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Astronauts Add Wing to International Space Station; Can Wells Run Dry in Middle East?; A Look at Orphanage for Baby Apes in Africa

Aired April 20, 2002 - 13:00   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.
ANNOUNCER: Today on NEXT@CNN, an out of this world construction job comes to an end. Astronauts from the Shuttle Atlantis add a wing to the International Space Station, and then head back to earth.

As Israelis and the Palestinians fight over land, another issue bubbles beneath the surface.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's not enough water to grow all the food that the region needs to grow for itself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: What might happen if the wells run dry.

And we'll take you to a unique orphanage in Africa, a sanctuary for charismatic baby apes, but their cuteness has a sad past. All that and more on NEXT.

JAMES HATTORI, HOST: Hi everybody, and welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm James Hattori. This week, we're taking in the scenery at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Behind me, a Dutch windmill built back in 1902 used for irrigation back then. Today, this is the site of a garden, the Icelandic poppies in full bloom.

Now as lush and tranquil as it is here, imagine the celestial scenery astronauts aboard the Shuttle Atlantis were taking in while orbiting earth this past week. Miles O'Brien reports their mission was all about what's next for the International Space Station project.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Launched under a veil of tight security, the Space Shuttle Atlantic returned to earth harboring no secrets. It was one for the record books, the successful end to astronaut Jerry Ross' seventh mission. He is now the most frequent flier in U.S. space history, as well as being its most avid walker, space walker that is.

JERRY ROSS, ASTRONAUT: I felt the same on this one as I did on the first one, totally enthralled with the entire experience, great crew to fly with, incredible mission to perform. O'BRIEN: During the mission, Ross logged his eighth and ninth space walks, also a new benchmark. He and his partner Lee Morin (ph), both grandfathers, called themselves the silver team, but no shuffleboard for these space fares.

During four walks in all, they and another pair of astronauts attached the $790 million keystone of a football field length truss, backbone for the space station when it is complete. While they walked, astronaut Barbara Morgan talked, working the radios in Mission Control.

During the mission, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced the elementary school teacher, who was Christa McAuliffe's understudy for the Challenger mission, will make her own trip to the station in two years.

SEAN O'KEEFE, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: We're just thrilled to death that she was named to fly in 2004, and I know that she'll have a wonderful time and be able to take that information back to all the kids in all the schools and get them fired up where they'll go out and set high goals.

O'BRIEN: Atlantis left the planet under some unprecedented security. NASA did not release the liftoff time until the day before launch. Limited live coverage of crew preparations and shutdown a huge chunk of air space around the Cape.

O'BRIEN (on camera): The space agency is clearly nervous about a mission slated for this summer. For the first time ever, a member of the crew is a citizen of Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: Americans weren't the only ones busy in space this week. Chalk up another successful mission for the European Space Agency. An Ariane 4 (ph) rocket lifted off from Kouro (ph) in French Guiana. Twenty minutes after liftoff, a rocket placed a satellite into geo stationary orbit, which will enhance telecommunications service for Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

Space may be the final frontier, but the seemingly unending troubles in the Middle East prove that we've yet to sort out all conflicts on the ground. And now, as if the Israelis and Palestinians don't have enough to fight over, another dispute could be brewing just beneath the ground. Natalie Pawelski explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The Sea of Galilee, a rare and life-giving source of water in a parched land, but to get to this Israeli lake, the water has to flow through a tough and thirsty neighborhood, from Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, then through the Golan Heights.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL KLARE: There really isn't enough water to go around, so there's a high risk of conflict between these countries over who will control these crucial sources of water.

PAWELSKI: For Israel and the Palestinians most water comes from under contested land, drawn from aquifers beneath the West Bank, Gaza and Israel itself. It is water both sides need to survive.

PETER KOENIG: Neither one can live without the water.

PAWELSKI: But a growing population is pumping water out faster than nature can replace it, and already there's not enough water to go around.

SANDRA POSTEL: There's not enough water to grow all the food that the region needs to grow for itself, and to provide enough drinking water and water for industry.

PAWELSKI: In the West Bank, Israeli authorities control who gets to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) wells and pump water.

KOENIG: Eighty percent of the water resources right now are in the West Bank and only about 20 percent of those are currently used by the Palestinian Authority.

