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Google Goes Public; One Man Mississippi Clean Up Crew Turns To 10,000

Aired May 2, 2004 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: The death toll rises for U.S. troops in Iraq. An American soldier was killed in a roadside bomb attack outside Mosul today. Two international security personnel were killed in another ambush outside the northern Iraqi City.
At least three people died in flash flooding in North Texas and officials say three toddlers are missing in the storm zone. Heavy thunderstorms blasted the region with high winds, heavy rain and large hailstones.

Storms are lashing other parts of the country. Meteorologist Rob Marciano has your weekend forecast.

ROB MARCIANO, METEOROLOGIST: Rainfall in places across the mid Mississippi valley, across the Ohio River valley and across the Gulf Coast, as well. Where you will see dry weather across the mid Atlantic states. And much of the Eastern Sea board, at least for today.

This moisture moves east tomorrow and it replaces some cooler air where it snowed yesterday in Denver, we'll see temperatures warm up as this warm air mass heads off of the east today at least. It is suppose to be pretty warm and dry across much of the West Coast. Boston and New York looks dry and warm today. But a little bit more wet tomorrow. Atlanta, a threat of a shower today. Better chances tomorrow, naturally some of the rain could be heavy at times today. Showers in Chicago today and drying out tomorrow.

Detroit also could see a couple of showers and Dallas, look for a high of about 63 degrees today, 72 a little warmer tomorrow. And Denver warming up. Phoenix getting close to 100. Seattle 75 today. More clouds, cooler ocean air tomorrow. San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, mean time warm in the 70s today and the mid 80's tomorrow.

I'm Rob Marciano that's a quick weather update. Enjoy your Saturday.

NGUYEN: I'm Betty Nguyen at CNN Center in Atlanta. More news at the bottom of the hour. NEXT@CNN begins right now.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Hi everybody, I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN let the Google rush begin. The search engine has announced plans for an initial public offering of stock. We will report on the implications and on just how much we've all begun to Google around.

We'll reintroduce you to a young man who is proving one person can make a difference, especially after he gets a little help from a few thousand of his friends.

And would you go into your backyard and catch a wild songbird to keep as a pet? We'll take you to a country where that's a long-held tradition. All that and more on NEXT.

Well, if you're feeling a sense of de ja vu all over again, it could be because it's official. Google does plan to sell stock to the public. I'm sure you remember it was less than a decade ago that the first big Internet companies went public and launched the dot com boom which of course later went bust. Investors hope Google's move will start another boom without the big bust.

Allen Chernoff has more on Google's announcement.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Google the number one Internet search engine is now searching for investors. It won't be hard; the company intends to raise $2.7 billion through an auction. Investors big and small will place bids to determine the offering price. Creating the potential for the stock to go sky high even before it begins trading.

PATRICK BYRNE, OVERSTOCK.COM: It eliminates the chance of a huge pot on the first day after the IPO. No one should buy thinking this is going to triple on the first day. It's not.

CHERNOFF: In its registration form Google reveals it has been profitable since 2001. It earned $106 million last year on $962 million in revenues. The company generates the bulk of its revenue by selling ads that appear next to a search result.

SCOTT KESSLER, STANDARD & POOR'S: The difference is pretty stark, I think, relative to a lot of companies that came public amidst the dot com bubble. Here you have a viable, profitable company.

CHERNOFF: Founders Sergei Brim and Larry Page stand to make billions but say they will stay true to their roots by running the company for the long-term, not the short-term results that investors usually demand. Brim and Page write a management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on the scale every half hour.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHERNOFF: The founders say they would like to have a stock that trades rationally. If that happens, it would be a first for such a widely hyped and popular Internet company.

SIEBERG: Is that the sound of a dot com bubble beginning to inflate? Dare we even suggest it. At any rate, whether the Google IPO will trigger a new Internet boom is still up for debate but there's no argument that the little search engine that could has changed American culture.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) PROF. JANET MURRAY: You can think of Google as the bulletin board for the global village.

SIEBERG, (voice over): Do you Google? These days, it seems who doesn't? Google comes from g-o-o-g-o-l, a math term that means 1 followed by 100 zeroes, it symbolizes the huge amount of data on the Internet. And its creators Sergat Brim and Larry Page two former Stanford students are on a mission to organize all of it from museum collections to Britney photos, even your home address.

