In the new case, Nature said weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - part of the
Commerce Department - in February set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming and hurricanes.

According to Nature, a draft of the statement said that warming may be having an effect.

In May, when the report was expected to be released, panel chair Ants Leetmaa received an e-mail from a Commerce official saying the report needed to be made less technical and was not to be released, Nature reported.

Leetmaa, head of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey, did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment.

NOAA spokesman Jordan St. John said he had no details of the report.

NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher is currently out of the country, but Nature quoted him as saying the report was merely an internal document and could not be released because the agency could not take an official position on the issue.

However, the journal said in its online report that the study was merely a discussion of the current state of hurricane science and did not contain any policy or position statements.

A series of studies over the past year or so have shown an increase in the power of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a strengthening that many storm experts say is tied to rising sea-surface temperatures.

Just two weeks ago, researchers said that most of the increase in ocean temperature that feeds more intense hurricanes is a result of human-induced global warming, a study one researcher said "closes the loop" between climate change and powerful storms like Katrina.

Not all agree, however, with opponents arguing that many other factors affect storms, which can increase and decrease in cycles.

The possibility of global warming affecting hurricanes is politically sensitive because the administration has resisted proposals to restrict release of gases that can cause warming conditions.

In February, a NASA political appointee who worked in the space agency's public relations department resigned after reportedly trying to restrict access to Jim Hansen, a NASA climate scientist who has been active in global warming research.

The study, published in the September 26 of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that Earth was now within about 1.0 C (1.8 F) of the maximum estimated temperature of the past million years.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration researcher said that was the most important finding of the team's research.

'That means that further global warming of 1.0 degree Celsius defines a critical level. If warming is kept less than that, effects of global warming may be relatively manageable.

"Imagine, they fly in the form of a flock. Imagine the width of a street," government official Martin Rodriguez said on Tuesday, describing the fields around Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Towns have formed pesticide-armed brigades and are winning the war against the 3-week-old plague that has left tourist areas unharmed, authorities said.

Squads wait until night when the flying insects are roosting on plants to blast them. They carry motorized backpack pumps to shoot chemicals in a crusade that has affected from 2,000 to 2,500 acres of farm land.

"It is a war, effectively," said German Parra, a senior agriculture official in the Gulf state of Quintana Roo, home of tourist resorts Cancun and Playa del Carmen.

Hot weather and an absence of mobility-limiting hurricanes have allowed the insects to breed more than normal but authorities hope to end the infestation in the next eight days.

The insects have focused on agricultural areas, sparing beachgoers another disaster after last year's Hurricane Wilma, which ravaged Cancun and other Caribbean coast resorts and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and lost revenue.

Destruction to corn crops has been lessened because the locusts came after most of the harvesting was finished, officials said.

Locusts, which typically come to the region in four-year cycles, are most famous as one of the 10 biblical plagues of Egypt. "We hope that God will take pity on us and help us," said Parra with a laugh.

Last March, the Hepworths were having money troubles. Struggling to pay off their medical bills and make house payments, they sold their old home.

They planned to buy a home and a couple of outbuildings from an acquaintance on a few acres outside tiny Wilford.

Then they found the snakes - in the lawn, in the living room and in their hair.

Turns out the property was a winter snake sanctuary, likely a snake den or hibernaculum where snakes gather in large numbers to hibernate for the winter, said Lauri Hanauska-Brown, a biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

In the spring and summer the snakes fan out across the wilds of eastern Idaho, but as the days get shorter and cooler, the snakes return to the resting place - in this case, the Hepworth's new home - where they ball up for heat.

The snakes are likely a terrestrial garter snake, Hanauska-Brown said. Reptiles are a protected species meaning the Hepworths cannot bait them or kill them, she said.

The couple has not contacted Fish and Game to move the garters, Hanauska-Brown said. The department would attempt to move the snakes, but it could be difficult because if they move them too far they would die and if they move them close by the snakes would likely return to hibernate, she said.

"They are used to going there and kind of balling up," Hanauska-Brown told The Associated Press. "That sounds kind of Indiana Jonesish. But this is a natural thing."

The Hepworths never moved in, but Lyman Hepworth's brother is still making payments, though the seller offered to refund their money when he found out about the infestation.

Their plan: They sent a videotape of the house, their children and, of course, the snakes to the producers of "Extreme Home Makeover," in hopes the television show would send its decorators in for a filmed renovation.

