Return to Transcripts main page

Next@CNN

Athens Spends Unprecedented Amount On Security; NASA Launches Spacecraft To Mercury;

Aired August 07, 2004 - 15:00   ET

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

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


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the Olympic opening ceremony is mere days away, and Greece says it's ready. Enormous amounts have spent on infrastructure and security, but there's another long standing problem in Athens that could be harder to solve. Femi Oke has the story.

FEMI OKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The locals call it Nopos (ph), or cloud, thick smoke that's been responsible for making Athens one of Europe's most polluted cities. In fact, some scientists warn that the quality of the air could affect Olympic performance in Athens.

With the capital full of traffic, industry and surrounded by hills, pollution is easily trapped. But this year, the mayor of Athens promises the smoggy city will be transformed.

DORA BAKOYIANNIS, MAYOR OF ATHENS: Oh, it's much better than it was. You know Athens had a bad reputation years ago for being a very polluted city. But that started 25 years ago, when it was true. From then on, a whole policy started which changed the atmosphere very much.

OKE: Despite the mayor's confidence, American athletes have been briefed on how to cope with air pollution in Greece. Dr. Randy Wilber is the senior sports physiologist for the United States Olympic Committee.

DR. RANDY WILBER, U.S. OLYMPIC COMMITTEE: We've actually started as far back as May of 2003, by going to Athens and measuring the pollution levels at the various venues. Armed with that information, we were then able to educate our coaches and athletes as to how good or how bad the air pollution would be in those environments.

OKE: The medical team took these pictures of Athens in August, 2003. The air looked pretty bad. The doctor's advice for these athletes was to train a few times in polluted air, that way, if they developed any respiratory problems, they would have plenty of time to get treatment.

Runner Ryan Talbert-Jackson is very familiar with the effects of smog, she has asthma which was triggered after she competed at the 1997 world championships in Athens.

RYAN TOLBERT-JACKSON, U.S. OLYMPIC TEAM: I think your body deals with allergies and pollution as if it's fighting off a virus or something. Your breathing is labored, you're more fatigued.

OKE: Ryan says the best thing athletes can do is be outside as little as possible, especially if they have allergies or asthma.

TOLBERT-JACKSON: Really just go warm up for your event, race and then go back inside.

OKE: But this is not the sort of Olympic experience the mayor of Athens is planning for.

BAKOYIANNIS: The air in Athens will be really no problem for the athletes. And I think the whole environment will be an extremely friendly environment for to -- you know, to really excel themselves.

OKE: This isn't just hype, a lot of work and money has gone into bringing fresh air the Athens. Public transport has been dramatically improved. Buses are powered by natural gas and the metro has been expanded. Olympic officials will drive around in electric cars, while thousands of new trees have been planted.

If the Nepos (ph) descends after all of this, it's not for want of trying.

(on camera): Athens is not the only olympic venue to face air pollution problems. In 1984, the Los Angeles Olympics had a number of bad air days. And here, in Atlanta, in 1996, also some concerns about smog.

(voice-over): Nobody will really know how effective the air pollution measures have been until the games begin. Until then, athletes and Olympic officials will be waiting to excel.

SIEBERG: Of course, they'll still have to contend with the heat.

Well, those athletes have trained for years to make their country's Olympic teams using every tool they can find to improve performance. One of those tools is a video program called Dartfish. Donna Tetreault reports.

DONNA TETREAULT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Olympic hopeful Erica Wheeler is training for one of the biggest moments of her life: a shot at a trip to Athens. But this lifelong javelin thrower, who tried to qualify in '96, has a little more help this time around thanks to a cutting edge digital video program called Dartfish.

ERICA WHEELER, OLYMPIC HOPEFUL: I'm a lot more effective with my training. I do less training, but it's definitely more specific to what I need to accomplish in my technique.

TETREAULT: Dartfish allows athletes to fine tune their training on the spot. Coaches videotape practice and then athletes can review their own performance instantaneously, or the pictures can be superimposed over images over the world's best competitors, to see how the athletes stack up.

WHEELER: I walk right over and I can look at it right after a set and tell if I'm making the changes I need to do.

VICTOR BERGONZOLI, PRESIDENT DARTFISH: If you take a javelin throw, a very, very small difference in the launch angle can mean making it to the trials and or winning the gold medal of the Olympics. And it's the scene at every level of this sport.

TETREAULT (on camera): It's those subtle differences that Wheeler is hoping to correct, so when she leaves the field her work doesn't have to end, she can go home, pull up the program and look at her technique over and over again. It's a constant reminder of what works and what doesn't.

(voice-over): Akiba McKinney is also working to get to Athens, in the long jump. She's a big believer in Dartfish.

AKIBA MCKINNEY, OLYMPIC HOPEFUL: It allows me to see it, rather than him just telling me exactly what it is that I'm not doing.

WHEELER: It kind of settles the mind because it says, well because your right foot landed this way instead of this way. And so it really allows you to put a feeling and a -- you know, a reason behind why something's not going as well as you want it to.

TETREAULT: But the technology advantage comes at a cost. And critics say with a price tag anywhere under just under 500 to nearly $5,000, it's not within reach of amateur athletes. So as long as they can afford it, athletes can add technology to the list of blood, sweat and tears in their quest for success.

SIEBERG: Incidentally, McKinney and Wheeler still don't know if they're going to Athens. They have until Monday to meet the standards to be included in the U.S. teams in their events.

Now, of course, another big concern of Olympics is security. And when we come back, we'll see what Greek authorities are doing to keep the games safe.

And speaking of safety, what are these things doing on the streets? We'll find out later in the show.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: In a world plagued by terrorism, the Olympics are an obvious target. Authorities in Greece backed up by other countries and NATO, are using technology plus a massive police presence to protect the games. Michael Holmes reports.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Of all the records that have and will be set at the Athens Olympics, perhaps none are impressive than the bill for security: $1.25 billion and counting, 15 times what Atlanta spent eight years ago. Times have changed.

ELEFTHERIOS IKONOMOU, GOVT. SECURITY SPOKESMAN (through translator): After September 11, the Olympic security planning changed significantly, because it had to take into consideration new factors that came into play. HOLMES (on camera): Here at the main Olympic Stadium, just handful of the 70,000 Greek police and soldiers who will be here at the games. NATO is here also. There'll be AWACS early warning planes in the skies. And in the water: warships, including submarines.

In addition, some teams are bringing their own armed security.

JAMES APPATHRUAI, NATO SPOKESMAN: This is a massively complex security operation involving, of course, a huge array of countries, all coming with security details. But also specific countries and NATO have been engaged to provide security.

So, yes, there's some diplomacy. There's a lot of security, but again, it's the Greeks doing the choreography.

HOLMES: There are teams on stand by from the Czech Republic with chemical, biological and radiation experts. U.S. special forces will be here. PATRIOT missiles are in place. The FBI is coming with a hostage rescue team and bomb scene specialists.

But according to NATO, on the delicate issue of chain of command, Greeks run the show.

APPATHRUAI: Greece is in charge. This is absolutely a Greek lead and a Greek security operation.

HOLMES: But on the streets of Athens, little so far in terms of security. But lots of subtle signs: cameras, hundredes of them, watching 24 hours a day. In the sky, day and night, an ever present airships with more cameras. Some Greeks feel the eye of big brother.