PAWELSKI: Experts estimate Israeli settlers in the occupied territories use three to five times as much water as their Palestinian neighbors.

POSTEL: Well, I think water is an undercurrent to the tensions that exist between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

KLARE: Palestinians will say that they point across the road to an Israeli settlement, where they see a swimming pool being filled, and then they point to their own community where there's barely any water at all, and they express a great deal of anger about that.

PAWELSKI: People who study water issues say there may be one hopeful thing about the situation. Even countries with bitter histories, they say, India and Pakistan or since 1994, Jordan and Israel have managed to stick to water sharing agreements, even when fighting over everything else.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: For more on the Mid East water woes, check out our Web site, cnn.com/next. A different kind of water problem has scientists looking at the sexual development of male frogs in North America.

A University of California researcher has found that low levels of the common weed killer Atrazine (ph) can cause tadpoles to develop both male and female sex organs. Atrazine is a restricted herbicide, which has contaminated drinking water supplies in the Mid West United States.

Frogs exposed to levels 30 times lower than standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency also showed diminished amounts of the male hormone testosterone. A number of European countries have banned the use of Atrazine. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TYRONE HAYES, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY: We use somewhere between 60 and 100 million pounds per year, primarily in the Mid West on corn, and as a result of so much Atrazine in the environment, the contamination can be found virtually everywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HATTORI: Researcher Tyrone Hayes says, while the herbicide might help explain the global decline in amphibians, he's not sure how the chemical could affect human sex hormone levels. He notes that Atrazine does not accumulate in tissue, and unlike frogs, humans do not spend most of their lives in water.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up on NEXT@CNN: The Sumatran elephant, an increasingly rare animal, faces a cloudy future in a nation of shrinking forests and growing conflicts with humans.

And later, a new way to keep your entire music collection close at hand, even when you're on the go, that and more ahead on NEXT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: On the Indonesian (UNINTELLIGIBLE) there's a battle going on in Sumatra, one that's got nothing to do with politics or religious tensions. It's between elephants who are running out of space and people whose space the elephants are invading. Gary Strieker has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In this government camp in Sumatra, elephants are trained to work and perform for the people who captured them. There are hundreds of elephants like these in similar camps across the island, captured because in the wild, they were problem animals, persistent crop raiders, or stubborn trespassers into villages.

They're like prisoners of war in a conflict between elephants and humans, a deadly competition for living space in most areas of southern Asia, where wild elephants still exist.

The Sumatran elephant is the distinct subspecies found nowhere else. There were an estimated 3,000 of them 20 years ago, but their population has now dropped to an uncertain number.

MICHAEL STUEWE, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND: The Sumatran elephant is probably in graver danger than any of the other populations.

STRIEKER: Deforestation is forcing the elephants to retreat into shrinking fragments of forest, where they can survive only by searching for food in surrounding farmer's fields and plantations.

STUEWE: These guys are always on the run from human beings, and every now and every now and then, they overdo it. They destroy one guy's property too much, and that fellow is going to react and the elephant may die.

STRIEKER: In these clashes, many elephants now pay the ultimate price, poisoned or shot. But there are casualties on both sides. This house was demolished by a herd of elephants, the family inside barely escaping with their lives. Many oil palm plantations are trashed by hungry elephants.

The manager of this plantation says he's given up trying to drive elephants off much of his land and now they stay there most of the time eating his palm trees. The previous manager tried to stop them and he was killed right here by an angry elephant. Farmers like these say elephants are destroying their crops, making their lives unbearable, and they want the government to take them away.

But the government has no money to pay for capturing and holding still more elephants, so the clashes continue with farmers building fortresses, and defending their crops with fire and human barricades.

As the last of Sumatra's lowland forests are destroyed, and the last elephants are reduced to wandering, starving herds, confrontations along these front lines are like small skirmishes in a final stage of a war that's already been won. The question now, will the winners in this conflict have any mercy for the losers? Is there any future for wild elephants in Sumatra?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: In Central Africa, there's a similar conflict, but this time it's between small sociable apes, called Bonobos and people who want to eat them. Gladys Ingerode (ph) reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo on efforts to save the species from extinction.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GLADYS INGERODE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): These are orphaned Bonobos in the Democratic Republic of Congo, rescued and living in a sanctuary, their mothers butchered for meat.