MURRAY: Everything about your life it seems to be just one Google away.

SIEBERG: Remember card catalogs, the Dewey decimal system, and libraries? Well not only did Google's founders find a way to search the billions of pages of information on the Internet in a fraction of the time but they also made it easy to read, accurate and a little fun.

CHRIS SHERMAN: Well Google calls their headquarters the Google Plex and when you walk into the Google Plex you immediately recognize that this is not just your ordinary cooperation or computer place. Google has a grand piano in the lobby, for example. Lava lamps all over the place. They play roller hockey in the parking lot.

SIEBERG: And that sense of doing Googley things at their Mountain View California office translates to their site.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, you know what I love the most? I love how they do little logos for Christmas and different activities, different holidays. They do little graphics and sort of make fun of their logo.

SIEBERG: And it's not just looking for things. Sometimes it's people.

MURRAY: And I did the same thing with my daughter when she has a new boyfriend, one of the first things I do is put his name in that search engine and see what comes up. I try to say very subtly, how do you spell that dear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Never Google myself, I'm afraid what I might find.

SHERMAN: Google makes it as simple as sitting down, typing in a few words and in most cases it will actually give you a very good answer. So I think that's the reason for it's overwhelming popularity.

SIEBERG: Google still faces competition from the likes of Yahoo, Alta Visita, Microsoft and Ask Jeeves. Now it's branched out to include other functions, plus a Web-based e-mail service.

SHERMAN: In 50 years, they would ultimately like to have Google be the same kind of computer that you see in Star Trek right now where it's basically everywhere. You speak to it; it gives you answers and so on. Whether they actually reach that goal or not remains to be seen, but it shows that their ambitions are certainly quite high.

SIEBERG: Want to know more? Well you can always Google it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well search no further, there's more on Google and other stories in this week's program on our Web site. That's at CNN.com/next.

If you hate spam and who doesn't, well, there's a ray of hope this week. On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission announced criminal charges against four men accused of violating the new Canned Spam Act. Two of the men have been arrested and the feds are looking for the other two. They're all from the Detroit area; they are charged with sending thousands of spam messages selling fake diet products. These are the first charges under the new Anti-Spam Legislation.

Coming up on NEXT@CNN, we'll tell you how the International Atomic Energy Agency, yes the guys who were looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is now putting its talents toward eradicating mosquitoes.

And later, imagine the federal government wanted to build a lab containing some of the deadliest germs known to man in your neighborhood. Well these folks don't have to imagine it. That story and more when NEXT@CNN returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Look out. The Franken fish are back. Well one of them at least. An angler caught the non-native fish; its real name is the northern snakehead in a lake in Wheaten, Maryland this week. The species has been informally dubbed Franken fish because it can move on land for short distances and can eat so much, it can destroy an ecosystem. Might make a good name for an aquatic horror movie as well. Snakeheads were found breeding a couple of years ago in a pond in Crofton, Maryland. They were all killed and the pond was drained. This lake will also be drained to make sure there are no more Franken fish lurking about.

An emergency cleanup operation is going on in a marsh north of San Francisco where thousands of gallons of diesel fuel spilled on Tuesday. This assumed marsh is a key nesting ground form migratory birds and several ducks have already been found dead. State officials estimate 40,000 gallons of fuel were released when a pipeline broke. By Thursday, the spill was mostly contained, but a complete cleanup will take weeks or even months.

Well, the drought in the western United States is now in its fifth year with no relief in sight. As Casey Wian reports, the drought is having a growing impact on people's lives and livelihoods.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Another day of record high temperatures in southern California. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I'm in the shade and it's still hot, I know it's hot.

WIAN: Rising fears of growing water shortages throughout the west this summer. Already this year low winter snow levels led the governor of Idaho to declare a drought emergency in three counties. This national drought mitigation center map shows drought hitting 25 states with abnormally dry weather in seven others. Giant Lake Mead which supplies water to Nevada, Arizona and Southern California has dropped below 60 percent of its capacity, nearby Lake Powell is closer to 40 percent. Water agencies such as Arizona's Salt River Project are slashing deliveries to customers.

BRUCE HALLIN, SALT RIVER PROJECT: We've reduced allocations to our users within our service territory by one-third. We did that last year and we're continuing that allocation reduction for this year, and that hasn't happened since the late '40s.

