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Global Challenges
Tsunami Recover; Solar Energy; Technology for the Visually Impaired
Aired May 21, 2005 - 19:30 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 VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Coming up, back on track. The trains are running, the boats are fishing, but the tsunami recovery effort will be a long haul for this Sri Lankan town.
Heir apparent. Bertrand Piccard's last adventure was full of hot air. His next around the world mission will downright sizzle.
And heard but not seen. How computer technology is bringing the Internet to the blind.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Hello and welcome to GLOBAL CHALLENGES. I'm Andrew Stevens.
Here in Hong Kong just about every year we face some of nature's most destructive forces, typhoons. And for most of us, that's worrisome enough. But just try to imagine what it must have been like in the path of the December tsunami. Unlike a typhoon, they couldn't see it coming.
Well, seeing the way ahead now is the real challenge. A few moths ago we reported from Galle, one of Sri Lanka's worst hit cities. Well, we're going back there now to see how the recovery efforts are moving along.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SATINDER BINDRA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After taking away so much from the people of Galle, the sea is slowly giving back. It's providing fish once again to nurture the people of this coastal community. But compared to what they caught before the tsunami, fishermen say the catch is sparse.
Nolan Kumar (ph) has spent a whole evening casting his nets. Then he labors for hours pulling them up from the bottom of the ocean with only this stingray to show for his efforts.
The fish will fetch Nolan Kumar (ph) $3 at the market, not enough to even cover his costs, but he isn't complaining too much.
For months after last December's tsunami, in which his boat and outboard motor were destroyed, Nolan Kumar (ph), along with hundreds of other fishermen, sat stitching nets by the beach and looking out to sea. But just a few weeks ago, international donors gave him this brand new fiberglass boat to go fishing again.
Just being back on these choppy waters again, says Nolan Kumar (ph), is a big blessing for him, and each time he's out fishing, he tries to come to terms with the sea that robbed him and the people of Galle of their families.
"I was very upset after I lost my parents and friends in the tsunami," he says. "When I come back to the sea, I remember them."
Galle's fishermen say they can never forget what happened here on December 26 last year.
(on camera): The tsunami described almost the entire fishing fleet off Sri Lanka's southern coast. Then there was even more bad news for local fishermen when tens of thousands of Sri Lankans stopped buying and eating seafood. They believed fish were feeding off hundreds of corpses that had been swept out to sea by the tsunami.
(voice-over): It took a concerted and long running government campaign to convince Sri Lankans this fish was safe to eat. Rising fish consumption means more such fishing trawlers are going out to see every day. Fishing and tourism account for almost 80 percent of the economic activity here, and Galle's residents are now finding work again.
Miles and miles of rail track ripped apart by the tsunami have now been repaired, and train services linking the capital, Colombo, to Galle have resumed, bringing more tourists to the area.
This is what Galle's bus stand looked like five months ago. This is what it's like now. In Galle's harbor, just a few damaged boats serve as a reminder of the fury of the waves. Most of the other wrecks have been cleared.
This gigantic dredging ship that had been lifted like a toy out of the water and slammed onto a jetty was recently put back into the sea.
In the heart of the city, shop owners have repaired and reopened their stores. Still, for all such signs of normalcy, there is an almost unbearable sense of loss and lingering pain in the hearts of residents.
Fourteen members of Vidana Gugary Kumari's (ph) family were killed by the tsunami. Five months on, she still cooks in the open because her house was badly damaged. Her clothing business was also ruined, making life a grind for this mother of four young children.
VIDANA GUGARY KUMARI (ph), TSUNAMI SURVIVOR (through translator): I wish my entire family had been killed by the tsunami. That would have been better than facing all of our problems.
BINDRA: Kumari (ph) and dozens of other families continue staying right next to the sea in defiance of a new law that states all homes must be moved away from the waters' edge.
Senior Police Officer Lasantha De Silva recognizes some people don't want to move, but he says many others are cooperating because they recognize it's in the interest of their own safety.
LASANTHA DE SILVA, SR. SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE: At the inception, of course, the people were rather depressed and they were very slow to move, but now they have begun to realize the seriousness of being closer to the sea.
