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European Central Bank Executive Board member Juergen Stark said the bank will raise interest rates if necessary to keep inflation in check.

“We’re prepared to act decisively and immediately if needed,” Stark said at an event in Frankfurt last night. “The objective is pretty clear. In order not to risk un-anchoring inflation expectations, we have to change the monetary policy stance if need be.”

Stark is the latest policy maker to signal the ECB is moving toward raising borrowing costs in coming months after inflation breached its 2 percent ceiling, accelerating to 2.4 percent in January. Officials may be laying the groundwork for a shift in policy bias at their next meeting on March 3, when the central bank is due to publish its latest inflation forecasts.

Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said yesterday that with the 17-nation euro-area economy gathering strength, the ECB may need to reassess whether its benchmark rate is still appropriate at a record low of 1 percent.

The ECB may raise its key rate by a quarter-point in September, Eonia forward contracts show.

“Risks to the medium-term outlook for price developments in the euro area as a whole could move to the upside,” Stark said. “I can assure you that we will act quickly and decisively on any indications” of a wage-price spiral and higher inflation expectations, he said.

Oil, Wages

Crude oil prices have surged 24 percent over the past six months, pushing up import prices and adding to pressure on labor unions to secure bigger pay increases for workers.

In December, the ECB predicted inflation will average 1.8 percent this year and 1.5 percent in 2012.

Stark said inflation is now “likely to stay” above 2 percent through 2011 before moderating in 2012. The ECB must take “seriously” the warning signals for more persistent upward pressure on prices, he said.

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet reiterated on Feb. 19 in Paris that inflation risks could move to “the upside.” The same day, Bundesbank President Axel Weber said inflation pressure is increasing and “clearly there are risks to the upside.”

ECB council member Athanasios Orphanides told Dow Jones in an interview published yesterday that inflation may stay above 2 percent “somewhat longer than we expected before” and the bank “must be ready to act as appropriate to safeguard price stability.”

Faster growth may fan inflation, even as some of the euro region’s peripheral nations remain mired in a sovereign debt crisis.

Business confidence in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, surged to a record this month and expansion in the euro region’s service and manufacturing industries accelerated to the fastest pace in more than four years, reports showed yesterday.

“Latest economic developments suggest that the monetary policy of the ECB, that has already been accommodative, has become even more accommodative,” Stark said. “To the extent that financial market conditions continue to improve and the current economic recovery turns out to remain strong and self- sustained, the stance would need to be normalized over time.”

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Portugal’s financial agony deepened Friday, threatening to pitch Europe into a whole new round of economic turmoil over its debt crisis.

The country’s borrowing costs are punishingly high, with the interest rate on its 10-year bonds holding above 7 percent for a 10th straight session Friday.

As Portugal _ one of the smallest and frailest in the 17-nation eurozone _ runs out of options, its leaders are pressing fellow European nations to adopt new crisis management measures at a summit next month, ahead of a euro4.5 billion ($6.13 billion) debt repayment that falls due for Portugal in April.

Yet the broad consensus in markets is that Portugal is doomed to become the third member of Europe’s bailout club, after Greece and Ireland, partly because the continent’s paymaster Germany doesn’t want the issue to fester for much longer.

Another bailout for a eurozone member is sure to further undermine market confidence in the fiscal soundness of the single currency bloc and carry severe consequences for other vulnerable _ and much bigger _ countries such as Spain, Belgium and Italy.

Filipe Sila, debt manager at Portugal’s Banco Carregosa, said investors have turned their backs on Portugal, frightened away by a level of risk that’s deemed too great and worried they might not get their money back.

“Many political decisions are pending that could have a lot of bearing” on what happens, he said. “It’s an additional risk. I think nobody is buying Portuguese debt at the moment except the European Central Bank.”

The catalyst for the renewed tensions was eurozone leaders’ failure at a Brussels meeting two weeks ago to come up with anything dramatic that could douse the yearlong financial firestorm, despite bold pronouncements from many that a “comprehensive package” was in the offing. Those predictions briefly calmed investors.