"I don't like them, because they are watching us without us knowing," says this man. "Who protects us from the protectors."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): When that thing goes around, it's very disturbing but isn't security important for the games?

BAKOYIANNIS: It's price we have to pay. There is no other way. We are not thrilled with it. And I don't think any city in the world would be thrilled with that. But we know it's necessary, so we live with it.

PROF. THEODORE COULOUMBIS, UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS: If you feel that you live in a brave new world and that you have given up your freedom in order to get your stability and your security, then the terrorists have managed their own key objective, to rob us of our Democratic values.

HOLMES: Mayor Bakoyiannis says that isn't happening.

BAKOYIANNIS: We should not forget that this is not the moment of the police or the army, but it's the moment of the athletes and of the people being able to look this sport event. So we have to balance all that out. I believe we did it. HOLMES: Nervous Greeks hope she's right. That the fears, the guns and the airship will all be forgotten in the euphoria that surely comes when the Olympic Anthem is first played.

SIEBERG: Law enforcement agencies across the country held an emergency drill this week to test how they'd respond to terrorist attaks. On Thursday, a series of simulated disasters hi California. Thelma Gutierrez reports.

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 9:28 a.m., the port of Los Angeles, Long Beach. A dirty bomb detonates, ripping through a shipping container, releasing radioactive material into the air.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You need to come over here.

GUTIERREZ: 9:32 a.m., the first emergency crews arrive on the scene.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On a scale we have not seen in the United States since 9/11.

GUTIERREZ: 9:35, the command center in Sacramento is on full alert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The U.S. is clearly under attack once again.

GUTIERREZ: It is a scenario no one wants to think about: a radioactive bomb detonated by terrorists, claiming dozens of casualties.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three.

GUTIERREZ: You're looking at a simulated attack, but the possibility is all too real, and emergency teams want to be ready.

ELLIS STANLEY, L.A. COUNTRY EMERGENCY SERVICES: This, as you indicated very appropriately, is a massive amount of people coming together, entities that may not have worked together in the past.

GUTIERREZ: Forty different local, state and federal agencies and 200 role players are taking part in the exercise here in Long Beach.

MICHAEL BOWMAN, LOS ANGELES CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT: We're really evaluating that coordination and communication and sharing and pooling of resources.

GUTIERREZ: NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, organized the massive effort.

Few people knew what to expect. The details were kept quiet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moderate to high levels of contamination on the (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

GUTIERREZ: They used capsules containing what NORAD describes as safe levels of live radioactive material in the drill.

BOWMAN: The purpose of those capsules is so that the first responders will have an actual device that they can search for, recover and secure.

GUTIERREZ: Homeland security expert Stephen Flynn once served as commander of the U.S. Coast Guard.

STEPHEN FLYNN, HOMELAND SECURITY EXPERT: If I were to rate on port security on a scale of one to 10, where one were a bull's eye and 10 were secure, on September 11, in our seaports, we were one. In a port like Los Angeles or Long Beach, we may be up to a three. That's not a passing grade.

GUTIERREZ: Achieving what Flynn would consider a passing grade will not be easy. The port of Los Angeles is one of the busiest in the world, with some 11 million containers coming in and out of here. Only 3 percent go through any kind of security inspection.

ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, scientists are revamping their ideas where life can exist. We'll show you why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, NASA sent a messenger to Mercury this week. The space agency launched a spacecraft called Messenger Tuesday on a 6 year trip to the Sun's closest planet. When it reaches Mercury, it will spend a year in orbit gathering information about geology, atmosphere and its core. Scientists are hope to get clues as to how Mercury formed which could, in turn, shed light on how Earth and the solar system came to be.

Well, less than an hour after launching Messanger, NASA, along with Russian controllers, directed a spacewalk at the International Space Station. Astronaut Michael Finck and Cosmonaut Gennady Penalka installed equipment that will help accommodate a new line of supply ships.

And is there life anywhere besides Earth? Well, in the past few years, mainstream scientists have started to take that possibility much more seriously. Miles O'Brien reports on some of the discoveries, both on Earth, and out in space that are shaking up conventional ideas about where life can exist.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Greetings from the deadest place on Earth, Chile's Atacama Desert.

These researchers are probing the limits of life, trying to understand why is there nothing living in the dirt they're digging, while, just over the hill, life is thriving. The big question is, are we alone in the universe? Is there life anywhere other than Earth? And the scientists tell me, mapping the limits of life here makes it easier to chart a clever course to troll for it out there on Mars and possibly other planets. And this is why scientists in this field are so excited right now. The more they look for life in all the wrong places, the more they find it, in the scalding hot acid springs of Yellowstone, in the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean, in the cold dry valleys of the Antarctic, even in radioactive waste pools. We now know all of these places are home to some hale, hearty critters. Life is much more tenacious than we once assumed.

STEVEN SQUYRES, MARS ROVER PROJECT LEADER: There used to be this idea that life really only could take hold in a very narrow range of conditions, sort of like a Goldilocks kind of thing, where it can't be too warm. It can't be too cold. It has got to be just light. But what you find is, as long as you can get liquid water there and some source of energy, man, life is happy, on this planet.

O'BRIEN: And this has fundamentally changed the way scientists look at the universe.

PAUL DAVIES, AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR ASTROBIOLOGY: People have speculated about life beyond Earth for centuries. But it's become a scientific venture only relatively recently.

KELLY SMITH, CLEMSON UNIVERSITY: Well, I think the universe is such an incredibly huge place that the chances that there isn't life anywhere out there are virtually zero. How frequent intelligent life is, is another question.

DAVIES: If we were to discover just a single microbe on another planet and if we could be sure it didn't get there from our planet or vice-versa, if we discovered a second sample of life, somewhere where life has began from scratch, even just a microbe, it would transform our world view beyond the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo and Darwin and Einstein put together.

SIEBERG: And that report is part of an hour-long program on astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial life. "CNN PRESENTS: Is Anybody Out There?" aires Sunday at 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm Eastern time. It will re-air next weekend on Saturday, August 14 at 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm Eastern.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up in our next half hour, invader species like zebra mussels cause billions of dollars worth of damage. We'll tell you about new moves to keep them out of waters where they don't belong.

And would you like to run a presidential campaign? We'll show you how you can. Those stories and a lot more coming up after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. Well, next month, some tough new regulations from the U.S. Coast Guard take effect to try to prevent unwanted and sometimes very destructive cargo. Now, we're not talking about weapons or hazardous materials here, but invasive species, tiny hitchhikers that can really wreak havoc. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG (voice-over): Say the name invader species and Godzilla, king of the monsters may come to mind. Real-life invaders can be minuscule by comparison, but no less dangerous. Creatures, like these almost mystical jellyfish and their kin, tiny, sometimes transparent sea creatures, travel the globe in ballast water of cargo ships. Ballast water keeps ships stable when there's no cargo onboard. But when the water is dumped so are the millions of creatures living in it.

LINDA FARMER, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI: Coming into a new area, this originalism, however, doesn't have any real enemies. The defenses of the local population are not up and so, the organisms can become established, and out-compete the population, could then cause a collapse of the food chain in that area.