BINDRA: To encourage people to move inland, officials in Galle have been constructing hundreds of such temporary homes. People that move here will later be relocated to more permanent homes also being built at state cost.
Such incentives mean little to Vidana Gugary Kumari (ph). She says it's not the government's job to tell her where to live.
KUMARI (ph): We like this house so much because I bought my mother this house. I want to die also this house. I don't want to go other house.
BINDRA: The fear of another tsunami is still very real in these parts. Just outside Galle workers use heavy machinery to construct a massive embankment to prevent seawater from rushing inland. There is also serious talk about moving the entire town of Galle and it's 100,00 residents further away from the sea.
Vidana Gugary Kumari (ph) says she'll continue living here but will keep a wary watch on the sea.
KUMARI (ph) (through translator): Every day we are worried that a tsunami could come tomorrow or it might come when we are sleeping. Sometimes when I see the sea, it's angry. I don't send my children to school.
BINDRA: Five months after the sea rolled onto land Vidana Gugary Kumari (ph) says only death will make her stop thinking of what happened on December 26. She shows me this broken clock which stopped ticking at 9:25 a.m. when 20 foot waves smashed into her home.
Kumari (ph) says she will never throw it away because it reminds her of all of those who are not with her.
Satinder Bindra for GLOBAL CHALLENGES, Galle, Sri Lanka.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
STEVENS: Welcome back.
One of the best known of the Greek mythologies is the tale of Icarus. He and his father, Daedalus, were trying to escape the Isle of Crete. They built some wings made of feathers, wax and thread. Well, they flew off the island and then tragedy struck. Icarus flew too close to the sun, the wax was melted by the sun and he plunged to his death.
Well, that's a fate that one modern day hero is hoping to avoid when he takes flight, using the sun to keep himself in the air and to do something that no one else has done before.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JULIET LINLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is a man who feels at home with his head in the clouds.
After all, Bertrand Piccard made history by circumnavigating the globe nonstop for the first time in a balloon. That was six years ago. Today the Swiss adventurer has another dream.
BERTRAND PICCARD, ADVENTURER: I would really like to use adventure and exploration to raise enthusiasm of the public in favor of renewable energies and sustainable development.
LINLEY: To do that, Piccard will attempt to fly around the world in a solar powered plane.
PICCARD: The goal is to show that with very high tech, with a lot of innovation and scientific research, you can find new solutions for the future, and this is really important, because then it can be implemented for the car industry, for the heating industry, for the transport industry, for everything.
LINLEY: This is the nerve center for his dream, the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland's equivalent of MIT.
Piccard has been working with his team since 2003 on finding financial and technical partners for his venture known as Solar Impulse. Now a new design for the aircraft is about to be unveiled.
PICCARD: So we agree that the propellers and engines will be on the wings. So it will look a little more like that, actually.
LINLEY: Most design details are being kept confidential until an official presentation in mid-June at the Paris Air Show. The target date for the record-breaking flight, 2010. A far off deadline because the technology doesn't exist yet, but researchers are working hard on getting Piccard's plane off the ground. The secret, engineers say, is in the material.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can see it's like a honeycomb structure in which the material is in between the two composite layers.
LINLEY: They plan to use a composite similar to the one they developed for Alinghi, the yacht that landed Switzerland its first victory in America's Cup in 2003.
PICCARD: So here you can see this type of composite material that is used for both structures like Alinghi, but also in airplane structures.
LINLEY (on camera): It feels quite light.
PICCARD: It's very light, but if you think this is light, if you look now to the materials that have to be used in the solar inputs, we are down to 20 or 50 percent of the weight of this structure.
LINLEY (voice-over): Researchers say one of the biggest challenges will be to build a plane that is stable and solid, yet light enough to fly above the clouds where the sun shines.
Solar panels will go on large wings and lightweight batteries will ensure enough energy for night flights.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It still works, but I don't think it's the type of equipment we'll have for the solar impulse.
LINLEY: Another challenge for scientists: making sure Piccard, who will be alone in the cockpit for days on end, will not fall asleep.