There are only about 5,000 Bonobos left in the wild, down from 100,000 in just two decades.

GARRY RICHARDSON: People simply do not know specifically how many are left and what impact the war has had on the population, so that's why a sanctuary like this is absolutely vital, not only from a humanitarian, you know, rescuing an orphaned Bonobo from a terrible situation, but also for the survival of the species.

INGERODE: Bonobos share 98.6 percent of the genetic makeup of humans, and since 1998 when the war in Congo started, hungry troops and refugees have been the apes' biggest threat.

CLAUDINE ANDRE, DIRECTOR, LOLA YA BONOBO: The population to survive, they have only the forest, so they are not organized to cut the big trees, so they make charcoal and bush meat. So they bring -- they smoke the meat and they bring back to Kinshasa where the Kinshasa sends some bullets, and it's a big, big trade, big market about the bush meat.

INGERODE: But a public awareness campaign is slow in progress. Often illegal sales of Bonobos are reported to Claudine and her team or to authorities and they are rescued.

"When we tell the people that it is prohibited to sell or detain Bonobos," this caretaker says, "you could be heavily punished. Then people choose to bring them here rather than go to prison."

With more and more Bonobos being rescued, they're moving the world's largest captive population of 22 Bonobos from an American school in Kinshasa to a larger, more natural sanctuary just outside the city.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Next on NEXT@CNN, how technology is helping law officers prepare (ph) tattoos, fingerprints, and digital mug shots, all in efforts to catch the bad guys.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: After the September 11th terrorist attacks, there were a lot of questions raised about law enforcement and sharing intelligence. If one agency knew about a possible attack, why didn't all the others? Sharing everything from mug shots to rap sheets may never be an easy task, but as Ann Kellan reports, police in some cities are now getting help from specially designed software and each other.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In LA County, 49 law enforcement agencies are on the same digital page, using high tech methods to catch criminal, when suspects are hauled in.

I have the person sometimes lift up. I tell everybody to relax their hands.

KELLAN: In this case, we used our producer to demonstrate. They're digitally fingerprinted without ink.

TARA HARDEN, JAILER: When you take the fingerprints, if you don't get the print you want, you can automatically do it over again.

KELLAN: The mug shot is taken with a digital camera.

HARDEN: I just need you to look right up here.

KELLAN: Making it easier to compare to other mug shots on record. Jailer Tara Hardin (ph) says these electronic records provide a quick reality check.

HARDEN: It's always fun when someone comes in saying they're one person, and within minutes, we know they're not. They try to fool us. They can't fool the system. KELLAN: All this technology lets police agencies share much more precise databases with each other. But, it doesn't solve all the problems, says Lieutenant Greg Morgan, who helped set it up.

LT. GREG MORGAN, LA SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT: We have the technology, but we still have, you know, some turf issues. We really have to demonstrate that yes, this does make your job easier.

KELLAN: Along with mug shots, police can share databases filled with tattoos.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can be specific. We're searching for a tattoo on the upper left hand. We're looking for an eagle. You're looking for a skull.

KELLAN: A crime victim may have only seen a suspect's arm during a mugging or a facial scar during a rape. With digital records, that nugget of information may be enough to crack the case. TV and movies like the usual suspects, get a lot of mileage out of scenes like these, police lineups with victims behind a two-way mirror.

KELLAN (on camera): Forget Hollywood. Today's high tech lineup is portable. A detective can take these digital mug shots anywhere, so victims and witnesses don't have to travel to the police station. Police can share these photos with other precincts, and it saves time, money and it's a lot less stressful on the innocent victims.

(voice over): Officers can also create composite sketches with a software program, piece together the eyes, nose, and mouth, hair color based on a victim's description.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'd like copies of both with and without glasses?

JIM MILLER, CEO IMAGEWARE SYSTEMS: You can then take facial recognition software and run that composite through a database of criminals that you have already on file, and see whether or not there's any kind of a resemblance in there.

KELLAN: By the way, this mug shot isn't real. He's an employee of Imageware System, the maker of this software and one of a number of companies vying for police business.

In a matter of minutes, cops can create a wanted poster and release it to other precincts. Time is critical when fighting a crime.