WIAN: Last year, the federal government forced southwestern states to agree on a way to share surplus water from the Colorado River. Now the surplus is gone.

RON GASTELUM, CEO: Two years ago we were taking 1.2 million acre feet of water from the Colorado River almost every year now we're down around 600,000 acre feet and we're planning on not getting much more for the near term.

WIAN: Southern California and some other areas say they have plenty of water to survive the drought because they've invested heavily in storage facilities and conservation. But in Las Vegas, the drought has already led to sharp price increases. Water rationing and restrictions on new lawns. Some western water districts are considering paying farmers not to grow crops to conserve water and lumber prices in some areas have doubled since last year.

The biggest immediate threat is a repeat of last year's wild fires. One hit Southern California Monday.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN: Electricity supply is another concern. Already California's power grid operators have asked residents to reduce their use of appliances twice in the past month. Grid officials say they have enough electricity to keep the lights on this summer as long as temperatures return to normal.

SIEBERG: Another unwelcome sign of summer is mosquitoes. Well mosquito's numbers could start to drop in a few years. They have a project being launched in Austria pans out. Katherine Dorset (ph) reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHERINE DORSET, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For an Enthromolgists at the U.N.'s Nuclear Watchdog Research Center outside Venisa (ph) says his organization theory to eliminate mosquitoes is simple, breed mosquitoes in the lab, exposing the males to short bursts of radiation, thus rendering them sterile.

BART KNOLS, ENTROMOLOGIST: And when they mate with females, they transfer sterile sperm to the female that only mates once during her lifetime, and therefore she will not produce any off spring afterwards.

DORSET: Knols says his mosquitoes are becoming more immune to pesticides and drugs. With radiation, the idea is that over time, the mosquito's population would significantly decrease or perhaps end all together in some places of the world. If this process works, Knols says it could potentially save millions of lives especially in places like Sub Sahara Africa, where millions die from by Malaria, which can be carried by mosquitoes.

KNOLS: Sub Sahara Africa (INAUDIBLE) with an estimated 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths per year, which comes down to a figure of about 3,000 children per day or about one child every 20 seconds. It's a very severe disease.

DORSET: Knols said entomologists could release sterile male mosquitoes into the wild in five years time. The problem they still need to solve is which stage in the male mosquitoes life to radiate the male mosquito and for how long. There's no telling if what's working in the lab will work in the real world.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SEIBERG: Turning to news from out of this world now, the Hubble space telescope has come up with another stunning image from space this is called the bug nebula, although it looks more like a butterfly than your basic bug. Researchers say it's one of the brightest nebulae ever seen. It is a dying super hot star at its center surrounded by blanket of hailstones. Scientists from the European Space Agencies say one of the most interesting things about the bug nebula is its chemical composition, which includes carbonates. In the solar systems, the presence of carbonates means there was once liquid water. Now the researchers don't think that's the case with the bug nebula so they are mystified about how the carbonates formed.

NASA Mar's Rover mission got another gold star on its report card this week. The Rover Opportunity passed its 90th full day on Mars. NASA released a time-lapse video to mark the occasion. Don't get whiplash. This compresses 90 days worth of activity into less than a minute. Opportunity has traveled about half a mile during its three months on the red planet and it sent back more than 12,000 images and 15 gigga bytes of data. Opportunity and its twin Spirit have both completed their original to do list but will probably keep working for several more months.

And three space travelers are back on Earth after a stay on the International Space Station. Their solar spacecraft landed early Friday morning Moscow time. Two of the crew, an American and a Russian have been on the space station for the past six months. The third is a Dutch astronaut who spent a few days doing science experiments. That leaves a two-man crew on board the station who is just starting their six-month hitch. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ahead on NEXT@CNN the difference a young man from Illinois has made in cleaning up the nation's rivers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: For nearly three years, environmentalists and watchdog groups have been complaining about the energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney that helped the Bush administration drop a national energy strategy. This week, their complaint went before the Supreme Court. They say the energy plan was written largely by the energy industry itself, and they want access to task force records, but Cheney says the records are none of their business. The latest from Bob Franken.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Vice President Cheney wants the justices to decide what he and the Bush administration say is a fundamental constitutional question.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a case about the separation of powers.