SIEBERG: The American comb jellyfish, just a few centimeters long, hitchhiked thousands of miles in the ballast waters of cargo ships from the Chesapeake Bay, to the Black Sea to then to the Caspian Sea. The creature caused the collapse of anchovy fisheries there. Since 1988, then European zebra mussel has invaded the Great Lakes, it caused billions in damage by clogged water intake pipes at factories and power plants and by interrupting the food chain. The Coast Guard says a voluntary code hasn't worked in part because more than 8,000 foreign flagged vessels arrive in the U.S. every year.

REAR ADM. THOMAS GILMOUR, U.S. COAST GUARD: Well, we certainly didn't get as good results on a voluntary regulation as we would like to have seen. We decided a national mandatory regulations are needed.

SIEBERG: There'll soon be new requirements for all ships heading for the Great Lakes.

GILMOUR: That they exchange their water in the open ocean to insure they get high salinity water in their ballast tanks to destroy as many a species as possible or that they carry no ballast or that they retain the ballast that they have onboard.

SIEBERG: Even so, several states bordering the Great Lakes are petitioning for stricter enforcement. The International Maritime Organization estimates that 7,000 different species travel in ballast water every day. Controlling the spread of non-native species is one of several research projects that the University of Miami has under way in floating laboratories aboard the cruise ship Explorer of the Seas.

FARMER: We're looking at a number of different treatment options: Filtration is a possibility; ultra century centrifugation, which is essentially a big centrifuge to spin out originalisms; ozone bleach chlorine treatment.

SIEBERG: Some global shipping companies are working with oceanographers to develop other ballasted water systems. But, those little hitchhikers are not going to be easy to throw overboard.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, speaking of water, in Cuba they don't have enough. Drought has dried up much of the nation's food supply. Lucia Newman reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Appearances are deceiving. Who would guess, for example, that what you see here is really the bottom of a lake. What looks like a puddle was, until two years ago, a huge reservoir providing water for 35,000 people in the nearby city Olgeen (PH). Today, another casualty of the devastating drought hitting eastern Cuba.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The reservoir has been totally dry for nine months. In its fifty years of existence this has never happened.

NEWMAN: Fifty-five-year-old farmer, Raphael Algelata (PH) also knows appearances are deceiving. After a year of no rain, the occasional drizzle of the last two weeks has revived the grass, but it's too little too late for his crops, he says.

"All this should have been full of corn," he adds. His cattle are skin and bones. The region's sugar cane is dry like toothpicks, a disaster for Cuba's main cash crop.

In the city, residents stare into the empty fruit and vegetable market. Ordinair (ph) Rodriguez tells us all he has to sell are condiments, no manioc, plantains, or the like. "If there's no water, there are no staple foods," he says.

So critical are shortages that the U.N. Food Program has approved emergency funding to provide food for children under five. To get a little water, residents rush out of their homes with anything they can, to collect it from trucks brought sometimes from as far away as Havana, nearly 900 kilometers away.

(on camera): The local water authority says it would take up to two months of good daily rain to revert the situation so the people here wouldn't have to keep doing this.

(voice-over): An unlikely weather scenario, though, which is why water to supply about a third of the population will soon be brought from here, the Calto River. Through a 54 kilometer water pipeline being built at record speed, but the only quick solution to this drought, say experts, may well be paradoxically, another natural disaster, one this island is all too familiar with -- a hurricane.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: When we come back, technology makes our lives easier, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're trapped by technology.

ANNOUNCER: Well, maybe not. We'll hear some opinions on the subject.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: All right. With less than 90 days until the presidential election, campaign season is well under way and if you've been thinking, "I can do better than these guys," well, here's your chance. Two new PC games allow you to become a virtual campaign manager. The first is from Lantern Games called "Frontrunner" which allows to you choose your candidate and your issues, then you hit the campaign trail to focus on speeches, ads, fundraising, and ensuring your candidate doesn't get too tired along the way. The other title's from UBISOFT called "The Political Machine" and it's very similar. In this case you can also hire spin doctors or what they call "smear merchants" and you can appear on talk shows like "Barry King Live" and "Nighttime." The creators say they're meant to be interesting, educational, and even a little fun.

Well, from cyber candidates to cyber stock brokers. The New York Stocks Exchange, on Monday, announced a new plan to make electronic trading available to more investors, no matter how big a deal they want to do. Can computers do a better job than human floor traders? Fred Katayama reports.

FRED KATAYAMA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Orders arrive electronically now days at the century's old New York Stocks Exchange and the big board offers electronic trading. But, more than 90 percent of the orders are filled by humans.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just don't think...

KATAYAMA: The NYSC is planning expand electronic trading do and that trading faster. That means more trades could bypass floor brokers. Floor brokers take orders from clients and take them to trading posts where specialists hold auctions and try to get the best price possible for their customers. The NYSC dominates trading (UNINTELLIGIBLE) stocks because rules require that orders be executed at the market that offers the best price and the NYSC beats its rivals on that score most of the time. For regulators have proposed modifying that rule, offering investors the choice of best price or faster execution which could shift some trades to electronic rivals like the NASDAQ or InstaNet.

Could increased automatic trading become Trojan Horse that wipes out traders? Not so soon, say market experts. Machines just can't handle big complex orders as well as man can, so experts say those orders will keep going to specialists.

A computer crushed Gary Casparov, but trading can be more complex than chess.

HAIM MENDLESON, STANFORD BUSINESS SCHOOL: The missing link is not so much on the computer per se, but of course, in the systems and the software, and ability to emulate the reasoning of a human trader.

KATAYAMA: Specialist Kevin Fee boasts computers can't replace the analytical power of human judgment.

KEVIN FEE, SPECIALIST: ...today technology we can have airplanes fly themselves, right now. There's a reason why we have pilots open the cockpit of airplanes.

KATAYAMA: But small orders will increasingly be processed electronically.

(on camera): The head of the NYSC says he doesn't know how many customers will choose electronic trading. But, even he concedes that over the next five years the big boards will see, in his words, "a somewhat smaller number of floor brokers."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: It does seem kind of crowded down there sometimes.

OK, well here's another angle on man versus machine: Does technology really make your life easier? Before you answer take a look at this report from Jim Bolden.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM BOLDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Technology promises so much, but not necessarily more leisure time. In fact, if we aren't spending time using technology, we're spending time trying to get it to actually work.

(CRASH)

BARRY FOX, TECHNOLOGY WRITER: Technology's a nightmare.

BOLDEN: Barry Fox has written about technology for years, but thinks it hasn't made our lives easier -- far from it.

FOX: We're trapped by technology and we've been sold -- we've been sold a lie that technology makes life pleasant, leisurely, lovely.

BOLDEN: So what has gone so horribly wrong? After all, technology does allow us more flexibility at work.

MADELEINE BUNTING: The thing about the kinds of technologies that we've got now is that they've broken down in what used to be a spatial differentiation between work, i.e., you went to work in an office or a factory and you came home again and the two were some distance apart.

BOLDEN: If you think the mobile phone started that dismantling process, then you might say the Blackberry has obliterated the line. Blackberry begs to differ. It says its little wireless e-mailers actually give employees a half an hour a day of free time. Technology certainly has enhanced playtime. And the senior lawyers in this London firm say they couldn't represent their clients well without the latest tech tools. But, there are limits.