The most visible sign of the new heightened state of stress is in the bond markets, where Portuguese bond yields have spiked dramatically.

The spread between two-year Portuguese and German bond yields has risen by more than a percentage point this week alone, while Portugal’s 10-year yield has risen three quarters of a percent to a potentially unsustainable 7.5 percent.

Portugal’s borrowing costs for its three-year government bonds stands at 5.6 percent _ more or less the rate the International Monetary Fund and eurozone countries charged Athens and Dublin for their loans and making a bailout look more palatable for the Portuguese.

A number of analysts think the bailout option will become more acceptable for Portugal, given that its economy is contracting once again.

“Although Portugal has a lower debt level than Greece, its high fiscal deficit and dismal growth prospects expose the country’s debt dynamics to market risks,” said Athanasios Vamvakidis, a strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “Beyond debt sustainability concerns, the lower IMF-EU borrowing cost should look increasingly attractive to Portugal.”

But the Portuguese government, keen to keep its domestic political reputation for economic management intact, insists it doesn’t want or need assistance. It says its austerity package of pay cuts and tax hikes will lower its grievous debt load and restore international faith in its economy.

It is also urging the European Union to set aside the differences between member states and quickly take some action that would ease market tensions.

“(Europe) has to do its part and respond to the scale of the problem,” Portugal’s minister for the Cabinet, Pedro Silva Pereira, said Thursday.

Germany, however, appears reluctant to increase the size and scope of Europe’s current bailout fund unless all euro countries agree to stricter fiscal policies and Portugal bites the bullet and applies for a rescue.

Financial markets mistrust Portugal just as they did Greece and Ireland, but for different reasons. Portugal has recorded feeble growth over the past decade, forcing it to run up high debts in order to keep financing its economy.

The outlook for the future is no brighter. Portugal’s central bank now predicts a double-dip recession after a slight recovery last year, when the jobless rate climbed to a record 11.1 percent.

Moody’s Investor Services has warned it may cut its A1 rating on Portugal, while Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services is also considering a downgrade.

Those considerations are helping push Lisbon, which also has to find almost euro5 billion ($6.8 billion) to settle outstanding debts in June, into a corner.

The prevailing view is that the March 25 summit of EU leaders will have to come up with something big and bold on how to deal with Europe’s debt crisis or else face the wrath of the markets.

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Pylas reported from London.

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Oracle Corp. has agreed to pay $46 million to settle a lawsuit over alleged kickbacks to win government work.

The Department of Justice charged that Sun Microsystems Inc., which Oracle bought last year, and other technology companies paid kickbacks to Accenture PLC for Accenture to recommend that federal agencies buy Sun products.

The Justice Department said last year that the lawsuit covered software contracts that ran from 1998 to 2006 and were worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Six other companies including Hewlett-Packard Co. have settled similar charges.

The settlement by Oracle’s America unit also resolved claims that Sun provided incomplete and inaccurate information to government contracting officers during negotiations over contracts with the U.S. Postal Service and two resellers of Sun products. The government said regulations and contracts required Sun to explain how it did business so that contracting officers could negotiate a fair price for government customers.

Government officials said kickbacks and inaccurate information during contract negotiations cost taxpayers money.

Allegations against Sun were first raised in a lawsuit brought by two whistle-blowers, and the government joined their case in 2007.

Shares of Oracle, a software company based in Redwood Shores, Calif., rose 3 cents to close at $32.03.

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A letter from his bank left businessman Tom Neusel outraged.

M&I Bank said the interest rate on his company’s $70,000 loan was jumping to 7.5 percent from 4.25 percent. Just like that.

“This is not a reflection on you in any way,” said the letter, “but more as a result of the increased risk in the economy and general cost of funds increase across the entire banking industry.”