Researchers hope to adapt the technology used by these flying robots, weighing less than a sugar-cube, which are able to make decisions based on movement they detect.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to design a new type of jacket that will put the pilot and airplane into a sort of symbiosis. The idea is that this jacket will record a lot of data continuously from the body of the pilot and will try to tell the pilot whether he needs to sleep, whether he needs to wake up, and whether he's cognitively fit so he is able to take decisions to drive this machine.
LINLEY: To keep the plane flying, Piccard will have to consume energy wisely by making stopovers on every continent during his pioneering flight, Piccard hopes to generate international debate on using the earth's resources wisely.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The pilot of the airplane needs to save his energy and needs very, very high technology to be able to fly through the night with the energy that was stored before, in order to wait for the next rising sun and continue his flight, and the citizens of the planet needs also to be very good in managing his energy and invent new technologies, otherwise he will never give the planet to the next generation before a major disaster.
LINLEY: But making the plane fly will take more than just goodwill.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can picture the cost of the project with this kind of plane, so basically the blueprint and the mission will cost an average to high level business class private jet, so more or less about $50 million.
LINLEY: So corporate sponsors, a European space agency and donors of every kind are being mobilized.
(on camera): Clearing the skies completely of regular aircraft isn't the realistic goal of Solar Impulse, nor does the adventure end once the solo around the globe flight takes place. Piccard says as soon as he lands, he wants to get his team immediately working on creating a two- seater jet like this one, hoping to find politicians brave enough to go up in the sky with him to see how serious he is about clean energy powering the planet.
Juliet Linley for CNN, Lausanne, Switzerland.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
STEVENS: From around the world to the World Wide Web, trying saying that 10 times fast. Anyway, in a minute we'll be showing you some people who are surfing the Web for the very first time.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
STEVENS: The videogaming industry is worth billions of dollars. Virtually every week a new title is hitting the market. Gamers can transport themselves into the shoes of action heroes, warriors or sportsmen, but what about aid workers. Have a look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): It's called Food Force, a new game developed by, of all people, the United Nations World Food Program, an organization that's not exactly the king of cool for teenagers, but this game aims to change that.
Modeled after crises in Sudan and Indonesia and billed as the first humanitarian videogame, a U.N. team must save starving communities on a fictitious island in the Indian Ocean.
The gamer takes part in airdrops, ground distribution and even negotiates with rebels.
JUSTIN ROCHE, WORLD FOOD PROGRAM: It's quite an exciting kind of environment. Everything is against the clock, and you are a rookie member of this new crack team. It is really all about the way we solve hunger in situations of crisis.
STEVENS: The game is available as a free download at www.foodforce.com. The objective, to get 8 to 13-year-olds along with their parents and teachers enthused about the work of the World Food Program.
ROCHE: Some of the feedback we already has is that kids really are into the game to the extent that they'd like to come and work for us when they grow up, so that's a great result.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
STEVENS: Computers, of course, are used in most walks of life these days. They're part of the fabric of our society. But they don't work for everyone. Because computers are a visual platform, the visually impaired or the uneducated can often be left frustrated, but true to form the computer programmers are working on solutions.
Here's an example of one solution that's operating here in Hong Kong.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): Fred Liung (ph) lost his sight when he was two years old, an accident at home left him totally blind and growing up in a world which back then offered little support for the disabled.
But Hong Kong, like many parts of the developed world, has changed dramatically for people like Fred. Today he can be a lot closer to a community that was in so many ways closed to him as a young man.
FRED LIUNG (ph), BLIND USER OF TECHNOLOGY: In those days, tape recorders were not even invented in my early school days. We could only read braille material or have sighted teachers to read newspapers, et cetera, to us. So it was very limited.
STEVENS: The 21st century is a different world for the visually impaired. Tools to help the blind are becoming common and many of the biggest breakthroughs are coming via the computer.
This sort of software, known as JAWS, turns text into speech or text into braille on a keypad. It's at the cutting edge. But there is a drawback. It's expensive.
In many developing countries, the sheer cost of the technology puts it out of reach for many who could benefit from it.