DET. STEVE BUCHER, LA POLICE DEPARTMENT: You want to get this individual into custody as fast as possible. That reduces the chances of him doing this to another victim.

KELLAN: Someday, these photos and rap sheets will go directly to the streets via wireless handheld devices. LA County and several hundred other jurisdictions are already sharing this information. They hope to soon connect with the federal law enforcement agencies, all in an effort to track down criminals before they commit another crime.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: Turning now from technology for fighting crime to technology for testing toilets. Yes, we plunged the depths of scientific inquiry here on NEXT. We wanted to know what it takes to come up with a properly working toilet, why I don't know. Regardless, we sent Bruce Burkhardt to flush out the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): There may be no way to tell this story in good taste, but we'll try, kind of. First, it's off to the races. No, not this kind of race, but the race to find a toilet that flushes like it means it.

DAVID COWER (ph), COWER COMPANY: We're trying to encourage consumers to bring electricity into the bathroom.

BURKHARDT: Yikes. I'm not sure that's a good idea, but what David Cower of the Cower Company is talking about is more than electrically heated seats. It's electrically powered flushing.

COWER: It flushes 1.6 gallons of water with this electric pump.

BURKHARDT: 1.6 gallons. It is the law, ever since 1992 when Congress mandated the low flow toilet. Since then, there have been complaints.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have to flush it twice sometimes.

BURKHARDT: While many blame the 1.6 gallon requirement, it may not be so much a question of how much water as it is how well the toilet is designed. No sense throwing out the toilet with the toilet water. The fact is low flow toilets have saved huge amounts of water. The EPA reports, as do other studies, that the average family of four now uses 20,000 fewer gallons a year, enough to fill a small backyard pool. It's just that some toilets do it better than others.

Here at the National Association of Homebuilders Research Center, they test stuff, insulation, water heaters, toilets. This is all the stuff you put down there?

BOB HILL: This is stuff we can put down there.

BURKHARDT: Bob Hill heads up the lab where they've developed a new testing method, because the old industry standard, flushing 100 small plastic balls, was just too easy. What's this stuff?

HILL: This stuff is the media we're working with now are sponges. We've got two kinds of sponges.

BURKHARDT: What's this called?

HILL: A media, test media. BURKHARDT: Do you have to call it the media? Can you come up with another name?

HILL: That's what the industry is calling it is test media.

BURKHARDT: In this case, the media is a bunch of small sponges. Some of them are weighted with a little nail so they sink.

HILL: Basically, we flush a number of sponges and paper wads down the toilet. We do five different, what we call, challenge levels.

BURKHARDT: Each toilet is flushed repeatedly. They count up what went through, what stayed behind, numbers that are crunched in a computer to come up with clog potential index, or as toilet economists might call it the CPI.

HILL: This toilet left 100 pieces in the bowl from all those flushes.

BURKHARDT: That's not good.

HILL: That's not good.

BURKHARDT: It's high clog potential index? Even though the sponges and paper wads work pretty well in these tests, the search for the perfect media goes on. Let her rip. Until such time, if you have to flush twice, you can always blame it on the media. What else can we throw? Here goes. I want that back. I'll just take the change.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: Sadly, there's a growing crowd of folks who'd like to see the media flushed down the toilet. Well, we're going to go away for a bit, let you take a break if you need one, but we'll be back after a check of the latest headlines from the CNN newsroom. Stay with us.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, a new TV channel will offer all games, all the time, but will gamers need their computers and consoles to watch? Also ahead, making a love connection through remote control. And we'll tell you why dead animals are being flown around Alberta, Canada. All that and more still to come on NEXT@CNN, don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: Welcome back to NEXT at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. You know we all need a day outside in the sun once in a while, especially if you have an affinity for sitting in front of a Playstation, Nintendo, or X-Box console for hours at a time.

The multi-billion dollar videogame industry continues to be the fastest growing part of the entertainment business, so what could possibly be next? How about "I want my Game TV?" Here's Daniel Sieberg.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Getting videogame players off their computers is no easy task, but a new television network is hoping to do just that. G4 an all videogame TV network is set to launch on April 24th to capitalize on the country's fascination with gaming.

CHARLES HIRSCHHORN: This is the fastest growing entertainment form, any way you look at it. So, it's sort of our unique opportunity to present a channel to an industry we think deserves a channel.