A year and a half after the official end of the Great Recession, banks are still tightfisted with lending, although they are starting to loosen just a bit.

“I have the feeling that it’s starting to come back slowly,” said Dennis Melton, district director for the Small Business Administration in St. Louis. “I’m not getting the phone calls that I used to get saying,

World shares were mixed Tuesday ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s first interest rate meeting of the year and as concerns lingered China will take new moves to cool economic growth.

Oil prices hung below $88 a barrel, extending losses after the Saudi oil minister hinted the world’s biggest oil producer may raise supplies to put the brakes on higher oil prices. In currencies, the dollar fell against the yen but rose against the euro.

European stocks were mixed in early trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 was marginally lower at 5,940.47. Germany’s DAX rose by 0.2 percent to 7,084.74 and France’s CAC-40 was up 0.3 percent to 4,043.60.

Wall Street was headed for a lower opening after gains the day before. Dow futures were down 0.2 percent to 11,909. Broader S&P 500 futures were down by 0.2 percent to 1,285.50.

Asian stocks presented a mixed picture. Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average added 1.2 percent to close at 10,464.42 after the Bank of Japan kept its key interest rate unchanged at virtually zero, hoping to protect a still-fragile economy from veering off track. Exporters rose as Wall Street optimism offset a stronger yen. Sony Corp. jumped 2.3 percent and Canon Inc. gained 0.7 percent.

South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.2 percent to 2,086.67. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5 percent to 4,807.80. Sentiment was bolstered by the country’s latest inflation reading, which fell below expectations and reduced the chances of a rate hike by the Australian central bank.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped less than 0.1 percent to 23,788.83. Indexes in Singapore, India and Thailand were also down.

Shares on mainland China were notably down as investors continued to worry about further attempts by the government to slow growth as it tries to get inflation under control.

The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.7 percent to 2,677.43 and the Shenzhen Composite Index for China’s smaller, second market was down 1.2 percent to 1,136.58.

The Dow’s rise gave stocks a boost but Chinese shares are “capping Asia momentum,” said Castor Pang, research director at Cinda International payday loan lenders.

“The worry is still there in China, especially if they (investors) guess inflation in January and February is still high,” which could mean that authorities may announce an interest rate hike around Chinese New Year, Pang said. The holiday starts Feb. 3.

Figures last week showed growth picked up in the fourth quarter to 9.8 percent from 9.6 percent in the previous quarter. The government also reported the inflation rate at 4.6 percent in December.

Investors had other factors to weigh Tuesday. Later in the day, the U.S. Federal Reserve was to start a two-day meeting to discuss interest rates. Few expect any major shifts, even though two new members to the Fed’s policymaking panel have been skeptics of the Fed’s $600 billion Treasury bond purchase plan to help stimulate the economy.

Also Tuesday, some major U.S. companies will release quarterly earnings, including: E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.; Johnson & Johnson; United States Steel Corp.; and Yahoo Inc.

In New York on Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average closed within 20 points of 12,000 Monday, its highest point since June 2008.

Technology stocks rose after Intel Corp. increased its dividend and said it would buy back more of its stock. The company gained 2 percent.

The Dow gained 108.68 points, or 0.9 percent, to 11,980.52. The last time the average closed above 12,000 was June 19, 2008.

The broader Standard and Poor’s 500 index rose 7.49, or 0.6 percent, to 1,290.84. The Nasdaq composite gained 28.01, or 1 percent, to 2,717.55.

In currencies, the dollar fell to 82.39 yen from 82.49 yen late Monday. The euro dropped to $1.3593 from $1.3638.

Benchmark crude for March delivery was down 19 cents at $87.68 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract lost $1.24 to settle at $87.87 a barrel on Monday.

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Associated Press business writer Kelvin Chan in Hong Kong contributed.

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European stock markets rallied Tuesday on hopes that eurozone nations are planning to strengthen and broaden their measures to fight the debt crisis.