Can Hand (ph) technologies has successfully adapted the powerful JAWS system for millions of Chinese speakers. Now it's working on software that links visually impaired people to the Internet via a telephone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Most people still need a computer for the Internet (INAUDIBLE) so we think about why don't we develop something you can use a telephone, a normal telephone, and use the telephone to go to the Internet and have things spoken to them through the telephone.
STEVENS: The result is Hand Voice (ph) and Hand Phone (ph), a program that converts printed information on the Internet into voice. You dial into a browser that is equipped with Can Hand (ph) software and it reads the information to you in realtime.
It's still early days and the information access is still limited. At this stage, the information available consists of news items, a digital book library and consumer services announcements, and the program is only linked to a few browsers, like the Hong Kong Society for the Blind and some local government departments, but the company sees huge potential, particularly in Asia.
The program provides a service in Asian languages -- Japanese, Korean and the two main Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese. And right there is a massive potential market.
(on camera): There are about 80,000 visually impaired or blind people living here in Hong Kong. If you go across the border into mainland China, it's 100-times that number, about 8 million people, many of them in desperate need of new technology just to help make their lives a little bit easier.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In China, the blind children normally live in villages or in remote areas, so they really don't have much opportunity to receive education because all the blind schools are in the big cities. And so what the Society for the Blind at the moment is doing is trying to help them to setup some education resource centers so that we could reach the blind schools.
STEVENS (voice-over): Can Hand (ph) is attempting to expand its operations in China and trying to reach a wider audience.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that the major challenge to us is getting the word out. I don't think a lot of people are aware that there is such technology in Hong Kong. We believe the technology will benefit most of the blind people globally and it's not just for the blind people but also we can help elderly people who cannot read from the screen properly, people who are poor and cannot afford computers. They can use just a telephone to go to the Internet. So I believe there are many, many applications of helping government really build a digitally-inclusive society.
STEVENS: For people like Fred Liung (ph), that vision is now a reality in Hong Kong. But he's one of the lucky ones. For millions of others there is still more darkness than light.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
And if you want to get into your computer and send us a note, please feel free. Our address is Global.Challenges@CNN.com.
I hope you've enjoyed the program. I'm Andrew Stevens. I'll see you again soon.
END
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Aired May 21, 2005 - 19:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Coming up, back on track. The trains are running, the boats are fishing, but the tsunami recovery effort will be a long haul for this Sri Lankan town.
Heir apparent. Bertrand Piccard's last adventure was full of hot air. His next around the world mission will downright sizzle.
And heard but not seen. How computer technology is bringing the Internet to the blind.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Hello and welcome to GLOBAL CHALLENGES. I'm Andrew Stevens.
Here in Hong Kong just about every year we face some of nature's most destructive forces, typhoons. And for most of us, that's worrisome enough. But just try to imagine what it must have been like in the path of the December tsunami. Unlike a typhoon, they couldn't see it coming.
Well, seeing the way ahead now is the real challenge. A few moths ago we reported from Galle, one of Sri Lanka's worst hit cities. Well, we're going back there now to see how the recovery efforts are moving along.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SATINDER BINDRA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After taking away so much from the people of Galle, the sea is slowly giving back. It's providing fish once again to nurture the people of this coastal community. But compared to what they caught before the tsunami, fishermen say the catch is sparse.
Nolan Kumar (ph) has spent a whole evening casting his nets. Then he labors for hours pulling them up from the bottom of the ocean with only this stingray to show for his efforts.
The fish will fetch Nolan Kumar (ph) $3 at the market, not enough to even cover his costs, but he isn't complaining too much.
For months after last December's tsunami, in which his boat and outboard motor were destroyed, Nolan Kumar (ph), along with hundreds of other fishermen, sat stitching nets by the beach and looking out to sea. But just a few weeks ago, international donors gave him this brand new fiberglass boat to go fishing again.
Just being back on these choppy waters again, says Nolan Kumar (ph), is a big blessing for him, and each time he's out fishing, he tries to come to terms with the sea that robbed him and the people of Galle of their families.
"I was very upset after I lost my parents and friends in the tsunami," he says. "When I come back to the sea, I remember them."