SIEBERG: G4 will feature original programming, ranging from weekly series and specials, to gaming tips, news, events, and reviews of the latest games.

RONNIE LEWIS: Hey, what's up. I'm Ronnie Lewis and this is Sweat, the fourth game that no jock stress can handle.

SIEBERG: But some say handling a non-interactive videogame experience could be difficult for most gamers.

RYAN MACDONALD: You know people overwhelmingly want to get to what they want to get to what they want to get to, compared to the number of people that want to sit back and just watch.

SIEBERG (on camera): With 145 million Americans, spending more than $9 billion on videogames last year, can G4 convince gamers to put down their controllers and pick up their remote?

HIRSCHHORN: I think anyone who's passionate about their hobby and interest would like to watch a channel about it on TV.

SIEBERG (voice over): But TV analysts say there's no guarantee that G4 will survive in an already crowded medium, and the channel will have to compete with the Internet and magazines, where gamers currently get most of the information they need.

HIRSCHHORN: I hope that we won't compete with any form of the game industry. I don't want to compete with the Web sites. I don't want to compete with the magazines or the game manufacturers or game retailers. We want to complement their business.

SIEBERG: G4's target audience is kids and young adults, so how will it cover videogames that are too violent for such an audience?

HIRSCHHORN: That segment of the videogame business, we're going to segregate to later times at night.

SIEBERG: At first, G4 will be available only for Comcast Cable subscribers, but the network is talking to other cable providers, so that their viewers too can get games.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: Since Apple came out with its IPOD music player in October, the little device with a huge hard drive has been a huge hit. Well now, IPOD has some big competition. Here's Marsha Walton with this week's techno file.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARSHA WALTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): What can a digital music player do with a 20-gigabyte hard drive? Well, it can store your entire music collection or about 5,000 of your favorite songs.

Sonic Blues Real Riot Music Player plans to give Apple's IPOD a run for its money. It costs $400, about the same as the IPOD, but Real Riot has a few extra features. It's Mac and PC compatible, working with both the Itunes and Real Jukebox music programs.

Upload songs from CDs or the web. Organizer your selections in your music program and you're ready to transfer. It takes several minutes to transfer one CD to the Real Riot, but Apple's IPOD accepts music almost instantaneously, with the use of a fire wire connection.

The Real Riot's main menu allows you to organize your music into albums, artists, genre, songs, play lists and more. Select the Real DJ to play a mix of music, songs you listen to the most or tunes from your favorite decade.

And, if you want to keep up with the latest hits on the radio, the Real Riot also features a built-in FM tuner. Both the Real Riot and the IPOD will play for about ten hours on a single charge. The Real Riot is bulky to carry and you may not find it as attractive as the IPD, but it can store twice as many songs and that might be music to an audio file's ears. I'm Marsha Walton and that's techno file.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still to come, volunteering is not for the birds. We'll tell you about a Web site that can hook you up with a perfect good deed project.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: The U.S. Supreme Court this week struck down a six- year-old federal law banning simulated child pornography, that is porn using computer generated children or youthful looking adults. The court ruled the law was a violation of free speech.

Luckily, much of the Internet is devoted to more constructive uses. For example, April 21st marks the beginning of National Volunteer Week, and in case you don't have your do-good project picked out yet, we've got a site that can help. Andy Jordan with this week's nothing but net.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDY JORDAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Deborah Robbins knows exactly why this caged bird sings.

DEBORAH ROBBINS: Animals that you know right away, whether you're giving them what they want or not. You feed them and at the beginning of the day, they look you know tiny, and then towards the end of the day, you think visibly they're bigger, and you know it's because of what you did.

JORDAN: Online, becoming a makeshift mom for a sick bird is as easy as one, two, three punches.

JAY BACKSTRAND, VOLUNTEERMATCH.ORG: If you punch in your zip code and then you select the categories that you're interested in and we'll pull back a list of those local volunteer opportunities that match what you're interested in. I wanted to build a site to make it easy for them to actually tape into their interests in volunteering.

JORDAN: At volunteermatch.org, Jay Backstrand is the head matchmaker, pairing up non-profits in need with web surfers who start out virtual and end up volunteers.

