Pedestrians in Spalding town centre stopped dead on hearing the noise while several cars in the Sheep Market pulled over.

The noise was heard by residents in Gedney, Bourne, Baston and even as far away as Eye, although most believe the source of the noise was directly above Spalding. The Lincolnshire Free Press received several calls from concerned residents on Wednesday afternoon as people tried to establish what has happened.

Noel Pullford heard the bang and saw the ground shake while walking dogs in Deeping High Bank. He said: "There was a huge crack of noise and I could see the vibrations come through the trees, which all moved, and then go right across the field.

"I would say it actually began in one spot and spread because there were a lot of sheep in a field that ran away from where they were standing as soon as it happened.
"It is really strange. I did not realise that it had been heard by so many people."

Margaret Dark, of London Road, Spalding, said: "I thought there had been an explosion or crash outside. It is very strange that no-one knows what it was. "It shook my windows and everyone outside stopped when it happened."

The force of the bang was so great that it turned off the fridges at Sheep Market newsagent Classic News.
A local radio station claimed the noise had been caused by RAF Harrier jets but that theory has been dismissed as the aircraft is incapable of travelling faster than the speed of sound.

While there is a channel for military aircraft to use off the East of England, RAF pilots make every effort not to travel above the speed of sound and try to encourage pilots from other countries to avoid doing so.

Tony Walsh, of RAF Wittering, said: "I have no idea what might have caused it but it was not us."

And a Ministry of Defence spokesman said there was no military activity going on in the area which could have been responsible.

The vast majority of scientists now agree that global warming is real and well under way.

"It may have sounded new to some, but it wasn't — there was nothing really new there," says American economist Gary Yohe, who has focused for years on the economic challenges and dangers posed by global warming. "As long as they remain voluntary, meaningful cuts in greenhouse gas emissions simply won't happen in the U.S."

An extremely gloomy assessment of the dangers of global warming was published this week in Britain by prominent Earth systems scientist James Lovelock. In "Gaias's Revenge," Lovelock concludes that catastrophic global warming cannot be avoided; Lovelock does not expect that the United States, China or India will make the necessary emissions cuts over the next few years to avoid catastrophic global warming, and he expects it will occur soon.

Before the end of the century, says Lovelock, too many climate system tipping points will have passed, taking the planet into a runaway greenhouse effect that will raise temperatures so sharply that people will be "dying by the billions" with only a "few breeding pairs left" at the poles, the only places that will be at all tolerable.

Leading American climate scientist James Hansen of NASA says there is still time, that planetary catastrophe can be avoided, "but we have to get started with the emissions cuts now ... [get them] well under way within the next 10 years."

While virtually all climate scientists agree new emissions-free energy technologies are vital if there is to be any chance of averting drastically disruptive climate change, many say that even the most promising new technologies would take years to become effective, and they argue that in the meantime there must be major cuts in greenhouse emissions.

"There is some new money in the Advance Energy Initiative that Bush announced last night, but it pales in comparison to the tax breaks he's offering the oil companies," says Susan Joy Hassol, an independent climate analyst who has written several major international assessments of global climate change.

"Compared to the incremental increases Bush is offering for the development of new energy technologies — increases of millions or tens of millions of dollars — in the overall energy bill, the president is giving billions in tax breaks to the oil and gas drillers — and all this at a time when oil company profits are soaring," Hassol says.

Hassol also points out that the president's speech "made no mention of fuel efficiency, the best and cheapest way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions." Hassol complains that "this administration has consistently stood in the way of raising fuel-efficiency standards."

The president made no reference in his address to global warming or to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, other than one mention of continuing research in emissions-free, coal-fired energy plants.

This contrasts sharply with the messages coming from the office of British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the past few days. Blair has tried to draw attention to those new scientific studies that conclude that global warming has accelerated and is much closer to dangerous tipping points than scientists had recently thought.

This week Cambridge University Press is publishing "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change," which gathers 41 studies by established scientists from around the world.