Galle's fishermen say they can never forget what happened here on December 26 last year.
(on camera): The tsunami described almost the entire fishing fleet off Sri Lanka's southern coast. Then there was even more bad news for local fishermen when tens of thousands of Sri Lankans stopped buying and eating seafood. They believed fish were feeding off hundreds of corpses that had been swept out to sea by the tsunami.
(voice-over): It took a concerted and long running government campaign to convince Sri Lankans this fish was safe to eat. Rising fish consumption means more such fishing trawlers are going out to see every day. Fishing and tourism account for almost 80 percent of the economic activity here, and Galle's residents are now finding work again.
Miles and miles of rail track ripped apart by the tsunami have now been repaired, and train services linking the capital, Colombo, to Galle have resumed, bringing more tourists to the area.
This is what Galle's bus stand looked like five months ago. This is what it's like now. In Galle's harbor, just a few damaged boats serve as a reminder of the fury of the waves. Most of the other wrecks have been cleared.
This gigantic dredging ship that had been lifted like a toy out of the water and slammed onto a jetty was recently put back into the sea.
In the heart of the city, shop owners have repaired and reopened their stores. Still, for all such signs of normalcy, there is an almost unbearable sense of loss and lingering pain in the hearts of residents.
Fourteen members of Vidana Gugary Kumari's (ph) family were killed by the tsunami. Five months on, she still cooks in the open because her house was badly damaged. Her clothing business was also ruined, making life a grind for this mother of four young children.
VIDANA GUGARY KUMARI (ph), TSUNAMI SURVIVOR (through translator): I wish my entire family had been killed by the tsunami. That would have been better than facing all of our problems.
BINDRA: Kumari (ph) and dozens of other families continue staying right next to the sea in defiance of a new law that states all homes must be moved away from the waters' edge.
Senior Police Officer Lasantha De Silva recognizes some people don't want to move, but he says many others are cooperating because they recognize it's in the interest of their own safety.
LASANTHA DE SILVA, SR. SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE: At the inception, of course, the people were rather depressed and they were very slow to move, but now they have begun to realize the seriousness of being closer to the sea.
BINDRA: To encourage people to move inland, officials in Galle have been constructing hundreds of such temporary homes. People that move here will later be relocated to more permanent homes also being built at state cost.
Such incentives mean little to Vidana Gugary Kumari (ph). She says it's not the government's job to tell her where to live.
KUMARI (ph): We like this house so much because I bought my mother this house. I want to die also this house. I don't want to go other house.
BINDRA: The fear of another tsunami is still very real in these parts. Just outside Galle workers use heavy machinery to construct a massive embankment to prevent seawater from rushing inland. There is also serious talk about moving the entire town of Galle and it's 100,00 residents further away from the sea.
Vidana Gugary Kumari (ph) says she'll continue living here but will keep a wary watch on the sea.
KUMARI (ph) (through translator): Every day we are worried that a tsunami could come tomorrow or it might come when we are sleeping. Sometimes when I see the sea, it's angry. I don't send my children to school.
BINDRA: Five months after the sea rolled onto land Vidana Gugary Kumari (ph) says only death will make her stop thinking of what happened on December 26. She shows me this broken clock which stopped ticking at 9:25 a.m. when 20 foot waves smashed into her home.
Kumari (ph) says she will never throw it away because it reminds her of all of those who are not with her.
Satinder Bindra for GLOBAL CHALLENGES, Galle, Sri Lanka.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
STEVENS: Welcome back.
One of the best known of the Greek mythologies is the tale of Icarus. He and his father, Daedalus, were trying to escape the Isle of Crete. They built some wings made of feathers, wax and thread. Well, they flew off the island and then tragedy struck. Icarus flew too close to the sun, the wax was melted by the sun and he plunged to his death.
Well, that's a fate that one modern day hero is hoping to avoid when he takes flight, using the sun to keep himself in the air and to do something that no one else has done before.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JULIET LINLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is a man who feels at home with his head in the clouds.
After all, Bertrand Piccard made history by circumnavigating the globe nonstop for the first time in a balloon. That was six years ago. Today the Swiss adventurer has another dream.