FRANKEN: U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson ordered no judge, no other branch of government has the power to force Cheney to release records of his energy advisory board.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congress may neither intrude on the president's ability to perform these functions nor authorize private litigants to use the courts to do so.

FRANKEN: This drama had a sub plot. Justice Antonin Scalia (ph) had refused to remove himself from the case even after disclosures had he gone duck hunting in January with Cheney. Would he challenge as usual the solicitor general's arguments? He did. What was the harm in just releasing who actually voted on energy policy?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why would that be such an intrusion upon the executives?

FRANKEN: Why not? Several justices asked Olson. Just claimed executive privilege.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Executive privilege may not have covered every scrap of paper.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. vice president, what are you hiding?

FRANKEN: That was the attorney from the Sierra Club outside. Inside, he argued the law required that the administration show if its energy policy had been shaped by Cheney's meetings with corporate energy executives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The question is what happened at those meetings and that's what we seek discovery.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRANKEN: But justices are expected to make their ruling by the end of June, just as the election campaign begins to really heat up, and this is a political issue, as well as a legal issue.

SIEBERG: Now a settlement in the federal case that's been going on for more than a decade. In 1990, two members of the Radical Environmental Group Earth First were injured when a pipe bomb blew up in their car in Oakland, California. Judy Barry suffered a crushed pelvis and Daryl Cherny suffered cuts. Authorities arrested the pair and said they had been carrying the bomb when it accidentally detonated.

However, no charges were filed. Barry and Cherny they later sued the FBI and Oakland police claiming false arrest and saying authorities ignored evidence. This month, 14 years after the event, the federal government agreed to pay $2 million to settle the lawsuit. Oakland agreed earlier to pay another $2 million. The settlement will be divided between Cherny and the estate of Barry who died of cancer in 1997.

When it comes to environmental activism, you've heard the saying think globally and act locally. Well a remarkable young man from Illinois took that to heart and then some. Elaine Quijano has the inspiring story of river advocate Chad Pregracke.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When CNN first met Chad Pregracke in 1997; he was a young man trying to single-handedly clean up the Mississippi River.

CHAD PREGRACKE, 1997: I saw trash and I was tired of living around trash, camping out. All the beaches were totally trashed. Nobody was coming out to pick them up. So I thought well if I don't do it, who's going to.

QUIJANO: What can one person do? For Chad, the answer is clear.

PREGRACKE: It was simple. It was just like just go and picks it up and just do it, and it's done.

QUIJANO: The 29-year-old began cleaning up the Mississippi seven years ago. His goals were simple. To clear the banks of the river here his Illinois home.

PREGRACKE: We removed over a million pounds of garbage and had over 10,000 volunteers. Come out and help out.

QUIJANO: Chad reminds others not to take America's resources for granted.

PREGRACKE: We are blessed I think in this country because we have an abundance of good soil, an abundance of water. A lot of places in the other parts of the world don't. QUIJANO: Over the years, Chad has hauled out more than 10,000 tires, 737 refrigerators and even 21 messages in bottles, including one he put back in the river.

PREGRACKE: Somebody had passed away and there was a picture of him in the bottle, and something written from probably his brother or a family member and so actually, we let that bottle stay.

QUIJANO: From the banks of the Mississippi now to the nation's seat of power, Washington.

PREGRACKE: We removed 50 tons of debris out of the Potomac and the Casia River with hundreds of volunteers. We've got 746 tires and a couple thousand, 3,000 bags of trash. I used to measure results in boatloads. Every boatload was an accomplishment everyday out there, and now with the help of all these thousands of volunteers from all over the country, we're measuring it in barge loads.

QUIJANO: Chad has martalled (ph) an impressive array of corporate sponsors and an army of devoted volunteers. Those who know him perhaps the best aren't surprised by his accomplishments.

KEEKEE PREGRACKE, CHAD'S MOTHER: When he says he's going to do it, you'd better get out of the way or get in the boat because he's going to do it.

PREGRACKE: This is my life's work. This is not just a job or 8 to 5 on a mission. This is it, this what I'm all about. I can't say exactly where I'll be in ten years, but I know I'll be trying to do as much positive work as I can somewhere.

QUIJANO: After D.C., Chad will be leading his volunteers to St. Louis, back to the Mississippi River he loves.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Coming up in our next half hour, as deadly roadside bombs in Iraq send Humvees up in flames, the Pentagon considers whether new technology or perhaps old technology should be used to replace the vehicles.