JONATHAN WOOD, LAWYER: You are constantly trying to deal with your mobile phone ringing, e-mails coming on -- off your desk, faxes arriving, it's -- it's constant intrusion and sometimes you have to say, "no, I need to give this particular file three hours, four hours, whatever it needs, in fairness to that client."

BOLDEN: And even Barry Fox admits technology is very seductive.

FOX: I can only think it's because what a computer can offer is so wonderful and so attractive, that we are prepared to put up with all the kind of nonsense that we do put up with.

BOLDEN: The best advice from those who make technogadgets and those who use them: Don't forget, there is an off button.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still ahead, are there more shark and gator attacks than usual this year? We'll have a reality check.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: You may have heard recently about animals on the attack, a shark in Texas, an alligator in Florida. Well, Brian Todd has some advice on what to do if you find yourself in a similar situation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eleven-year-old Aaron Perez is lucky, if you can say that about a boy whose arm nearly got bitten off. Fishing off a beach in Freeport, Texas, last week, he came face to face with a predator.

AARON PEREZ, SHARK BITE VICTIM: There was a bunch of school of fish and they all moved in. And I caught one and I turned around to tell my dad, and when I did that, a shark just started biting my arm.

TODD: Doctors have successfully reattached Aaron's forearm and they say his recovery is ahead of schedule.

Fifty-four-year-old Janie Melsek did not escape her encounter with an alligator. She was attacked by a nearly 12-foot-long gator as she trimmed bushes by a pond on Sanibel Island, Florida, last month. The gator pulled her under water, inflicted severe bites on her arms, legs, and midsection. When police and neighbors got there, the beast still had her in its jaws. JIM ANHOT, NEIGHBOR OF VICTIM: Had the -- one part of her and the alligator had the other part, we pulled each other like that, like a tug-of-war almost.

TODD: In a scene one officer described to CNN as "horrifying," police wrestled Melsek from the gator's grasp and killed the animal. Melsek died the next day from the wounds and infection.

You hear stories by Melsek's and Aaron Perez's and you might get a distorted picture. The reality is, this has been an average to mild year for both shark and alligator attacks. Unprovoked shark attacks have decreased every year since 2000. This year, more than 30 have occurred worldwide, four of them fatal. As for alligators in Florida:

LUIS DELGADO, FLORIDA FISH & WILDLIFE: This year has been particularly slow.

TODD: Florida Fish and Wildlife officials report about half a dozen attacks this year in a state with more than one million alligators spread out over nearly seven million acres. Still, the alligators' resurgence, coupled with human population growth, brings the two species into uneasy proximity.

To avoid attacks, officials say, don't swim outside posted areas in lakes, rivers, ponds, or canals. Don't swim with pets. Don't swim at night, dawn, or dusk. Don't go near the water's edge outside posted areas. And the worst mistake you can make, feeding them.

DELGADO: That's what makes them associate humans with food and that's when we come into problems.

TODD: If you're attacked, Florida Wildlife officials say, fight back hard to cause confusion and intimidate the gator. Hit it in the eyes. When it comes to those deep sea predators, experts say, don't do what Aaron Perez did.

You shouldn't go near so-called "bait fish," those schools that swim near shore that sharks feed on. Don't swim near birds diving toward the water. That may signify a feeding frenzy. Don't swim at dawn our dusk. Stay away from areas where rivers meet the ocean, that's where dead animals can wash out and sharks are often around. And it helps to swim in groups to potentially scare them away.

If you are attacked, you can do what Aaron Perez did; hit the shark in the gills, nose, or eyes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, what is that thing? We'll tell you who builds these bikes and why.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SIEBERG: All right, have you seen those tiny motorcycles called pocket bikes? Or you may have heard them. They're the right size for small kids, but some big kids are riding them, too. And a few them are causing headaches for law enforcement. Donna Tetreault returns with that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONNA TETREAULT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They're three- feet long and about a foot off the ground.

CASEY DAVIS, CHILD MOTORBIKE RIDER: It's better, like, than almost everything.

TETREAULT: Seven-year-old Casey Davis rides his pocket bike, also known as a "pocket rocket" with his dad at this speedway in Rialto, California. Here, it's legal, but take this pocket bike on the city streets and be prepared to be stopped.

OFFICER RON BURCH, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL: They're designed to be ridden on tracks and private property, and as soon as you take this little, almost invisible vehicle and put it out into traffic, you're creating a hazard.

TETREAULT: In order to operate a motor driven cycle on streets, and pocket bikes fall into that category, you have to be 16 years old, licensed and the cycle has to have a seven digit VIN number. These pictures show how dangerous these tiny bikes can be. A 14-year-old boy ran a stop sign and crashed into this car, the broke his arms and legs and arm and cracked his ribs.

That's why Randall Davis only lets his kids ride where it's legal and safe. But, this new fad isn't just for them.

RANDALL DAVIS, FATHER: You almost feel like a clown rider or something, but once you see everybody else doing it, it's -- you fit right in and it's lot of fun.

TETREAULT: Mike Ditsfall (PH) owns a shop in Hollywood and say he's sells 10 to 15 pocket bikes a day. They go for about $300, so for those with a need for speed, this is one way to get it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: OK, if a pocket bike isn't your style, how about a Riquimbilis. Lucia Newman returns with report on some Cuban cycles that aren't like anything you'll find in a yuppified bicycle.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NEWMAN: When they couldn't find a boat and wanted to get out of Cuba, these people turned a '51 Chevy truck into a ship.

The same Cuban ingenuity is also being used on land to deal with the transportation nightmare. It's a Cuban concoction called the Riquimbilis, once just an ordinary bicycle. El Belveal (PH) and his uncle are creators of what they jokingly call "Frankensteins."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The exhaust is made from the tube of a hospital bed.

NEWMAN: The motor is from an old Soviet tank, the bicycle, Chinese. The gas tank a plastic soft drink bottle. Add up to 100 kilometers a liter or 240 miles a gallon, the gas mileage can't be beat.

They come in as many styles as the people who use them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there's no car or no transportation or anything you have to invent something to move in. With Riquimbili, I can go anywhere I want.

NEWMAN: there's only one catch, they're illegal, considered a safety hazard because they often go faster than their brakes can handle. Although police often turn a blind eye, many complain they've had theirs Riquimbilis confiscated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We want to be able to move around, go to the disco, the beach. Some people even race them.

NEWMAN: He should know. A speeding accident very nearly killed him, he says, showing us his enormous scar.

But, despite safety concerns, fines and possible confiscation, people refuse to give them up. People like Elmas, a gardener, who paid about $100 for his "Frankenstein," made of a discarded fumigation motor and pieces of an old air conditioner.

ELMAS, (through translator): I just turn it on and that's how I go to work.

NEWMAN: More proof that necessity is the mother of invention.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: But, as one writer put it, "want is the mistress of invention."

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

A bat in the hand is worth, well, actually a lot when it comes to measuring the healthiness of an ecosystem. Dozens of scientists converged on a North Carolina forest to study the nocturnal critters which in turn will tell them what's up with the local environment.