BERTRAND PICCARD, ADVENTURER: I would really like to use adventure and exploration to raise enthusiasm of the public in favor of renewable energies and sustainable development.
LINLEY: To do that, Piccard will attempt to fly around the world in a solar powered plane.
PICCARD: The goal is to show that with very high tech, with a lot of innovation and scientific research, you can find new solutions for the future, and this is really important, because then it can be implemented for the car industry, for the heating industry, for the transport industry, for everything.
LINLEY: This is the nerve center for his dream, the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland's equivalent of MIT.
Piccard has been working with his team since 2003 on finding financial and technical partners for his venture known as Solar Impulse. Now a new design for the aircraft is about to be unveiled.
PICCARD: So we agree that the propellers and engines will be on the wings. So it will look a little more like that, actually.
LINLEY: Most design details are being kept confidential until an official presentation in mid-June at the Paris Air Show. The target date for the record-breaking flight, 2010. A far off deadline because the technology doesn't exist yet, but researchers are working hard on getting Piccard's plane off the ground. The secret, engineers say, is in the material.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can see it's like a honeycomb structure in which the material is in between the two composite layers.
LINLEY: They plan to use a composite similar to the one they developed for Alinghi, the yacht that landed Switzerland its first victory in America's Cup in 2003.
PICCARD: So here you can see this type of composite material that is used for both structures like Alinghi, but also in airplane structures.
LINLEY (on camera): It feels quite light.
PICCARD: It's very light, but if you think this is light, if you look now to the materials that have to be used in the solar inputs, we are down to 20 or 50 percent of the weight of this structure.
LINLEY (voice-over): Researchers say one of the biggest challenges will be to build a plane that is stable and solid, yet light enough to fly above the clouds where the sun shines.
Solar panels will go on large wings and lightweight batteries will ensure enough energy for night flights.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It still works, but I don't think it's the type of equipment we'll have for the solar impulse.
LINLEY: Another challenge for scientists: making sure Piccard, who will be alone in the cockpit for days on end, will not fall asleep.
Researchers hope to adapt the technology used by these flying robots, weighing less than a sugar-cube, which are able to make decisions based on movement they detect.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to design a new type of jacket that will put the pilot and airplane into a sort of symbiosis. The idea is that this jacket will record a lot of data continuously from the body of the pilot and will try to tell the pilot whether he needs to sleep, whether he needs to wake up, and whether he's cognitively fit so he is able to take decisions to drive this machine.
LINLEY: To keep the plane flying, Piccard will have to consume energy wisely by making stopovers on every continent during his pioneering flight, Piccard hopes to generate international debate on using the earth's resources wisely.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The pilot of the airplane needs to save his energy and needs very, very high technology to be able to fly through the night with the energy that was stored before, in order to wait for the next rising sun and continue his flight, and the citizens of the planet needs also to be very good in managing his energy and invent new technologies, otherwise he will never give the planet to the next generation before a major disaster.
LINLEY: But making the plane fly will take more than just goodwill.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can picture the cost of the project with this kind of plane, so basically the blueprint and the mission will cost an average to high level business class private jet, so more or less about $50 million.
LINLEY: So corporate sponsors, a European space agency and donors of every kind are being mobilized.
(on camera): Clearing the skies completely of regular aircraft isn't the realistic goal of Solar Impulse, nor does the adventure end once the solo around the globe flight takes place. Piccard says as soon as he lands, he wants to get his team immediately working on creating a two- seater jet like this one, hoping to find politicians brave enough to go up in the sky with him to see how serious he is about clean energy powering the planet.
Juliet Linley for CNN, Lausanne, Switzerland.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
STEVENS: From around the world to the World Wide Web, trying saying that 10 times fast. Anyway, in a minute we'll be showing you some people who are surfing the Web for the very first time.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
STEVENS: The videogaming industry is worth billions of dollars. Virtually every week a new title is hitting the market. Gamers can transport themselves into the shoes of action heroes, warriors or sportsmen, but what about aid workers. Have a look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): It's called Food Force, a new game developed by, of all people, the United Nations World Food Program, an organization that's not exactly the king of cool for teenagers, but this game aims to change that.