An influential German survey also gave the markets a boost with news that investor confidence has risen sharply amid hopes that global economic growth will remain robust. Greece, meanwhile, passed another bond market test, raising euro650 million ($865 million) in a heavily oversubscribed auction.

Still, analyst Ben Potter at IG Markets cautioned that “lingering uncertainty over Eurozone debt could well deliver something of a hangover.”

Ministers from the 17 euro nations meeting in Brussels discussed boosting the size and powers of the region’s bailout fund. Support for stronger action is growing and the bloc is clearly trying to come up with a more comprehensive solution to its crisis, with a final decision expected over the coming months.

The crisis has already forced Greece and Ireland to implement painful budget cuts in exchange for multibillion dollar bailouts. Harsh remedies prescribed by governments have provoked protests and strikes in Portugal, Greece and elsewhere.

The outlook was good in Germany, however, with the ZEW survey noting positive U.S. data has raised hopes of continued worldwide growth. Its confidence index rose to 15.4 points for January, from 4.3 in December.

Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 1.0 percent to 6,047.93 while Germany’s DAX rose 1.0 percent to 7,146.48 and the CAC-40 in Paris gained 0.9 percent to 4,009.28.

Oil futures hovered below $92 a barrel, largely shrugging off higher demand forecasts from OPEC and the IEA, the oil cartel and the energy agency. In currencies, the dollar was up against the euro at euro1.3385 and lower than the yen, at 82.5.

Wall Street appeared headed for a muted opening after being closed Monday for a holiday. Dow futures were up 0.3 percent to 11,758 and broader S&P 500 futures were up 0.5 percent at 1,289.59.

The market close in Asia was not as bright. Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average closed up 0.2 percent at 10,518.98. Elpida Memory Inc., Japan’s biggest semiconductor maker, rose 1.1 percent after the Nikkei financial daily reported company plans to raise prices of chips used in personal computers.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell slightly, less than 3 points, to 24,153.98 while South Korea’s Kospi was 0.2 percent lower at 2,096.48.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 closed 0.8 percent higher at 4,801.80 and Chinese shares edged up as investors awaited Thursday’s release of key economic data for the fourth quarter of 2010.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index added 0.1 percent to 2,708.98. The Shenzhen Composite Index of China’s smaller, second exchange rose 0.3 percent to 1,183.48.

“For now, investors would rather wait until they can clearly see the current economic situation,” said Peng Yunliang, an analyst at Shanghai Securities.

Meanwhile, investors across the world were waiting to see how Wall Street reacts to Apple’s announcement that CEO Steve Jobs would be taking a medical leave of absence.

The news could hammer the company’s shares and overall sentiment when trading opens for the week. The company made the announcement a day before its quarterly earnings report.

In Europe on Monday, investors reacted sharply. Apple shares closed in Frankfurt 6.6 percent lower at 243 euros ($323.02).

But some analysts believe the company can still function successfully without Jobs in the corner office full-time _ even with Apple at the forefront of a new revolution in personal computing.

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In the late 1990s, Marty Tenenbaum was a hotshot e-commerce entrepreneur riding high on the dot-com boom when he noticed a lump on his body.

His doctor told him it was nothing, but when he finally had it removed, he learned he had melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

He beat the disease, but he never got over the sense of frustration he felt as he clawed his way through the maze of treatment options, clinical trials and research in search of a way to survive.

Now 67, Tenenbaum still believes he would not have made it if he hadn’t had personal connections at the National Cancer Institute who guided him toward cutting-edge experimental treatments that saved his life.

The experience convinced him that the key to advancing cancer treatment and research is forging connections on as large a scale as possible. On Tuesday, he plans to launch a Web application to bring together patients, physicians and scientists regardless of where they work, live or went to college in hopes that the so-called wisdom of the crowd can lead to the best therapies.