That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let's hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at NEXT@CNN.com and don't forget to check out our website, that's at CNN.COM/NEXT.

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

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired August 7, 2004 - 15:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the Olympic opening ceremony is mere days away, and Greece says it's ready. Enormous amounts have spent on infrastructure and security, but there's another long standing problem in Athens that could be harder to solve. Femi Oke has the story.

FEMI OKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The locals call it Nopos (ph), or cloud, thick smoke that's been responsible for making Athens one of Europe's most polluted cities. In fact, some scientists warn that the quality of the air could affect Olympic performance in Athens.

With the capital full of traffic, industry and surrounded by hills, pollution is easily trapped. But this year, the mayor of Athens promises the smoggy city will be transformed.

DORA BAKOYIANNIS, MAYOR OF ATHENS: Oh, it's much better than it was. You know Athens had a bad reputation years ago for being a very polluted city. But that started 25 years ago, when it was true. From then on, a whole policy started which changed the atmosphere very much.

OKE: Despite the mayor's confidence, American athletes have been briefed on how to cope with air pollution in Greece. Dr. Randy Wilber is the senior sports physiologist for the United States Olympic Committee.

DR. RANDY WILBER, U.S. OLYMPIC COMMITTEE: We've actually started as far back as May of 2003, by going to Athens and measuring the pollution levels at the various venues. Armed with that information, we were then able to educate our coaches and athletes as to how good or how bad the air pollution would be in those environments.

OKE: The medical team took these pictures of Athens in August, 2003. The air looked pretty bad. The doctor's advice for these athletes was to train a few times in polluted air, that way, if they developed any respiratory problems, they would have plenty of time to get treatment.

Runner Ryan Talbert-Jackson is very familiar with the effects of smog, she has asthma which was triggered after she competed at the 1997 world championships in Athens.

RYAN TOLBERT-JACKSON, U.S. OLYMPIC TEAM: I think your body deals with allergies and pollution as if it's fighting off a virus or something. Your breathing is labored, you're more fatigued.

OKE: Ryan says the best thing athletes can do is be outside as little as possible, especially if they have allergies or asthma.

TOLBERT-JACKSON: Really just go warm up for your event, race and then go back inside.

OKE: But this is not the sort of Olympic experience the mayor of Athens is planning for.

BAKOYIANNIS: The air in Athens will be really no problem for the athletes. And I think the whole environment will be an extremely friendly environment for to -- you know, to really excel themselves.

OKE: This isn't just hype, a lot of work and money has gone into bringing fresh air the Athens. Public transport has been dramatically improved. Buses are powered by natural gas and the metro has been expanded. Olympic officials will drive around in electric cars, while thousands of new trees have been planted.

If the Nepos (ph) descends after all of this, it's not for want of trying.

(on camera): Athens is not the only olympic venue to face air pollution problems. In 1984, the Los Angeles Olympics had a number of bad air days. And here, in Atlanta, in 1996, also some concerns about smog.

(voice-over): Nobody will really know how effective the air pollution measures have been until the games begin. Until then, athletes and Olympic officials will be waiting to excel.

SIEBERG: Of course, they'll still have to contend with the heat.

Well, those athletes have trained for years to make their country's Olympic teams using every tool they can find to improve performance. One of those tools is a video program called Dartfish. Donna Tetreault reports.

DONNA TETREAULT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Olympic hopeful Erica Wheeler is training for one of the biggest moments of her life: a shot at a trip to Athens. But this lifelong javelin thrower, who tried to qualify in '96, has a little more help this time around thanks to a cutting edge digital video program called Dartfish.

ERICA WHEELER, OLYMPIC HOPEFUL: I'm a lot more effective with my training. I do less training, but it's definitely more specific to what I need to accomplish in my technique.

TETREAULT: Dartfish allows athletes to fine tune their training on the spot. Coaches videotape practice and then athletes can review their own performance instantaneously, or the pictures can be superimposed over images over the world's best competitors, to see how the athletes stack up.

WHEELER: I walk right over and I can look at it right after a set and tell if I'm making the changes I need to do.

VICTOR BERGONZOLI, PRESIDENT DARTFISH: If you take a javelin throw, a very, very small difference in the launch angle can mean making it to the trials and or winning the gold medal of the Olympics. And it's the scene at every level of this sport.

TETREAULT (on camera): It's those subtle differences that Wheeler is hoping to correct, so when she leaves the field her work doesn't have to end, she can go home, pull up the program and look at her technique over and over again. It's a constant reminder of what works and what doesn't.

(voice-over): Akiba McKinney is also working to get to Athens, in the long jump. She's a big believer in Dartfish.

AKIBA MCKINNEY, OLYMPIC HOPEFUL: It allows me to see it, rather than him just telling me exactly what it is that I'm not doing.

WHEELER: It kind of settles the mind because it says, well because your right foot landed this way instead of this way. And so it really allows you to put a feeling and a -- you know, a reason behind why something's not going as well as you want it to.

TETREAULT: But the technology advantage comes at a cost. And critics say with a price tag anywhere under just under 500 to nearly $5,000, it's not within reach of amateur athletes. So as long as they can afford it, athletes can add technology to the list of blood, sweat and tears in their quest for success.

SIEBERG: Incidentally, McKinney and Wheeler still don't know if they're going to Athens. They have until Monday to meet the standards to be included in the U.S. teams in their events.

Now, of course, another big concern of Olympics is security. And when we come back, we'll see what Greek authorities are doing to keep the games safe.

And speaking of safety, what are these things doing on the streets? We'll find out later in the show.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: In a world plagued by terrorism, the Olympics are an obvious target. Authorities in Greece backed up by other countries and NATO, are using technology plus a massive police presence to protect the games. Michael Holmes reports.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Of all the records that have and will be set at the Athens Olympics, perhaps none are impressive than the bill for security: $1.25 billion and counting, 15 times what Atlanta spent eight years ago. Times have changed.

ELEFTHERIOS IKONOMOU, GOVT. SECURITY SPOKESMAN (through translator): After September 11, the Olympic security planning changed significantly, because it had to take into consideration new factors that came into play. HOLMES (on camera): Here at the main Olympic Stadium, just handful of the 70,000 Greek police and soldiers who will be here at the games. NATO is here also. There'll be AWACS early warning planes in the skies. And in the water: warships, including submarines.

In addition, some teams are bringing their own armed security.

JAMES APPATHRUAI, NATO SPOKESMAN: This is a massively complex security operation involving, of course, a huge array of countries, all coming with security details. But also specific countries and NATO have been engaged to provide security.

So, yes, there's some diplomacy. There's a lot of security, but again, it's the Greeks doing the choreography.

HOLMES: There are teams on stand by from the Czech Republic with chemical, biological and radiation experts. U.S. special forces will be here. PATRIOT missiles are in place. The FBI is coming with a hostage rescue team and bomb scene specialists.

But according to NATO, on the delicate issue of chain of command, Greeks run the show.

APPATHRUAI: Greece is in charge. This is absolutely a Greek lead and a Greek security operation.

HOLMES: But on the streets of Athens, little so far in terms of security. But lots of subtle signs: cameras, hundredes of them, watching 24 hours a day. In the sky, day and night, an ever present airships with more cameras. Some Greeks feel the eye of big brother.