Also, ahead, an even more controversial plan from the folks who brought us Dolly, the cloned sheep.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: From CNN Center in Atlanta. I'm Betty Nguyen. NEXT@CNN continues in just a moment. But first the headlines.

Police sources in Washington believe an assault on Supreme Court Justice David Souter was a random attack. Souter suffered minor injuries last night when he was assaulted by two young men why jogging near the Potomac River.

A new Iraqi force in Fallujah is starting to take over some positions around the city from U.S. marines. A U.S. military spokesman says the Iraqi battalion will assist the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Fallujah.

To Europe and then there were 25, 10 new countries joined the European nion today, including Poland, Hungry, the Czech Republic. Festivies began last night. The move is being held as a new era, 450 million people now live in EU countries.

Police in North Texas as searching for 3 toddlers lost in a wave of flash flooding. Officials say the missing children were trapped in 2 different vehicles which got swept off roadways by rushing waters. The storms are blamed for at least 4 deaths.

It's 2 and a half hours to post time at Churchill Downs where folks may be looking to trade their traditional Kentucky Derby hats in for some umbrellas. There's a 60 percent chance of showers in Louisville today for the 1st leg of racing's Triple Crown. It's the 130th run for the roses with 18 3 year old to set the race.

Well, I have all of the day's news at the top of the hour. Now back to NEXT@CNN.

SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. Well, here's a question the U.S. Military is pondering: what's the safest way to move U.S. troops around the dangerous roadways of Iraq? Well, the Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on improved Humvees, but one top general says that's not the best solution. Senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With U.S. troops still dying in deadly roadside attacks, the Pentagon is spending $400 million racing to replace the Army's basic thin-skinned Humvees with reinforced up-armored versions. "But the better armor is still not providing adequate protection," writes a four star general in a memo obtained by CNN.

"Commanders in the field are reporting to me that the up-armored Humvee is not providing the solution the Army hoped to achieve," writes General Larry Ellis, commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces Command, in a March 30 memo to the Army chief of staff.

Critics say even with better armor, the Humvees' shoulder level doors make it too easy to lob a grenade inside. Its four rubber tires burn too readily. At two tons, it's light enough to be overturned by a mob.

General Ellis wants to shift Army funds to build twice as many of the Army's newest combat vehicle, the Stryker, which has eight wheels, weighs 19 tons and when equipped with a special cage, can withstand an RPG attack.

BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): The Striker's going to take too long to produce that many. So I'd get something out there now during this very intense period in Iraq.

MCINTYRE: Critics like General Grange say the Army is overlooking an even cheaper, faster solution than the $3 million Stryker, thousands of Vietnam era M-113 armored personnel carriers that the Army has in storage and which can be upgraded with new armor for less than $100,000 apiece.

(on camera): In his memo, General Ellis pleads for quick action, lamenting while the U.S. is at war, some in the Army are in a peacetime posture. He writes, "If our actions impede our ability to train, equip or organize our soldiers for combat, then we've failed the soldier and the nation."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: On the home front, one continuing worry is the possibility of a biological attack by terrorists. A new lab to be built in Boston will help scientists learn more about diseases like anthrax and Ebola that could be used for bio-terror. Now, there's not much debate about the value of such a lab, but as Dan Lothian reports, it seems nobody wants it in their backyard.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's a giant parking lot now, but underneath these cars in Boston's south end, is the proposed site of a level-four bio-safety lab, already coming under attack.

JONATHAN KING, M.I.T. BIOLOGY PROFESSOR: This is not a biosafety facility, there is no safety in it anywhere.

LOTHIAN: Nearby residents call it a bio-terror lab, where the deadliest biological agents, such as Anthrax, Ebola. and Smallpox will be studied by scientists at Boston University Medical Center.

KLARE ALLEN, COMMUNITY ACTIVIST: These are airborne diseases that have symptoms of a cold. I want to be safe.

LOTHIAN: But Dr. Jack Murphy, a Boston University medical professor, working to better understand these deadly agents, is one of the few researchers in the country with experience handling them. He says fear is understandable, but unfounded.

DR. JACK MURPHY, BOSTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CTR.: Safety is paramount. There is a containment barrier that's 150-foot around the building, iris scanning, fingerprinting, there are six levels of safety.