“I’m just trying to pull together all the pieces that are needed to do a real, rational attack on cancer,” Tenenbaum says. The way to do that, he says, is to pull people out of their individual labs, offices and hospitals to collaborate in a way not possible before the Web and mobile technologies made it easy to pool vast amounts of information.

“How much of cancer could be turned into a manageable disease if we only knew what we knew?”

Tenenbaum is one of a growing number of supporters of the so-called open science movement, which calls for greater sharing of research and the lowering of institutional, financial, legal and geographical barriers to bringing the best minds and data together to solve science’s toughest problems.

In its fledgling form, the Cancer Commons app integrates the existing data on different forms of melanoma and the most promising experimental treatments. Patients or their doctors input how far the disease has progressed, where it started and whether tests have discovered any specific genetic mutations believed to contribute to the cancer’s spread.

From that information, the app tells patients what specific cancer “subtype” they have as determined by an expert panel. They also learn what drugs have shown the most promise in treating that specific form of the disease and where clinical trials are being conducted that could allow patients access to that treatment.

The app itself was built by CollabRx, Tenenbaum’s for-profit health care startup. It’s free for doctors and patients. The company would make money through pharmaceutical company sponsorships of different apps, though Cancer Commons does not endorse specific drugs.

The data itself generated by the Cancer Commons project will be free and available for anyone to use, Tenenbaum says.

At Harvard University’s Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Keith Flaherty studies melanoma treatments and sees patients with the most advanced forms of the disease. He volunteered to help lead the Cancer Commons melanoma project, which he says lets doctors and patients plug into a complex collection of data distilled into a simple set of treatment options.

Though Flaherty treats only melanoma, oncologists across the country are called on to treat all kinds of cancers. They don’t have time to troll through obscure journals or websites to become experts on every variation of the disease, Flaherty says. An app like Cancer Commons lets those physicians plug into the knowledge of researchers like himself directly, he says.

“It’s to empower that doctor with the same information we have access to.” The hope is that patients also will be better able to advocate for themselves.

As the service expands, Tenenbaum also plans to make it possible for physicians and patients to add their own data on what has worked and what hasn’t. While researchers cannot rely on one person’s experience alone as a measure of success or failure, Flaherty says researchers could sift a large enough collection of anecdotes for leads.

The ease of sharing information among scientists and between nonscientists and professional researchers are two key developments made possible by the Internet that open science advocates say could speed discoveries.

“We have a chance at a new kind of digitally enabled collaboration,” says Joseph Jackson, organizer of the Open Science Summit at the University of California, Berkeley last summer. “But the hardest thing to do is change human behaviors and practices.”

Jackson is also working to help open a community biotech lab in Silicon Valley intended to provide space for ideas and research to take place outside traditional academic and corporate venues.

The San Francisco-based Science Commons project helps research institutions and scientific journals find ways to make valuable scientific data more widely available.

The group sees bright spots in their effort, such as the National Institutes of Health’s mandate that all NIH-funded research be made available free to the public within a year of being published.

But big challenges remain, both technological and in the culture of how science is done, says Alan Ruttenberg, principal scientist at Science Commons.

Ruttenberg focuses on solving the problem of “data integration”: how to put different scientific databases together to enable researchers to find new connections. Part of that effort involves developing a common language for data that Ruttenberg hopes someday will make possible a search engine for science.

“We ought to be able to ask a scientific question about anything that’s been done and get a straight answer to that,” he says.

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Laverl “Nick” Nicholson used to look out of his kitchen window at the weeping willows that mark the burial place of two of his two daughters. Then a debilitating car wreck left him unable to pay the $220,000 he owed on his northwestern Montana home.

He tried for a year and a half to lower his mortgage payments through a loan modification, but the government-insured loan that he took out three years ago came with restrictions. The best the bank could offer him was a reduction of $124 per month, leaving Nicholson with a $1,585 payment that he still couldn’t afford.

The bank foreclosed last April, forcing him to move next door into a mobile home on two of the original property’s 10 acres that he had given his daughter a few years before.