"I don't like them, because they are watching us without us knowing," says this man. "Who protects us from the protectors."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): When that thing goes around, it's very disturbing but isn't security important for the games?

BAKOYIANNIS: It's price we have to pay. There is no other way. We are not thrilled with it. And I don't think any city in the world would be thrilled with that. But we know it's necessary, so we live with it.

PROF. THEODORE COULOUMBIS, UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS: If you feel that you live in a brave new world and that you have given up your freedom in order to get your stability and your security, then the terrorists have managed their own key objective, to rob us of our Democratic values.

HOLMES: Mayor Bakoyiannis says that isn't happening.

BAKOYIANNIS: We should not forget that this is not the moment of the police or the army, but it's the moment of the athletes and of the people being able to look this sport event. So we have to balance all that out. I believe we did it. HOLMES: Nervous Greeks hope she's right. That the fears, the guns and the airship will all be forgotten in the euphoria that surely comes when the Olympic Anthem is first played.

SIEBERG: Law enforcement agencies across the country held an emergency drill this week to test how they'd respond to terrorist attaks. On Thursday, a series of simulated disasters hi California. Thelma Gutierrez reports.

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 9:28 a.m., the port of Los Angeles, Long Beach. A dirty bomb detonates, ripping through a shipping container, releasing radioactive material into the air.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You need to come over here.

GUTIERREZ: 9:32 a.m., the first emergency crews arrive on the scene.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On a scale we have not seen in the United States since 9/11.

GUTIERREZ: 9:35, the command center in Sacramento is on full alert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The U.S. is clearly under attack once again.

GUTIERREZ: It is a scenario no one wants to think about: a radioactive bomb detonated by terrorists, claiming dozens of casualties.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three.

GUTIERREZ: You're looking at a simulated attack, but the possibility is all too real, and emergency teams want to be ready.

ELLIS STANLEY, L.A. COUNTRY EMERGENCY SERVICES: This, as you indicated very appropriately, is a massive amount of people coming together, entities that may not have worked together in the past.

GUTIERREZ: Forty different local, state and federal agencies and 200 role players are taking part in the exercise here in Long Beach.

MICHAEL BOWMAN, LOS ANGELES CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT: We're really evaluating that coordination and communication and sharing and pooling of resources.

GUTIERREZ: NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, organized the massive effort.

Few people knew what to expect. The details were kept quiet.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moderate to high levels of contamination on the (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

GUTIERREZ: They used capsules containing what NORAD describes as safe levels of live radioactive material in the drill.

BOWMAN: The purpose of those capsules is so that the first responders will have an actual device that they can search for, recover and secure.

GUTIERREZ: Homeland security expert Stephen Flynn once served as commander of the U.S. Coast Guard.

STEPHEN FLYNN, HOMELAND SECURITY EXPERT: If I were to rate on port security on a scale of one to 10, where one were a bull's eye and 10 were secure, on September 11, in our seaports, we were one. In a port like Los Angeles or Long Beach, we may be up to a three. That's not a passing grade.

GUTIERREZ: Achieving what Flynn would consider a passing grade will not be easy. The port of Los Angeles is one of the busiest in the world, with some 11 million containers coming in and out of here. Only 3 percent go through any kind of security inspection.

ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, scientists are revamping their ideas where life can exist. We'll show you why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, NASA sent a messenger to Mercury this week. The space agency launched a spacecraft called Messenger Tuesday on a 6 year trip to the Sun's closest planet. When it reaches Mercury, it will spend a year in orbit gathering information about geology, atmosphere and its core. Scientists are hope to get clues as to how Mercury formed which could, in turn, shed light on how Earth and the solar system came to be.

Well, less than an hour after launching Messanger, NASA, along with Russian controllers, directed a spacewalk at the International Space Station. Astronaut Michael Finck and Cosmonaut Gennady Penalka installed equipment that will help accommodate a new line of supply ships.

And is there life anywhere besides Earth? Well, in the past few years, mainstream scientists have started to take that possibility much more seriously. Miles O'Brien reports on some of the discoveries, both on Earth, and out in space that are shaking up conventional ideas about where life can exist.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Greetings from the deadest place on Earth, Chile's Atacama Desert.

These researchers are probing the limits of life, trying to understand why is there nothing living in the dirt they're digging, while, just over the hill, life is thriving. The big question is, are we alone in the universe? Is there life anywhere other than Earth? And the scientists tell me, mapping the limits of life here makes it easier to chart a clever course to troll for it out there on Mars and possibly other planets. And this is why scientists in this field are so excited right now. The more they look for life in all the wrong places, the more they find it, in the scalding hot acid springs of Yellowstone, in the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean, in the cold dry valleys of the Antarctic, even in radioactive waste pools. We now know all of these places are home to some hale, hearty critters. Life is much more tenacious than we once assumed.

STEVEN SQUYRES, MARS ROVER PROJECT LEADER: There used to be this idea that life really only could take hold in a very narrow range of conditions, sort of like a Goldilocks kind of thing, where it can't be too warm. It can't be too cold. It has got to be just light. But what you find is, as long as you can get liquid water there and some source of energy, man, life is happy, on this planet.

O'BRIEN: And this has fundamentally changed the way scientists look at the universe.

PAUL DAVIES, AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR ASTROBIOLOGY: People have speculated about life beyond Earth for centuries. But it's become a scientific venture only relatively recently.

KELLY SMITH, CLEMSON UNIVERSITY: Well, I think the universe is such an incredibly huge place that the chances that there isn't life anywhere out there are virtually zero. How frequent intelligent life is, is another question.

DAVIES: If we were to discover just a single microbe on another planet and if we could be sure it didn't get there from our planet or vice-versa, if we discovered a second sample of life, somewhere where life has began from scratch, even just a microbe, it would transform our world view beyond the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo and Darwin and Einstein put together.

SIEBERG: And that report is part of an hour-long program on astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial life. "CNN PRESENTS: Is Anybody Out There?" aires Sunday at 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm Eastern time. It will re-air next weekend on Saturday, August 14 at 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm Eastern.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up in our next half hour, invader species like zebra mussels cause billions of dollars worth of damage. We'll tell you about new moves to keep them out of waters where they don't belong.

And would you like to run a presidential campaign? We'll show you how you can. Those stories and a lot more coming up after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. Well, next month, some tough new regulations from the U.S. Coast Guard take effect to try to prevent unwanted and sometimes very destructive cargo. Now, we're not talking about weapons or hazardous materials here, but invasive species, tiny hitchhikers that can really wreak havoc. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG (voice-over): Say the name invader species and Godzilla, king of the monsters may come to mind. Real-life invaders can be minuscule by comparison, but no less dangerous. Creatures, like these almost mystical jellyfish and their kin, tiny, sometimes transparent sea creatures, travel the globe in ballast water of cargo ships. Ballast water keeps ships stable when there's no cargo onboard. But when the water is dumped so are the millions of creatures living in it.

LINDA FARMER, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI: Coming into a new area, this originalism, however, doesn't have any real enemies. The defenses of the local population are not up and so, the organisms can become established, and out-compete the population, could then cause a collapse of the food chain in that area.