ROBBINS: I have gone way far away to do work with animals. I went to Thailand for a few months to work with gibbons, but I knew there had to be something I could do closer to home.

JORDAN: A click of her mouse and Deborah gets her animal fix at the Peninsula Humane Society down the street from her northern California home, and since the Humane Society requires about 500 workers and employs only 100, tapping into the local volunteer spirit is essential.

KEN WHITE: You do the math. We couldn't do half of what we do for the animals if it wasn't for the volunteers that come to help us.

JORDAN: That local community spirit can prove infectious. New York City currently tops the list of cities most in the giving mood, while overall hits that Volunteer Match did surge after the September 11th attacks, the momentum has continued with overall usage up 35 percent from the same time last year.

BACKSTRAND: People always want to volunteer. There might be little ups and down, but it's something that's really consistent.

JORDAN: Organizers also credit the upsurge in activity, some 700,000 referrals to date, to the recession weary unemployed, who are aiming to beef up their resumes and make productive use of their time, time that for the founder of Volunteer Match, is only the beginning.

BACKSTRAND: There's a difference between getting that information going volunteering and maybe becoming a donor, maybe becoming a board member, becoming really committed long term to a specific organization. Those types of connections don't necessarily happen online.

JORDAN: For this volunteer, though, connection is the name of the game and the payoff is measured in squeaks.

ROBBINS: These guys are not here for any, you know, because it's a good thing, but at least they're getting a second chance here, and then the chance that we get is to see them close up.

JORDAN: I'm Andy Jordan and that's Nothin' but Net.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: If you missed part of that story, or you just want to see those cute baby birds one more time, we've got it streamed on our Web site, cnn.com/next.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, how wildlife managers are using animals killed on the highway to keep other animals from getting killed on the range, and a look at the health and future prospects of the world's forests. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: Archaeologists have found more than 2,000 Inca mummies in an ancient cemetery near Lima, Peru. Scientists think the mummies were buried about 500 years ago. They provide a cross-section of Peruvian society at that time with bodies ranging from babies to very old people and from the very poor to an Inca noble.

Some of the bodies are bundled together in groups of as many as seven people. The bundles also include possessions, such as pottery, masks and clubs. Archaeologists say the site is like a time capsule of a civilization they've known little about until now. The excavation was funded by the National Geographic Society.

Monday is the 32nd official Earth Day, an annual observance whose goal is to draw attention to environmental concerns. So, is there anything to celebrate? Is the environment better off or worse that it was on that first Earth Day in 1970? Gary Strieker reports on the state of earth's forests.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STRIEKER (voice over): The growing crisis facing forests on the planet is even more serious than scientists had believed.

JONATHAN LASH: They saw the rapid loss of the last remaining old growth forests in the world, the forest frontiers.

STRIEKER: Ten years after the Rio Earth Summit, 32 years since the first Earth Day, disturbing new findings from the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch.

Extensive ground research, combined with digital and satellite mapping shows vast areas of the world's remaining old growth and primary forests are disappearing at an alarming rate.

LASH: These are places that are irreplaceable in terms of their value in conserving biodiversity, important cultures, and the services that those ecosystems provide for human kind.

STRIEKER: Among the findings, in only 50 years, Indonesia has lost almost half its forests, mostly by illegal logging, an area the size of Massachusetts deforested each year. In Russia, the unbroken semi-arctic taiga is quickly disappearing. Only a quarter of its area remains undisturbed. One conclusion researchers draw from these findings, the idea of virgin forests inhabited only by wildlife and indigenous people is fast becoming a myth.

DIRK BRYANT: The future of forests tomorrow is really logging concessions, mining concessions, protected areas. How we manage those forests will determine the future of our forests tomorrow.

STRIEKER: They say some countries have enacted new laws to better protect and manage their forests, but in many places, those laws are not enforced. At the current rate of destruction, they say, 40 percent of the world's intact forests will disappear in ten to 20 years, and other researchers warn the damage to the Amazon and other tropical rain forests could be irreversible within a decade.

Experts are calling for the forest crisis to be given top priority at the summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg later this year. Another summit ten years from now might be too late.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: Nobody wants to meet a hungry grizzly bear who's looking for his first meal after a long winter of hibernation. Ranchers of course don't want their livestock to meet those hungry bears either. Now wildlife officials in Canada have come up with a scheme to take the edge off the bear's appetite. Mark Stevenson from our affiliate network CTV has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARK STEVENSON, CTV CORRESPONDENT: In the hills below are grizzlies, about to wake up from their hibernation. When they do, they'll be starving.