The video showed snakes slithering on the back porch, climbing up the foundation and a ball of snakes on the side of the home, Jeanine Hepworth said.

The couple will not find out if the show chooses their reptile refuge for a fix-up challenge until next year.

Meanwhile, summer has turned to fall. And the snakes that have been out for the summer are making their way back to Hepworth's little home in Wilford.

The mid-afternoon accident happened as a worker attempted to dismantle a pressurized tank at Full Circle Carriers, a trucking company. The worker snapped the neck off the tank, releasing the gas cloud, officials said.

Witnesses said people began vomiting after breathing the gas, a poisonous industrial chemical that smells like a match that has just been struck.

Deputy Fire Chief Lathey Wirkus arrived at the scene and began to feel his lungs burning.

"I started screaming at all these people to run down the street," Wirkus said. "They were hacking, coughing, snot coming out of their noses."

Wirkus saw a dog nearby on its side with its tongue panting.

"I thought to myself, 'If this dog is in this condition, imagine what it's going to do to all of us,'" said Wirkus, who received oxygen at a hospital.

Sulfur dioxide is chiefly used in the preparation of sulfuric acid and other industrial chemicals, but it can also be used as a disinfectant, a refrigerant and a food preservative.

A hazardous material crew was brought in to seal the tank, Vitullo said. Police closed roads leading into the area, four miles south of Newark.

Eddie Rodriguez, 52, a truck driver from Cliffside Park, was having a shipping container loaded onto his truck when he suddenly smelled a strong odor, and then he couldn't breathe.

"I looked in my mirror and the guy behind me got out of his truck and started throwing up and gasping for air. All that time, I couldn't breathe either," Rodriguez said.

"Everywhere around me, like 50 guys were feeling the same way."

Rescue workers took Rodriguez to a decontamination tent, stripped off his clothes, then washed him down with soap and water before taking him to a hospital.

Speaking on French television channel France 3 on Sunday, French Finance Minister Thierry Breton said: "In a few days, I am going to announce the launch of green ethanol pumps throughout the country."

Sources told AFP on Monday that the plan would be made public before the start of the Paris Motor Show, which opens its doors on Saturday, with Breton most likely to choose Wednesday as the day for an announcement.

In France, the use of ethanol, an alcohol made from wheat, beetroot, corn or sugar cane, is far less than in leading countries such as Brazil or Sweden.

Biofuels, which includes ethanol and the more widely used biodiesel, represent just 1.2 percent of all fuel consumption in France, according to Prolea, a French oils and vegetable product association.

The French government had announced in September that it aimed to increase the amount of ethanol used as a proportion of total fuel to 5.75 percent in 2008 and 7.0 percent in 2010.

The final plan is likely to be influenced by the conclusions of former French Formula One champion, Alain Prost, who Breton said had been preparing a report on the technology that would be delivered to the finance ministry soon.

Asked about the need for consumers to switch to ethanol-enabled cars, Breton said on Sunday: "I've got some nice surprises for French people, for their cars and their taxes."

Biofuels in France already benefit from lower taxation owing to a partial exemption from fuel tax.

Adoption of the technology also depends on the development of new car models able to use ethanol, with the E-85 grade of fuel expected to spur progress.

E-85 is made up of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, but requires special "flex-fuel" engines that are able to work with the mix of fuels.

Car makers Saab, Ford, Peugeot and Citroen are all set to display cars able to run on E-85 at the Paris Motor Show, but the idea has faced some opposition.

The head of French manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroen, Jean-Martin Folz, said in May that the idea of a push to sharply increase the number of ethanol-enabled cars in France would be "stupid".

Nevertheless, PSA plans to launch the Peugeot 307 and the Citroen C4 next year that will be able to run on gasoline or E-85.

French rival Renault said in February that 50 percent of its petrol vehicles would be able to run on E-85 by 2009.

In Brazil, the largest producer and exporter of ethanol fuel, 80 percent of new cars sold are able to run on ethanol and the fuel provides 17 percent of the country's fuel needs.

However, some environmentalists and energy experts have cautioned that ethanol is not a panacea for the world's fuel problems, despite its current favour among policy makers looking to reduce consumer dependence on oil products.

Critics have stressed that the production of ethanol requires more energy input than the amount produced and that crop pesticides and fertilizers cause water pollution and other environmental problems.