SIEBERG: The American comb jellyfish, just a few centimeters long, hitchhiked thousands of miles in the ballast waters of cargo ships from the Chesapeake Bay, to the Black Sea to then to the Caspian Sea. The creature caused the collapse of anchovy fisheries there. Since 1988, then European zebra mussel has invaded the Great Lakes, it caused billions in damage by clogged water intake pipes at factories and power plants and by interrupting the food chain. The Coast Guard says a voluntary code hasn't worked in part because more than 8,000 foreign flagged vessels arrive in the U.S. every year.

REAR ADM. THOMAS GILMOUR, U.S. COAST GUARD: Well, we certainly didn't get as good results on a voluntary regulation as we would like to have seen. We decided a national mandatory regulations are needed.

SIEBERG: There'll soon be new requirements for all ships heading for the Great Lakes.

GILMOUR: That they exchange their water in the open ocean to insure they get high salinity water in their ballast tanks to destroy as many a species as possible or that they carry no ballast or that they retain the ballast that they have onboard.

SIEBERG: Even so, several states bordering the Great Lakes are petitioning for stricter enforcement. The International Maritime Organization estimates that 7,000 different species travel in ballast water every day. Controlling the spread of non-native species is one of several research projects that the University of Miami has under way in floating laboratories aboard the cruise ship Explorer of the Seas.

FARMER: We're looking at a number of different treatment options: Filtration is a possibility; ultra century centrifugation, which is essentially a big centrifuge to spin out originalisms; ozone bleach chlorine treatment.

SIEBERG: Some global shipping companies are working with oceanographers to develop other ballasted water systems. But, those little hitchhikers are not going to be easy to throw overboard.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, speaking of water, in Cuba they don't have enough. Drought has dried up much of the nation's food supply. Lucia Newman reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Appearances are deceiving. Who would guess, for example, that what you see here is really the bottom of a lake. What looks like a puddle was, until two years ago, a huge reservoir providing water for 35,000 people in the nearby city Olgeen (PH). Today, another casualty of the devastating drought hitting eastern Cuba.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The reservoir has been totally dry for nine months. In its fifty years of existence this has never happened.

NEWMAN: Fifty-five-year-old farmer, Raphael Algelata (PH) also knows appearances are deceiving. After a year of no rain, the occasional drizzle of the last two weeks has revived the grass, but it's too little too late for his crops, he says.

"All this should have been full of corn," he adds. His cattle are skin and bones. The region's sugar cane is dry like toothpicks, a disaster for Cuba's main cash crop.

In the city, residents stare into the empty fruit and vegetable market. Ordinair (ph) Rodriguez tells us all he has to sell are condiments, no manioc, plantains, or the like. "If there's no water, there are no staple foods," he says.

So critical are shortages that the U.N. Food Program has approved emergency funding to provide food for children under five. To get a little water, residents rush out of their homes with anything they can, to collect it from trucks brought sometimes from as far away as Havana, nearly 900 kilometers away.

(on camera): The local water authority says it would take up to two months of good daily rain to revert the situation so the people here wouldn't have to keep doing this.

(voice-over): An unlikely weather scenario, though, which is why water to supply about a third of the population will soon be brought from here, the Calto River. Through a 54 kilometer water pipeline being built at record speed, but the only quick solution to this drought, say experts, may well be paradoxically, another natural disaster, one this island is all too familiar with -- a hurricane.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: When we come back, technology makes our lives easier, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're trapped by technology.

ANNOUNCER: Well, maybe not. We'll hear some opinions on the subject.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: All right. With less than 90 days until the presidential election, campaign season is well under way and if you've been thinking, "I can do better than these guys," well, here's your chance. Two new PC games allow you to become a virtual campaign manager. The first is from Lantern Games called "Frontrunner" which allows to you choose your candidate and your issues, then you hit the campaign trail to focus on speeches, ads, fundraising, and ensuring your candidate doesn't get too tired along the way. The other title's from UBISOFT called "The Political Machine" and it's very similar. In this case you can also hire spin doctors or what they call "smear merchants" and you can appear on talk shows like "Barry King Live" and "Nighttime." The creators say they're meant to be interesting, educational, and even a little fun.

Well, from cyber candidates to cyber stock brokers. The New York Stocks Exchange, on Monday, announced a new plan to make electronic trading available to more investors, no matter how big a deal they want to do. Can computers do a better job than human floor traders? Fred Katayama reports.

FRED KATAYAMA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Orders arrive electronically now days at the century's old New York Stocks Exchange and the big board offers electronic trading. But, more than 90 percent of the orders are filled by humans.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just don't think...

KATAYAMA: The NYSC is planning expand electronic trading do and that trading faster. That means more trades could bypass floor brokers. Floor brokers take orders from clients and take them to trading posts where specialists hold auctions and try to get the best price possible for their customers. The NYSC dominates trading (UNINTELLIGIBLE) stocks because rules require that orders be executed at the market that offers the best price and the NYSC beats its rivals on that score most of the time. For regulators have proposed modifying that rule, offering investors the choice of best price or faster execution which could shift some trades to electronic rivals like the NASDAQ or InstaNet.

Could increased automatic trading become Trojan Horse that wipes out traders? Not so soon, say market experts. Machines just can't handle big complex orders as well as man can, so experts say those orders will keep going to specialists.

A computer crushed Gary Casparov, but trading can be more complex than chess.

HAIM MENDLESON, STANFORD BUSINESS SCHOOL: The missing link is not so much on the computer per se, but of course, in the systems and the software, and ability to emulate the reasoning of a human trader.

KATAYAMA: Specialist Kevin Fee boasts computers can't replace the analytical power of human judgment.

KEVIN FEE, SPECIALIST: ...today technology we can have airplanes fly themselves, right now. There's a reason why we have pilots open the cockpit of airplanes.

KATAYAMA: But small orders will increasingly be processed electronically.

(on camera): The head of the NYSC says he doesn't know how many customers will choose electronic trading. But, even he concedes that over the next five years the big boards will see, in his words, "a somewhat smaller number of floor brokers."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: It does seem kind of crowded down there sometimes.

OK, well here's another angle on man versus machine: Does technology really make your life easier? Before you answer take a look at this report from Jim Bolden.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM BOLDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Technology promises so much, but not necessarily more leisure time. In fact, if we aren't spending time using technology, we're spending time trying to get it to actually work.

(CRASH)

BARRY FOX, TECHNOLOGY WRITER: Technology's a nightmare.

BOLDEN: Barry Fox has written about technology for years, but thinks it hasn't made our lives easier -- far from it.

FOX: We're trapped by technology and we've been sold -- we've been sold a lie that technology makes life pleasant, leisurely, lovely.

BOLDEN: So what has gone so horribly wrong? After all, technology does allow us more flexibility at work.

MADELEINE BUNTING: The thing about the kinds of technologies that we've got now is that they've broken down in what used to be a spatial differentiation between work, i.e., you went to work in an office or a factory and you came home again and the two were some distance apart.

BOLDEN: If you think the mobile phone started that dismantling process, then you might say the Blackberry has obliterated the line. Blackberry begs to differ. It says its little wireless e-mailers actually give employees a half an hour a day of free time. Technology certainly has enhanced playtime. And the senior lawyers in this London firm say they couldn't represent their clients well without the latest tech tools. But, there are limits.