DARREN DORGE: I mean, they're hungry so they're looking for any food source possible.

STEVENSON: Food like cattle. Bear attacks on cows are a risk for nearby ranchers, like Lucy Copp. A cow can run more than $1,000 and she says she can't afford to lose any.

LUCY COPP, RANCHER: I don't want them, you know, preying on my livelihood.

STEVENSON (on camera): But wildlife officers have figured out a way to keep bears away with road kill. This spring, conservation officers will fly hundred of carcasses into the Alberta foothills to prevent grizzlies from preying on cattle.

(voice over): Deer, elk, and moose killed on the road are flown into the mountains and dropped off in the bush. It keeps grizzlies in the mountains and away from cattle, with more than enough to eat.

WAYNE NORDSTROM: It's a buffet, yes, road kill buffet. STEVENSON: The feast is monitored on remote cameras. Nothing is wasted. Cougars, coyotes, even bald eagles get leftovers.

Since the drop-offs began five years ago, the number of grizzly attacks has fallen from an average of six to zero. Conservationists agree feeding bears road kill is better than the alternative.

JEFF GALLUS: They're either moved or shot, and the grizzly bear population of southern Alberta simply can't withstand increased mortality.

COPP: I don't see anything wrong with taking road kill and dropping it off in the middle of nowhere.

STEVENSON: The drop-offs continue until May, when the snow will be gone and bears can eat berries.

NORDSTROM: I've got a friend of mine from up north said the graveyards are full of people that will say differently, but generally they're a very nice animal, and if you give them a little room, they're happy with that.

STEVENSON: The road kill drops address the problem of cattle, but with more people moving into prime bear country along the Rockies, conservationists say more creative solutions are needed to keep bears and people apart.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: When we come back, visit a club where you can flirt with the man or woman of your dreams, without actually meeting.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HATTORI: Finally this week, here's something new on the single scene, a nightclub that offers a protective barrier of technology between you and potential dates. It's a bit like teleconferencing and a bit like reality TV. Our Jeanne Moos went eavesdropping.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Remember the days when the standard opening line was, can I buy you a drink? That's an interesting haircut you have. It's just another night out at the remote lounge.

KEVIN CENTANINI: You might not find what you're looking for, but you'll find something.

MOOS: Sit yourself down in front of what they call a cocktail console. Check out the view from some 50 cameras. If you spot someone you like, send a message to their monitor and hope they pick up the phone. Cruel as high school, and eventually they got to talk to him. Not being face-to-face is supposed to lessen the fear of rejection.

CENTANINI: We sort of see the cameras and all the cocktail consoles. It's being a sort of a social (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MOOS: Some were already lubricated enough. And how about a light? If the camera on your console moves, someone's watching you. Wouldn't it just be easier to wave across the room the say hey?

CENTANINI: I remember one night some girl lifted her shirt and was doing something crazy and there was a group of guys around, and even though she was right next to them, they were watching her on the monitor.

MOOS: Check out the control room.

CENTANINI: This actually generates all of our 77 channels of video.

MOOS: The three owners are looking for investors so they can open remote lounges in other cities. Forget privacy. A sign warns you waive that right at the door. At least there are no cameras in the restrooms.

You can use your joystick to pan the cameras, but there's no zoom. Nevertheless. You can even press a button to take photos. They end up posted on the Remote Lounge Web site. Even the jokes here are remotely funny.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HATTORI: So is that flirting or voyeurism? Ah, technology. Well that's all the time we have but here's a look at where we'll be focusing our remote cameras next week. Crop dusters dropping fake anthrax take part in an experiment that could lead to better protection against real biological weapons delivered by air.

And web surfers who encounter the new floating ads may find them even more annoying than the pop-up kind. Where do these things come from anyway and who thinks they're a good idea? That and a lot more coming up on NEXT.

Until then, let us hear from you. You can e-mail us. Our address is next@cnn.com. Thanks so much for joining us this week, and thanks to our friends here at Golden Gate Park. For all of us, I'm James Hattori, see you next time.

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