Despite the government’s push to forestall foreclosures through mortgage modifications, situations like Nicholson’s have become common. Loan modifications often don’t work out because the homeowner doesn’t understand what’s out there, the lender is reluctant to write off part of the loan or, as in this case, the terms of a government-back loan limit what the bank can offer a borrower.

Today, the house near the small town of Thompson Falls is being sold in a sealed-bid process by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The asking price: $87,000.

Nicholson, 50, is galled to see something so dear being advertised so cheaply.

“I’ve been a blue-collar worker all my life and I worked hard for what I had. For it to be thrown back out there for this price and our family not given first option…,” Nicholson paused. “Things aren’t supposed to be this way in America. A man isn’t supposed to lose his home for $220,000 only to sell it again for $87,000.”

Nicholson, like many Americans, was drawn to a Federal Housing Administration loan to refinance his home because it offered good terms like a 3.5 percent down payment. He used the $268,000 he borrowed against his home to invest in his business as a sawmill maintenance contractor working in the Northwest and across the country.

But with the car accident in 2008 that broke two vertebrae in his neck and a pre-existing degenerative disc disease in his back, he became unable to work. He began to miss mortgage payments, and the agency that bonded his business discovered his delinquency, causing him to lose his bond and his business.

Foreclosure proceedings began and it became necessary for Nicholson to seek mortgage relief, but the FHA-loan modification terms were limited. Loan servicer Wells Fargo was only able to offer him a 5.375 percent interest rate, the going market rate, and unlike non-FHA loans, his terms could only be extended 30 years instead of 40 years.

The offer would have dropped Nicholson’s payments from $1,709 to $1,585.71. He asked for additional relief that would have lowered his payments to under $1,000 a month. He was denied.

“I’m lost. I’m a mechanical-type individual,” Nicholson said. “My knowledge in this field is not good. So I’m going on what I’ve been told.”

Wells Fargo spokesman Tom Goyda said the bank followed FHA guidelines in offering Nicholson a loan modification.

“We worked for more than a year in an effort to prevent the foreclosure. Under the guidelines available under FHA we were unable to find an option that would let him stay in the home at a price he could afford,” Goyda said. “At that point, there were no other options left for modification payday loan online.”

Wells Fargo had previously sold Nicholson’s mortgage through Ginnie Mae, the Government National Mortgage Association, to an investor that buys those securities, such as a mutual fund or a pension fund. When the house went into foreclosure, Wells Fargo bought back the loan to pay the investor the unpaid balance.

The bank filed a claim with the FHA, which provides insurance on loans made by approved lenders. FHA reimbursed Wells Fargo for the $220,000 unpaid principal and approved expenses.

That left the federal government to unload the house for about a third of Nicholson’s unpaid principal.

“Who’s going to eat the difference between $220,000 and $87,000?” said Julie Hope, a counselor for NeighborWorks Montana, a nonprofit housing group helping Nicholson. “The lender’s out of it because they’ve turned in their claim on it and gotten their money.”

FHA says it’s costing the taxpayers nothing because the money used to pay the claims comes from the mortgage insurance payments by the homeowners who borrow under the program.

FHA paid about $12.8 billion on nearly 100,000 such claims on foreclosed homes in 2010, an average of $128,000 per claim, said Department of Housing and Urban Development spokesman Lemar Wooley.

The year before, FHA paid 70,000 claims at an average cost of about $117,000, for a total of nearly $8.2 billion.

The loans have become very popular in the last four years, up from 2 percent of the mortgage industry’s volume in 2006 to about 30 percent today.

FHA loans have a lower foreclosure rate than non-FHA loans. At the end of the third fiscal quarter of 2010, the foreclosure rate for all loans was 4.39 percent compared to 3.32 percent for FHA loans, Wooley said, citing Mortgage Bankers Association delinquency data.