JONATHAN WOOD, LAWYER: You are constantly trying to deal with your mobile phone ringing, e-mails coming on -- off your desk, faxes arriving, it's -- it's constant intrusion and sometimes you have to say, "no, I need to give this particular file three hours, four hours, whatever it needs, in fairness to that client."

BOLDEN: And even Barry Fox admits technology is very seductive.

FOX: I can only think it's because what a computer can offer is so wonderful and so attractive, that we are prepared to put up with all the kind of nonsense that we do put up with.

BOLDEN: The best advice from those who make technogadgets and those who use them: Don't forget, there is an off button.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still ahead, are there more shark and gator attacks than usual this year? We'll have a reality check.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: You may have heard recently about animals on the attack, a shark in Texas, an alligator in Florida. Well, Brian Todd has some advice on what to do if you find yourself in a similar situation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eleven-year-old Aaron Perez is lucky, if you can say that about a boy whose arm nearly got bitten off. Fishing off a beach in Freeport, Texas, last week, he came face to face with a predator.

AARON PEREZ, SHARK BITE VICTIM: There was a bunch of school of fish and they all moved in. And I caught one and I turned around to tell my dad, and when I did that, a shark just started biting my arm.

TODD: Doctors have successfully reattached Aaron's forearm and they say his recovery is ahead of schedule.

Fifty-four-year-old Janie Melsek did not escape her encounter with an alligator. She was attacked by a nearly 12-foot-long gator as she trimmed bushes by a pond on Sanibel Island, Florida, last month. The gator pulled her under water, inflicted severe bites on her arms, legs, and midsection. When police and neighbors got there, the beast still had her in its jaws. JIM ANHOT, NEIGHBOR OF VICTIM: Had the -- one part of her and the alligator had the other part, we pulled each other like that, like a tug-of-war almost.

TODD: In a scene one officer described to CNN as "horrifying," police wrestled Melsek from the gator's grasp and killed the animal. Melsek died the next day from the wounds and infection.

You hear stories by Melsek's and Aaron Perez's and you might get a distorted picture. The reality is, this has been an average to mild year for both shark and alligator attacks. Unprovoked shark attacks have decreased every year since 2000. This year, more than 30 have occurred worldwide, four of them fatal. As for alligators in Florida:

LUIS DELGADO, FLORIDA FISH & WILDLIFE: This year has been particularly slow.

TODD: Florida Fish and Wildlife officials report about half a dozen attacks this year in a state with more than one million alligators spread out over nearly seven million acres. Still, the alligators' resurgence, coupled with human population growth, brings the two species into uneasy proximity.

To avoid attacks, officials say, don't swim outside posted areas in lakes, rivers, ponds, or canals. Don't swim with pets. Don't swim at night, dawn, or dusk. Don't go near the water's edge outside posted areas. And the worst mistake you can make, feeding them.

DELGADO: That's what makes them associate humans with food and that's when we come into problems.

TODD: If you're attacked, Florida Wildlife officials say, fight back hard to cause confusion and intimidate the gator. Hit it in the eyes. When it comes to those deep sea predators, experts say, don't do what Aaron Perez did.

You shouldn't go near so-called "bait fish," those schools that swim near shore that sharks feed on. Don't swim near birds diving toward the water. That may signify a feeding frenzy. Don't swim at dawn our dusk. Stay away from areas where rivers meet the ocean, that's where dead animals can wash out and sharks are often around. And it helps to swim in groups to potentially scare them away.

If you are attacked, you can do what Aaron Perez did; hit the shark in the gills, nose, or eyes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, what is that thing? We'll tell you who builds these bikes and why.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SIEBERG: All right, have you seen those tiny motorcycles called pocket bikes? Or you may have heard them. They're the right size for small kids, but some big kids are riding them, too. And a few them are causing headaches for law enforcement. Donna Tetreault returns with that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONNA TETREAULT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They're three- feet long and about a foot off the ground.

CASEY DAVIS, CHILD MOTORBIKE RIDER: It's better, like, than almost everything.

TETREAULT: Seven-year-old Casey Davis rides his pocket bike, also known as a "pocket rocket" with his dad at this speedway in Rialto, California. Here, it's legal, but take this pocket bike on the city streets and be prepared to be stopped.

OFFICER RON BURCH, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL: They're designed to be ridden on tracks and private property, and as soon as you take this little, almost invisible vehicle and put it out into traffic, you're creating a hazard.

TETREAULT: In order to operate a motor driven cycle on streets, and pocket bikes fall into that category, you have to be 16 years old, licensed and the cycle has to have a seven digit VIN number. These pictures show how dangerous these tiny bikes can be. A 14-year-old boy ran a stop sign and crashed into this car, the broke his arms and legs and arm and cracked his ribs.

That's why Randall Davis only lets his kids ride where it's legal and safe. But, this new fad isn't just for them.

RANDALL DAVIS, FATHER: You almost feel like a clown rider or something, but once you see everybody else doing it, it's -- you fit right in and it's lot of fun.

TETREAULT: Mike Ditsfall (PH) owns a shop in Hollywood and say he's sells 10 to 15 pocket bikes a day. They go for about $300, so for those with a need for speed, this is one way to get it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: OK, if a pocket bike isn't your style, how about a Riquimbilis. Lucia Newman returns with report on some Cuban cycles that aren't like anything you'll find in a yuppified bicycle.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NEWMAN: When they couldn't find a boat and wanted to get out of Cuba, these people turned a '51 Chevy truck into a ship.

The same Cuban ingenuity is also being used on land to deal with the transportation nightmare. It's a Cuban concoction called the Riquimbilis, once just an ordinary bicycle. El Belveal (PH) and his uncle are creators of what they jokingly call "Frankensteins."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The exhaust is made from the tube of a hospital bed.

NEWMAN: The motor is from an old Soviet tank, the bicycle, Chinese. The gas tank a plastic soft drink bottle. Add up to 100 kilometers a liter or 240 miles a gallon, the gas mileage can't be beat.

They come in as many styles as the people who use them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there's no car or no transportation or anything you have to invent something to move in. With Riquimbili, I can go anywhere I want.

NEWMAN: there's only one catch, they're illegal, considered a safety hazard because they often go faster than their brakes can handle. Although police often turn a blind eye, many complain they've had theirs Riquimbilis confiscated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We want to be able to move around, go to the disco, the beach. Some people even race them.

NEWMAN: He should know. A speeding accident very nearly killed him, he says, showing us his enormous scar.

But, despite safety concerns, fines and possible confiscation, people refuse to give them up. People like Elmas, a gardener, who paid about $100 for his "Frankenstein," made of a discarded fumigation motor and pieces of an old air conditioner.

ELMAS, (through translator): I just turn it on and that's how I go to work.

NEWMAN: More proof that necessity is the mother of invention.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: But, as one writer put it, "want is the mistress of invention."

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

A bat in the hand is worth, well, actually a lot when it comes to measuring the healthiness of an ecosystem. Dozens of scientists converged on a North Carolina forest to study the nocturnal critters which in turn will tell them what's up with the local environment.

That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let's hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at NEXT@CNN.com and don't forget to check out our website, that's at CNN.COM/NEXT.

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

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com