"These studies each quantify, in a variety of ways, the risks we are already dealing with in the global warming that is clearly well under way," says economist Yohe, one of the book's editors.

"This shows the statements by the president's science adviser to be simply wrong when he states that we can't quantify the risks of global warming," says Yohe.

President Bush's chief science adviser, John H. Marburger III, was quoted in The Washington Post on Sunday as saying, "We know these things are possible, but we don't have enough information to quantify the level of risk."

Yohe also says Marburger's quoted statement that "There's no agreement on what it is that constitutes a dangerous climate change" is meaningless.

Yohe has focused on evaluating numerous studies by scientists who have constructed possible "dangerous climate change" scenarios — scenarios that he says are critical to taking any responsible action in the face of the enormous dangers of accelerating climate change, and which, he points out, are by definition crucial portraits of possible effects of global warming that can never be known precisely until they happen.

Yohe quoted a famous climetologist's saying: "These are experiments that we really don't want to be trying with the only planet we have."

No serious injuries were reported.

The storm ripped part of a roof off Louis Armstrong International Airport, then hit the suburb of Kenner and the hurricane-ravaged lakefront area of New Orleans where at least one house collapsed, police said.

Authorities said a state police communications tower also fell across a roadway.

At the airport, a piece of roof was torn off a concourse, and a jetway used to load passengers was torn off and slammed into another jetway, said airport spokeswoman Michelle Duffourc. The airport was left on emergency power, grounding passenger service.

Although ground equipment at the airport was turned over by the high winds, no airplanes were damaged, Duffourc said.

The National Weather Service had yet not determined whether a tornado had hit. The thunderstorm moved at more than 50 mph across the New Orleans region around 2:30 a.m.

The earthquake was centered on a fault about 9 miles below Southeast Portland near Laurelhurst Park, the same site as a magnitude 2.7 quake last June. The latest quake was felt from Hillsboro in the west to Troutdale in the east, and from Ridgefield, Wash., in the north to Oregon City in the south.

"This felt area was surprisingly large for a small earthquake," Wang said. "This produced much stronger ground motion than similar quakes centered at Swan Island or Kelley Point in North Portland."

Wang said a new array of seven quake-measuring instruments from Hillsboro to Portland International Airport will give more detailed information about the quake and the area's geology.

Unlike other Portland-area seismometers that primarily pinpoint a quake's location and size, the new sensors measure ground-shaking.

Bob Norris, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Seattle, began to download data from his agency's instruments to a laptop Wednesday. His first stop was a sensor atop Rocky Butte.

"We got a very clear earthquake signal here," said Norris, pointing to sharp zigzag lines on the laptop screen. "With the data from all of the instruments, we will be able to say which areas shake more than other areas," Norris said.

Engineers eventually will be able to use the information in making buildings more quake-resistant. For now, the small quake's long-distance effects serve as a reminder for "everyone to be prepared for a larger one," Wang said.

Richard L. Hill: 503-221-8238; richardhill@news.oregonian.com

"I am calling on the industry to cease production activities immediately and go into a mine safety stand down," said the Governor in a Wednesday afternoon press conference announcing the two coal mining fatalities. "Mine companies, supervisors and the miners themselves are to engage in a thorough review before any work or production is to continue."

The Governor says the stand down is an order for workers to step back from the mine face for however long it takes for a safety inspection. Additional federal Mine Safety and Health Administration officials have also been called in to help with more thorough reviews in the coming days.

The Governor's announcement followed three separate mine incidents in a span of a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon at three separate mine sites in West Virginia, two in Boone County.

A coal miner was killed at Massey Energy's Black Castle Mine, a surface mine when a natural gas line was hit sparking a fire above ground.

In a state, officials with Massey Energy said the following: "We are saddened to report that the accident resulted in the fatality of a Black Castle surface miner."

At Long Branch Energy's Number 18 Mine near Danville, a coal miner working underground was killed in a rib fall incident.