Wooley said banks can’t simply foreclose on a person with an FHA loan to save themselves the hassle and possible monetary loss of a loan modification. FHA-approved lenders are required to try to help the borrowers avoid foreclosure or they face penalties, he said.

“Lenders that do not engage in loss mitigation and are paid a claim by HUD are subject to administrative action, including penalties in the amount of three times the amount of the claim paid to that lender,” Wooley said.

But that doesn’t make it any easier for borrowers like Nicholson trying to wade through their options with a foreclosure deadline hanging over them.

“We encourage borrowers in distress to get in touch with a HUD-approved counseling agency as soon as possible in the process,” said Marietta Rodriguez, NeighborWorks America’s national director for home ownership and lending.

Nicholson and NeighborWorks are investigating whether he has a viable wrongful foreclosure claim, but he said primarily wants to get word out as a warning to others who also may be teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

He hopes, though, that he might see his daughter and her husband one day move into the home where she grew up.

“I would never move back into the home, but it would be nice to have my children near me. Eventually my health is going to give out and I’ll be in a wheelchair. It would be nice to have them nearby to help,” he said.

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Wind Capital Group, the wind power developer led by Tom Carnahan, said Tuesday that Topeka, Kan.-based Westar Energy agreed to buy 201 megawatts of electricity from Wind Capital’s Post Rock wind farm in Kansas.

Post Rock, large enough to power 70,000 homes, will be Wind Capital’s seventh wind farm and the second under the company’s new business model, in which it owns and operates projects that it builds.

The first of those projects was the 150 megawatt Lost Creek wind farm in DeKalb County, Mo., which began operating in early 2010.

Construction of the Post Rock project will begin in 2011 and begin generating electricity in the second half of 2012, according to St. Louis-based Wind Capital.

The agreement “sets the stage for our continued growth into new markets across the country,” Carnahan said in a statement.

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The Justice Department is urging the administrator of the $20 billion fund for Gulf oil spill claims to show greater transparency about the process so the victims can feel they are being treated fairly.

Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli said in a letter to Ken Feinberg on Friday night that this is a critical time for the claims fund as it transitions from initial emergency payments to paying interim and final claims.

Perrelli said he continues to have concerns about the pace of the claims process. He said many of the people and businesses who have claims under review don’t have the means to get by while they wait for their claims to be processed.

“While you have indicated that poor documentation has made it difficult to address some claims quickly, over the past two weeks the number of claims requiring additional documentation has actually gone down _ while the number of claims under review has increased significantly,” Perrelli wrote to Feinberg easy payday loan.

Feinberg told The Associated Press on Saturday he has paid out roughly $2 billion already to some 125,000 claimants. He estimated the total draw on the fund to date at $6 billion, which he said includes government and cleanup claims. An official with the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust could not immediately be reached to verify that figure. Feinberg described the payments to individuals and businesses as generous, but agrees there is room for improvement.

“I think it’s always wise to listen carefully to constructive criticism from the Department of Justice,” Feinberg said. “They want me to improve transparency, and I plan to do so.”

On the transparency issue, Perrelli said more information should be provided to victims about the principles being used to decide claims. He said there is very little reason not to do so.

BP PLC agreed to pay Feinberg’s law firm $850,000 a month to administer the fund. Feinberg also oversaw the $7 billion government fund for families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

When the oil spill claims fund was announced in June, officials said the fund could be used to pay all claims, including environmental damages and state and local response costs, with the exception of fines and penalties.

Money left over likely goes back to BP instant payday loan no faxing. The Justice Department verified that leftover money would go back to BP, but said the money would first be held in escrow for a number of years to make sure all claims are settled.

“I don’t really worry about that because if there’s money left over from the $20 billion, so be it, as long as anyone eligible has gotten paid,” Feinberg said.

An offshore oil rig being leased by BP exploded in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana on April 20, leading to more than 200 million gallons of oil spewing from BP’s undersea well. Eleven workers on the rig were killed.

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