LOTHIAN (on camera): There seems to be no disagreement about the value of such a lab. The problem then becomes its location here. Nearby residents are concerned that no matter how much talk there is about extreme security, it will never be safe enough.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fifty thousand people within one mile...

LOTHIAN (voice-over): Some of the residents who attended a recent town hall meeting said they felt betrayed. DICK CLAP JAMAICA PLAIN RESIDENT: The community doesn't want this facility and so the institution has to listen to that. And if it doesn't, its just being an arrogant neighbor.

LOTHIAN: After 9-11 and the anthrax attacks, the National Institutes of Health awarded $128 million to this Boston University Medical Center to build one of two new level-four labs. The other one will be in Texas.

Federal officials were attracted to this areas rich medical and research history, determined to become proactive in the War on Terror.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: We need to be prepared. It would be dreadful and unconscionable if we were not prepared for a bio-terror attack.

LOTHIAN: As the effort to convince a community continues, opponents are working just as hard to block the lab before it goes from the drawing board, to groundbreaking to completion in three years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Later on NEXT@CNN, a fugitive on the lamb from the clippers for six years finally gets cut down to size.

But next, the folks who brought us another sheep, "Dolly," the clone, has another even more controversial plan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Speaking of cloning, the creators of the first clobed mammal, "Dolly" the sheep, now want to clone something more controversial, human embryos. Sue Saville of the British news service, ITN reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TIM COOPER: Very exciting, any movement to improve the chances of a cure, marvelous news.

SUE SAVILLE, ITN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tim Cooper says anyone opposing research on human embryos should understand the horror of living with motor neuron disease. Cloning is a moral debate that's raged since the creation of "Dolly" the sheep, the first cloned mammal eight years ago. Now, Dolly's creator, Professor Ian Wilmot, is applying for a license to clone human embryos, the first since the technology was approved by Parliament three years ago, but it's still raising objections.

DR. HELEN WATT, ETHICS EXPERT: This is not cloning for birth, but it's actually even worse because all these embryos are going to die. Not a single embryo is going to survive the experiment. So, what you're doing is you're cloning human beings, but you're cloning them for the purpose of lethal experimentation.

SAVILLE: The fuehrer extended to America where President Bush pulled public funding on stem cell research.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Life is a creation, not a commodity.

SAVILLE: Scientists here deny such research could ever lead to the cloning of a fully developed human baby.

PROF. LORD WINSTON, FERTILITY EXPERT: This is regulated. It's against the law to do reproductive cloning, it will remain against the law in this country and that is the end of the matter.

SAVILLE (on camera): When the first application to clone human embryos is received here at the human fertilization and embryology authority, it will take several months to assess, but if cleared, the controversial work could start later this year.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Next up, bar codes move over, here come the radio frequency tags. We'll explain this new technology that's coming to all sorts of products you buy everyday.

And later, you've heard of the Maltese falcon, but is something afoul with the fowl on the mysterious island of Malta?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID KIRKPATRICK, "FORTUNE" SENIOR EDITOR: Cyber-terror is an attack that basically targets the internet and all the technology that surrounds it. The infrastructure of the internet includes everything from the central servers that govern how you find an internet address all the way down to the cable modem at an individual consumer's house.

We're all familiar with the standard virus attacks, but beyond that, denial of service attacks where criminals create a huge volume of e-mail and requests for service to commercial web sites to the point that they simply can't manage them anymore and the sites crash.

Another big fear is that you use the internet to take down physical infrastructure whether it's a power plant or sewage plant, electrical power transmission facilities; almost all of these kinds of physical real-world infrastructures have large internet connected components, now. And people don't take the risk of cyber-terrorism seriously enough, and frankly, I think the terrorists probably realize that and if we're not guarding the internet, that's a vulnerable place where they're likely to attack.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FEMI OKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The crowd goes wild! They're about to witness an historic event.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a sperm race.

OKE: Spermatozoon, the male sex cell, is a natural born swimmer. The midsection behind the head powers it onwards and upwards and its tail gives it the motility it needs to get to its destination. But, not all sperm are born equal and in a unique experiment to show the characteristics needed for healthy fertile semen, British researchers staged a race.

Meet the contestants, Mike on the right, and Zeron on the left.