The third incident reported was a roof fall at a separate mine site in another part of the state.

The two miners killed were not being identified late Wednesday.

The stand down was just one of the changes the Governor reported after the 15th and 16th mining fatalities in the state so far this year.

He also bumped up the mine inspection scheduled from three month intervals to immediately. "We will immediately begin the process of inspecting every mine in the state and their equipment, conditions, engineering, engineering plans, safety procedures and safe work practices immediately."

The Manchin Administration was also working Wednesday night to implement emergency rules that would put the new mine safety and mine rescue measures passed last week in the State Legislature into effect on a faster time schedule.

"While the last month has been more trying for the state than anyone could ever imagine and than, certainly, I could ever imagine, West Virginia remains committed to putting the safety of each and every one of our miners first and foremost."

"Our hearts and prayers and the hearts and prayers of every West Virginia, every West Virginian, goes out to two families who have lost their loved ones in the mines," says Governor Manchin who was scheduled to visit those families on Thursday.

Kenya, where 3 million need food aid, has seen a steady decline in rainfall during the past decade. In southern Africa, the HIV/Aids pandemic has crippled subsistence farming, leaving adults too sick to work in the fields and others struggling to cope with orphans. In Sudan and Congo, where civil wars continue, the WFP says 6.1 million and 3 million people respectively need emergency aid. The problems have been compounded by the political failures in those countries.

Care International yesterday issued a renewed appeal for Niger, which is again threatened with starvation, partly because of the knock-on effect of last year's crisis. Fiona Turnbull, a Care spokeswoman, said: "In Niger, our figures show that 60% of people got into debt as a result of the food crisis last year. When the harvest came in, they had to sell most of that to pay off debts. People are getting poorer and poorer, and have less to fall back on."

The charity is appealing for funds to distribute food to the most needy, as well as to replace lost cattle and set up seed banks in an attempt to ward off further crises.

Fans in football jerseys sang ``Here we go Steelers,'' and members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club's Inner Circle - the top-hat- and tuxedo-wearing businessmen responsible for carrying on the groundhog tradition each year - threw black and gold Steelers ``Terrible Towels'' as they waited to rouse Phil from his burrow.

The furry forecaster may be popular, but the Pittsburgh Steelers are playing in the Super Bowl on Sunday.

``It's been really wonderful. This is just a ball. I'm having so much fun,'' said Nancy Durr, who came from Paxton, Neb., to the small western Pennsylvania town about 65 miles north of Pittsburgh to celebrate her 50th birthday.

She had been outside awaiting Phil's arrival since about 2:15 a.m., a rub-on Punxsutawney Phil tattoo on each cheek.

Others latched on to the Phil frenzy for a publicity boost - for just about anything, from global warming to the lottery.

The National Environmental Trust said it's groundhog-suit-wearing human ``will ignore his shadow and will instead rely on global warming evidence to forecast an early spring.''

The American Physiological Society was offering experts to discuss ``What Punxsutawney Phil can teach us about surviving massive blood loss, preventing muscle atrophy, and more.''

The Pennsylvania Lottery even has Gus, ``the second most famous groundhog in Pennsylvania,'' who implores lottery players to ``keep on scratchin'.''

None of those things are really what Groundhog Day is about, said Mike Johnston, a member of the Groundhog Club's Inner Circle. Punxsutawney Phil is nonpolitical and can't speak anyway, Johnston said.

Each Feb. 2, thousands of people descend on Punxsutawney for a little midwinter revelry, celebrating what had essentially been a German superstition.

The Germans believed that if a hibernating animal casts a shadow Feb. 2 - the Christian holiday of Candlemas - winter will last another six weeks. If no shadow is seen, legend says spring will come early.

According to the Groundhog Club, Phil has now seen his shadow 96 times, hasn't seen it 14 times and there are no records for nine years.

The last time Phil failed to see his shadow was in 1999.