 percent Thursday at euro8.69 ($11.67), almost mirroring the 0.5 percent decline in the DAX index of blue-chip stocks.

The proposed deal, announced in March, would vault the combination of America’s No. 2 carrier AT&T and No. 4 T-Mobile into the top spot ahead of Verizon.

Dallas-based AT&T has about 101 million wireless subscribers. T-Mobile, the Bellevue, Washington-based subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG of Germany, has 34 million.

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, has about 108 million, while Sprint Nextel Corp. has 53 million.

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The parents of murdered teen Milly Dowler say that phone hacking on behalf of a British tabloid made them think that she was still alive.

Sally Dowler told the inquiry investigating Britain’s media ethics that her 13-year-old daughter’s phone had been cleared of some messages shortly after she disappeared in early 2002, suggesting that she was checking her voicemail.

In fact Milly was dead and the person clearing the messages worked for the News of the World tabloid.

The Dowler parents have previously made similar statements, but Monday was the first time the pair spoke out on national television.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

LONDON (AP) _ Celebrities and crime victims whose personal lives have been exposed in Britain’s press will testify at an inquiry into media ethics payday advance low fees.

The Leveson inquiry is run by a judicial body that could recommend sweeping changes to the way Britons get their news.

Britain’s media ethics probe was set up in the wake of the scandal over phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, which was shut in July after it became clear that the tabloid had systematically broken the law. Most horrific was the news that the tabloid had broken into the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in its search for scoops.

Actor Hugh Grant and the Dowler family will be some of the first to give evidence Monday.

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Ameren Missouri said it will move swiftly to resolve a dispute threatening more than 1,200 waterfront homes at Lake of the Ozarks that are on land currently set aside for the utility’s Bagnell Dam project.

The St. Louis-based company on Friday promised to deliver a proposal to adjust the dam project boundary around the 93-mile serpentine lake to federal regulators before March 31 — two months before a deadline set by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

FERC last week ordered the plan in an effort to assuage property owners who feared their homes faced condemnation because were built on property reserved for the dam and Osage hydroelectric project.

The July 26 FERC order ignited a furor among lake residents and businesses, banks and Missouri’s congressional delegation, which proposed legislation to clip the federal government’s oversight of the lake.

FERC, which regulates 2,500 hydroelectric dams, said its July order had been misinterpreted by some property owners. The agency also criticized Ameren for lax management of shoreline development under its federal hydropower license.

“We’ve hopefully ratcheted down the passion,” Philip Moeller, a FERC commissioner, said during a meeting the Post-Dispatch editorial board this week. “It is (Ameren’s) duty to enforce their license. It’s not our duty.” Moeller was in St. Louis for a nationwide conference of utility commissioners.

Moeller said Ameren previously suggested it would seek revisions to exclude privately owned lands from the project boundary, but never followed through.

Ameren Missouri’s chief executive, Warner L. Baxter, too, is trying to calm jangled nerves. He discussed the issue with some Missouri congressional leaders on Thursday in Washington, D.C.

“We understand the heightened concerns of affected property owners and others regarding this issue and are taking what we believe to be necessary steps to expedite submitting a proposal to FERC,” Jeff Green, Ameren Missouri’s shoreline supervisor, said today payday loan lenders in states.

The 93-mile serpentine lake, created when the Osage River was dammed in 1931, serves as the reservoir for the hydroelectric plant. Ameren owns and manages the lake, dam and hydro plant under FERC’s oversight. Terms are spelled out in a 40-year license issued in 2007.

The license requires Ameren to submit a plan to manage land within the Bagnell Dam project, a narrow ring of shoreline encircling the lake. The project boundary is defined by elevation and reaches from the waterline to 678 feet above sea level in places.

Ameren said it’s considering a proposal to lower the boundary elevation to 662 feet, eliminating most of the lakefront property at issue. The utility said it will also consider additional revisions for homes or other structures below that elevation. The utility plans to give stakeholders a month to provide input before sending it to regulators.

However, even if FERC accepts Ameren’s proposed boundary changes, it won’t resolve the property ownership questions, which are already the subject of a handful of lawsuits.

“Just moving the project boundary does not necessarily change the ownership of that property,” Green said.

Ameren sent letters to hundreds, if not thousands, of property owners at the lake over the past couple of years claiming that all or part of their homes, decks, gazebos and patios were built on utility land. Those claims have been challenged in many cases by those who say they have paid taxes on the properties for years.

Ameren said it has no desire to own lakefront property that’s not part of the Bagnell Dam project and will seek to resolve the ownership issue after getting the project boundary redrawn.

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Economist Mario Monti formed a new Italian government without a single politician Wednesday, drawing from the ranks of bankers, diplomats and business executives to make sure Italy escapes looming financial disaster.