Modeled after crises in Sudan and Indonesia and billed as the first humanitarian videogame, a U.N. team must save starving communities on a fictitious island in the Indian Ocean.
The gamer takes part in airdrops, ground distribution and even negotiates with rebels.
JUSTIN ROCHE, WORLD FOOD PROGRAM: It's quite an exciting kind of environment. Everything is against the clock, and you are a rookie member of this new crack team. It is really all about the way we solve hunger in situations of crisis.
STEVENS: The game is available as a free download at www.foodforce.com. The objective, to get 8 to 13-year-olds along with their parents and teachers enthused about the work of the World Food Program.
ROCHE: Some of the feedback we already has is that kids really are into the game to the extent that they'd like to come and work for us when they grow up, so that's a great result.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
STEVENS: Computers, of course, are used in most walks of life these days. They're part of the fabric of our society. But they don't work for everyone. Because computers are a visual platform, the visually impaired or the uneducated can often be left frustrated, but true to form the computer programmers are working on solutions.
Here's an example of one solution that's operating here in Hong Kong.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): Fred Liung (ph) lost his sight when he was two years old, an accident at home left him totally blind and growing up in a world which back then offered little support for the disabled.
But Hong Kong, like many parts of the developed world, has changed dramatically for people like Fred. Today he can be a lot closer to a community that was in so many ways closed to him as a young man.
FRED LIUNG (ph), BLIND USER OF TECHNOLOGY: In those days, tape recorders were not even invented in my early school days. We could only read braille material or have sighted teachers to read newspapers, et cetera, to us. So it was very limited.
STEVENS: The 21st century is a different world for the visually impaired. Tools to help the blind are becoming common and many of the biggest breakthroughs are coming via the computer.
This sort of software, known as JAWS, turns text into speech or text into braille on a keypad. It's at the cutting edge. But there is a drawback. It's expensive.
In many developing countries, the sheer cost of the technology puts it out of reach for many who could benefit from it.
Can Hand (ph) technologies has successfully adapted the powerful JAWS system for millions of Chinese speakers. Now it's working on software that links visually impaired people to the Internet via a telephone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Most people still need a computer for the Internet (INAUDIBLE) so we think about why don't we develop something you can use a telephone, a normal telephone, and use the telephone to go to the Internet and have things spoken to them through the telephone.
STEVENS: The result is Hand Voice (ph) and Hand Phone (ph), a program that converts printed information on the Internet into voice. You dial into a browser that is equipped with Can Hand (ph) software and it reads the information to you in realtime.
It's still early days and the information access is still limited. At this stage, the information available consists of news items, a digital book library and consumer services announcements, and the program is only linked to a few browsers, like the Hong Kong Society for the Blind and some local government departments, but the company sees huge potential, particularly in Asia.
The program provides a service in Asian languages -- Japanese, Korean and the two main Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese. And right there is a massive potential market.
(on camera): There are about 80,000 visually impaired or blind people living here in Hong Kong. If you go across the border into mainland China, it's 100-times that number, about 8 million people, many of them in desperate need of new technology just to help make their lives a little bit easier.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In China, the blind children normally live in villages or in remote areas, so they really don't have much opportunity to receive education because all the blind schools are in the big cities. And so what the Society for the Blind at the moment is doing is trying to help them to setup some education resource centers so that we could reach the blind schools.
STEVENS (voice-over): Can Hand (ph) is attempting to expand its operations in China and trying to reach a wider audience.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that the major challenge to us is getting the word out. I don't think a lot of people are aware that there is such technology in Hong Kong. We believe the technology will benefit most of the blind people globally and it's not just for the blind people but also we can help elderly people who cannot read from the screen properly, people who are poor and cannot afford computers. They can use just a telephone to go to the Internet. So I believe there are many, many applications of helping government really build a digitally-inclusive society.
STEVENS: For people like Fred Liung (ph), that vision is now a reality in Hong Kong. But he's one of the lucky ones. For millions of others there is still more darkness than light.
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I hope you've enjoyed the program. I'm Andrew Stevens. I'll see you again soon.
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