ALLAN PACEY, MALE FERTILITY EXPERT: We're going to see which one of you guys has the better mucous penetrating sperm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would be something to brag about, won't it?

OKE: in preparation for the big race, Zeron worked out, ate well and took good care of himself. Mike drank too much and wore tight underwear which, apart from not being attractive to look at, was bad for his sperm which thrives in cool conditions.

On race day, the contestants dropped off their "athletes" who were then inserted into glass tubes. Filmed under microscopic conditions, the race was shown to a capacity crowd. Clean living Zeron wins the great sperm race. A public demonstration of the link between lifestyle and male fertility.

I'm Femi Oke, and that's "Cool Science."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: A technology that's been around since World War II is nearly ready to change the way we do business, but will it invade our privacy? They're called RFID tags or "Radio Frequency Identification Tags. Now, if you haven't heard of them, you're not alone, but be prepared to hear more about them in the future. They start out as very, very tiny chips; in fact there are about 150 of them in this vial alone. Then they need to be made into RFID tags which look like something here on the table, they add an antenna to them, in fact some companies are even incorporating their logo into the antenna already. Now, the whole point of RFID tags is they're meant to replace this -- this is a bar code. You see it all the time, a UPC bar code. But with a bar code, it needs to be scan or swiped at a fairly close range. You need to be close to the product, but with an RFID tag, you can be 15 to 50 feet away and still read it, you don't have to be in the line of sight. So, we have a demonstration here in the studio, we can show you how this works and what companies are doing initially to incorporate RFID tags. We have sort of a virtual warehouse set up, this is using technology from a company called Alien. We've got our pallet, if we're sort of going to into the warehouse and we're sliding along here with these products, it's going to go in front of our antenna, you can see right here, and each of the products on this pallet are now showing up in this computer. It's recognizing the products on the pallet.

Now, that's different than scanning the products or having a human record them as they come into the warehouse. Now I'm going to slide them out and as I slide them out, they're going to disappear. An in fact, if I take one single product off of here and move it closer, you can see the mug here, it's actually showing up as I close -- make it -- put it closer to the antenna.

So, this is part of the idea behind RFID tags is they don't have to be in this line of sight. However, there are some hurdles here, this is not going to be technology that's adopted widely initially and not in products individually right away either. Wal-Mart has asked its top 100 suppliers to include these RFID tags in its crates and pallets by January of 2005. There are other manufacturers of RFID tags including Phillips and Texas Instruments, even IBM has partnered with many of these companies to try and push RFID tags into the mainstream, but it's still a few years away wider adoption. There are some hurdles in place, including the price of the RFID tag, which needs to be brought down. The frequencies need to line up and there are privacy concerns that will have to be addressed going into the future, when these tags are part of individual items.

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ANNOUNCER: Still to come, a sheep bearing 60 pounds of wool finally has his date with the sheers. Too bad people can't lose weight this easily.

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SIEBERG: OK, you probably know that an earthquake is a sudden tremor or movement of the Earth's crust originating at or below the earth's surface. But, what causes them?

Well, just like its inhabitants, the Earth suffers from stress, this time the physical variety. When the Earth's layers become subjected to enormous strain, they eventually move and can cause an earthquake.

The surface of the earth is broken into several major plates or large areas of crust that float on the mantel. Since these plates free to slowly move and move they do, they can either drift toward each other, away from each other, or slide past each other.

Now, many of the earthquakes we feel are areas where the plates collide or try to shift past each other, something's got to give. When there's a sudden movement within the crust or mantel, concentric shock waves move out from that point, just like ripples in a pond.

On average, about 1,000 earthquakes with intensities of 5.0 or greater are recorded each year.

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SIEBERG: This weekend, the tiny country of Malta joins the European Union. And conservationists had hoped the country would be forced to adhere to the union's rule on hunting migratory birds, but it appears that's not the case. The Maltese have a long interest addition of hunting birds for pets and food and they're not planning to stop, more from Robin Oakley.

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ROBIN OAKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the Ghadira nature reserve, egrets, moorhens and waders enjoy the salt marsh shallows, along with more colorful species like yellow wagtails. But getting there can be risky for them. More than 6,000 Maltese are licensed to hunt and conservationists claim nothing is safe even on the spring migration to breed.