The 68-year-old former European Union competition commissioner told reporters he will serve as Italy’s economy minister as well as premier for now as he seeks to implement “sacrifices” to heal the country’s finances and set the economy growing again.

Monti and his new cabinet ministers will be sworn later Wednesday, formally ending Silvio Berlusconi’s 3 1/2-year-old government as well as his 17-year-long run of political dominance.

Monti said he would lay out his emergency anti-crisis policies in the Senate on Thursday, ahead of a confidence vote. A second vote, in the lower Chamber of Deputies, will follow, likely on Friday. He stressed that Italy’s economic growth is a top priority.

Hopes for Italy’s new administration won it some respite in financial markets Wednesday. The yield on its ten-year bonds dropped 0.16 percentage point to 6.77 percent. In the last week, that borrowing rate had flirted over 7 percent _ the level that forced fellow eurozone members Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek international bailouts.

Up until summer, Italy had mostly avoided the European debt turmoil despite having a jaw-dropping amount of debt: euro1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion), or is nearly 120 percent of its GDP. But after frequent delays and backtracking on austerity measures, markets lost faith that any Berlusconi government could fix Italy’s economic issues.

Restoring confidence in Italy’s financial future is crucial because, as the third-largest economy in the eurozone, it is too big for Europe to rescue. A debt default by Italy would threaten the euro itself and shake the global economy.

Monti gave few hints about his political program Wednesday, sidestepping a question about whether the government would dip into citizens’ bank accounts as it did decades ago during another debt crisis.

“You may ask,” he replied, but went no further.

Explaining why his Cabinet contained no one from Italy’s fractious political parties, Monti said that his talks with party leaders led him to the conclusion “that the non-presence of politicians in the government would help it.”

His ministers include Corrado Passera, CEO of Italy’s second-largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, to head Development and Infrastructure; Piero Gnudi, a longtime chairman of Enel utility company, as Tourism and Sport minister in a country heavily dependent on tourist revenues; and the current Italian ambassador to Washington, Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, to be foreign minister.

A historian of the Catholic church with close ties to the Vatican, Andrea Riccardi, was named minister of international and domestic cooperation, a choice that seemed to reward pro-Vatican lawmakers in Parliament.

A Monti government is “an historic and significant turn of events,” said Francesco Rutelli of the pro-Vatican centrists payday loans lenders.

Still, his choices raised some eyebrows.

“This government, ties to banks, to business, to the Vatican, to private universities _ to the usual names _ is the opposite of what this country needs,” said Paolo Ferrero, leader of Rifondazione Comunista, a tiny, far-left party.

Passera also sits on the board of directors of Milan’s Bocconi University, which forms Italy’s business elite. Monti is currently the head of the Bocconi.

But analysts gave Monti’s selections a top mark, insisting the Cabinet ministers were independent.

“I think the quality of the people is very high,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political science professor at Rome’s LUISS University. “All these people are very high-caliber, and highly respected, independent.”

Italy’s economy is hampered by high wage costs, low productivity, fat government payrolls, excessive taxes, choking bureaucracy and low numbers of college graduates. But Monti says Italy can beat the crisis if its largely polarized citizenry _ often bitterly divided over Berlusconi’s long tenure _ can pull together. He has also met with union leaders and business representatives.

“I hope that, governing well, we can make a contribution to the calming and the cohesion of the political forces,” Monti told reporters.

The head of Italy’s largest union confederation, Susanna Camusso, backed Monti but hoped he “won’t put his priority on pensions.”

Parliament on Saturday voted to raise the retirement age as part of an austerity package to 67 by 2026 and 70 by 2050, but critics say those reforms are meaningless because they are so far in the future. The new changes also call for the sale of state property and privatizing some services but contain no painful labor reforms. They also offer tax incentives to companies that hire young workers to fight Italy’s 25 percent unemployment rate for people ages 15 to 24.

The shift in power away from career politicians had caused bickering within Berlusconi’s conservative People of Freedom Party, which eventually endorsed Monti. But Berlusconi’s main coalition ally, the Northern League, has announced it will stay in the opposition during Monti’s government.

Rutelli predicted on Sky TG24 TV that Monti’s government would win the confidence votes and last until the end of the legislature in spring 2013, to the dismay of many of Berlusconi’s allies, who want elections in a few months.

“The economic crisis won’t be solved in a brief time,” he noted.

Not everyone was enthusiastic about an unelected, technocratic government.

“When governments of technocrats are needed, it means democracy and politics are considered useless, so it’s something negative that has to be for a limited period of time,” said skeptic Giuseppe Drago on the streets of Rome.