Charles Gauci DHADIRA, NATURE RESERVE WARDEN: Egrets are certainly -- they're very much at risk even though they are protected. And also unfortunately birds like swallows -- if there is nothing else to shoot they are shot at random.

OAKLEY: But many Maltese are entirely unapologetic about their traditions. Trapper John Vella was happy to show how he uses a captive turtle dove hooded and tethered to a platform as a lure to entice others into his clap nets.

JOHN VELLA, TRAPPER: "I attract the birds by showing that one and when they come in I just pull. It's a very primitive trapping which has been used since the Knights of Malta, very old. The problem is we used to catch around 500 a year, now we are catching 20 a year or less.

OAKLEY: And why do he and his friends trap turtle doves? Not just, it seems, to admire them in their aviaries.

VELLA: It's a very good bird to eat.

OAKLEY (on camera): Is it?

VELLA: It is very -- it's a delicacy. And -- you know, some -- we'll keep only twenty for next year and the other one we'll cook them.

OAKLEY (voice-over): But many don't trap for the pot. By day, Charles Micaleff works for a Birdlife Malta Nature Reserve. But off duty he has more than a hundred birds in cages and aviaries which dominate his home.

He doesn't see any contradiction. "It's not trapping," he says "which is trapping threatening species." CHARLES MICALEFF, BIRDLIFE MALTA NATURE RESERVE: No, no, no, no. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. In one day, you can see thousands of chaffinches.

OAKLEY: And while some argue that Maltese hunters are endangering species which fly over the island on migration, Charles insists there's a different explanation for lower numbers.

MICALEFF: The damage in birds. It's by farming; you know where they spray with poison liquids.

OAKLEY: The debate remains a vigorous one. Bird keepers reckon they're harassed.

MICALEFF: Police come every moment and search for something illegal.

OAKLEY: But wardens recon politicians listen it too much to the hunters.

DHADIRA: I know for sure that the Maltese authority receives several complaints everyday about hunting and about trapping, but somehow the government keeps clothing its eyes.

OAKLEY: So with EU (UNINTELLIGIBLE), Charles Micaleff reckons he'll still be keeping his birds in 20 years?

MICALEFF: I think so. I wish, yeah. I wish. I wish I die with them.

OAKLEY (on camera): Bird watchers had been hoping that Malta's arrival in the EU would see greater curbs on the island's hunting of migrant species. So far, they've largely been disappointed, but greater exposure over time, they hope, will see a new balanced struck between local tradition and growing pressures for conservation.

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SIEBERG: You know, sheep sheering is usually pretty routine in New Zealand, where sheep actually outnumber people 10 to one. You can insert your own sheep joke here, but this week, one ram's hair cut was big enough news to be carried live on TV. That's because the ram called "Shrek" has been hiding out in caves for six years avoiding the annual sheering. Dean Tornquist has the story.

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DEAN TORNQUIST, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Shrek may have evaded (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for six years in this rugged (UNINTELLIGIBLE) country, but with the cameras rolling, his flowing locks were finally about to get the chop.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Normally we see these sort of sheep every twelve months and we got one here with six years wool on it and as Peter said, the shield up the front here, that's almost like a bit of wood -- bit of balsa wood. It's going to take some -- take some opening up.

TORNQUIST: Looking equally woozy as he was woolly, Shrek rolled over for the clipping to begin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very soft wool.

TORNQUIST: Hand sheering opted in frequence to machine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think there's much less stress on the sheep, on Shrek, and Peter's doing an excellent job there, leaving on a very nice thick coat of fine Merino wool.

TORNQUIST: After almost 30 minutes, Shrek was denuded.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to see a naked Shrek. Here we have him.

(APPLAUSE)

TORNQUIST: This precious Merion wool weighing in at an impressive 20.7 kilograms.

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SIEBERG: That's 60 pounds, enough for a really big sweater, probably big enough to cover the movie version of "Shrek," but actually the wool will be auctioned on the internet with the money going to charity.

Well, that's all the time we have for now, but here's what's coming up next week:

A team of computer experts takes to the air to map out some of the hot spots where you can find wireless internet connections. The goal is to point out a growing danger to computer users.

That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let us hear from you. You can send us an e-mail anytime at next@cnn.com.

Thanks so much for joining us this week. For all of us, I'm Daniel Sieberg. We'll see you next time.

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