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A huge oil discovery by the Spanish company Repsol has sharply boosted Argentina’s potential to cash in on energy and could eventually attract an infusion of investment to exploit the shale oil.

Experts said Tuesday the find is very promising, but it is unclear how much time and investment may be needed to capitalize on the oil beneath the rocky, barren plains of Patagonia. The company said the discovery includes 927 million barrels of recoverable oil and natural gas, of which 741 million barrels is oil.

Shares in Repsol YPF SA soared a day after the find was announced, rising 6.3 percent by the close of trading in Madrid and climbing 6 percent in afternoon trading in New York.

Former Argentine Energy Minister Jorge Lapena said it’s a “spectacular announcement” but that the reserves have yet to be proven and that studies on economic feasibility and environmental impact still need to be carried out.

“There’s still a long path to go from resources to reserves, and then to put them into production,” Lapena told reporters. He said the find, if proven, appears to represent about 40 percent of Argentina’s reserves.

Though potentially a game-changer for Argentina, the find is small compared to Brazil’s recent deep-sea oil discoveries, which experts have estimated could represent as much as 55 billion barrels. Venezuela, South America’s largest oil exporter, has a whopping 296.5 billion barrels in proven crude reserves.

Still, for Argentina the find could lead to an eventual increase in oil output, and other areas remain to be explored.

“It must be proven first of all that they’re commercially exploitable reserves, that’s to say the economic feasibility,” Daniel Bosque, editor of the Argentina-based website Enernews.

Jason Schenker, an energy analyst and president of Austin, Texas-based Prestige Economics LLC, said such oil discoveries “will be critical to meet rising global oil demand.”

“A significant oil find at current price levels is very positive for firms that can verify their size and extract them efficiently,” Schenker said. “Now, the questions will be: How quickly can this oil be brought into production … and at what price?”

Those are questions that Repsol isn’t immediately ready to answer with specifics.

But Kristian Rix, a Repsol spokesman in Madrid, said that because 15 vertical wells have already been drilled in the area and are producing 5,000 barrels a day of shale oil, “the development of this is uncomplicated from our point of view.”

“It’s a producing region, so all the infrastructure is there already, so putting new wells on line is very fast,” Rix said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

He said that while it’s typical in the industry to have a lag time of five to seven years between exploration and production, “this is clearly not the case here, because we’re already producing from wells.” He said it’s too soon to comment on projected investment or how long it could take.

“We are still at a very intense exploration stage,” Rix said.

He said the oil would be extracted by hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the technique that involves injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressure to force out the fuel. It’s not yet clear which water sources would be used in that process.

The shale oil was discovered in the arid “Vaca Muerta,” or “Dead Cow,” basin of Neuquen province in northern Patagonia, a region of treeless plains dotted with dry brush where there are two nearby lakes.

Repsol YPF owns oil rights to 12,000 square kilometers (4,600 square miles) of the basin, but like other oil companies, has just begun to search them. The discovery came while exploring an area of just 428 square kilometers (165 square miles) known as “Loma la Lata Norte.”

The company now plans to expand its drilling in a nearby area of about the same size that shows similar potential, Rix said.

Repsol YPF SA is based in Spain but operates in more than 30 countries around the world. As of Monday, Argentina is home to two-thirds of the 3 billion barrels of oil deposits that the company considers recoverable, up from half.

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Associated Press writers Ian James in Caracas, Venezuela, Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo and Alan Clendenning in Madrid contributed to this report.

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This year’s annual construction industry awards by the Associated General Contractors of St. Louis includes for the first time specialty contractor awards in 10 areas and a Specialty Contractor of the Year Award.

The 14th annual Keystone Awards announced at a banquet Thursday night went to nine contractors chosen from nearly 30 finalists. Educational facilities, hospitals, apartments and data centers were among the project recognized, as well as industrial and heavy construction work. Also recognized were the projects’ owners.

Keystone Awards are not based on a project’s beauty, the AGC said. Instead, they recognize a contractor’s success in achieving solutions despite construction challenges.

General contractor members of the AGC determined the Special Contractor Awards based on the winners’ ability to stay within budgets and their overall experiences with the specialty contractor. The specialty contractor receiving the most votes by general contractors was also presented the Specialty Contractor of the Year award. That distinction went to Waterhout Construction Inc.

“It’s really exciting for our association to have the opportunity to highlight some of the tremendous projects completed by our members while at the same time honoring our specialty contractors for their contributions to the success of any project,” said Leonard Toenjes, AGC’s president. “More than ever in today’s competitive and challenging construction environment, collaboration is the key to making a successful project happen.”

The remaining 2011 awards:

General Contractor/Construction Manager/Prime Contractor

Project $45 million or more

Paric Corp.

Project