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Secret Videotaping Rampant in Taiwan; Entrepreneur Makes Bread With no Carbohydrates; Lance Bass Will Go Into Space
Aired July 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, cameras hidden in shoes and in bags. Secret videotaping in bathrooms and other private places. It is rampant in one Asian city, and people are nervous.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This filter can see through the nylon clothes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: We'll show you what authorities are doing about the issue of peek-a-boo cameras.
Flour that solves a weighty problem. It makes bread with no carbohydrates.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's good!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's heinous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Find out how you can decide for yourself.
And, it appears 'N Sync sensation Lance Bass will be saying "bye bye bye" to Earth. All that, and more, on NEXT.
JAMES HATTORI, HOST: Hi, everybody, and welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm James Hattori, this week from San Francisco's Pier 39, one of the most popular tourist spots in the city by the bay.
Come to a public place like this these days, and you undoubtedly expect, or even welcome, increased security, but imagine being secretly videotaped wherever you go, not by security cameras, but by everyday people, capturing friends, co-workers, even strangers with hidden cameras. And, get this, the pictures end up posted for the world to see on the Internet.
Well, that's apparently what's happening in Taiwan, where the situation has prompted officials to sweep public places for secret cameras. Ian Williams, of Britain's ITN news, reports from Taipei.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
IAN WILLIAMS, ITN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Taipei metro, 5:00 rush hour, and into the crowd steps a three-strong team of inspector, equipped to detect a menace that's shaking this city -- hidden cameras in the hand of voyeurs and blackmailers.
CHENG CHING-SHU, TRANSPORT POLICE (through translator): We scan for any suspicious radio signals and get a readout of the frequency. And we can repeat the video on another device. In that way, we can capture the offender.
WILLIAMS: Only last week, they found this man on one of the trains. That followed the celebrated arrest of the man the police called the "big-footed pervert," a camera in the toe of his shoe.
Their handiwork distributed widely on video disc and the Internet.
(on camera): The aim of the police here is to reassure a jittery traveling public. People are increasingly unnerved as they look around them and wonder exactly who might be secretly filming.
(voice-over): And Taiwan's hidden camera frenzy isn't confined to the metro.
YEN HSIN-YI, TAIPEI CITY COUNCIL: There's no doubt about it. Secret filming in all public places is becoming rampant, even in places like dressing rooms in department stores.
WILLIAMS: And it doesn't stop there. Shu May Fang (ph), a former television star and legislator, was devastated after the distribution of a video purported to be of her entertaining somebody else's husband. It was recorded by a pin-hole camera hidden in the bedroom.
Now, the City Council is ordering the regular screening of all public places, including the most intimate corners of the metro, hotels, restaurants and shops.
But eavesdropping of all types has become big business. A city jeweler pays around 300 pounds for two tiny listening devices. His supplier is Lawrence Lee, who prefers not to know precisely how they will be used, but has his suspicions.
LAWRENCE LEE, SUNGA TAKARA ENTERPRISES: Maybe they want to detect some information of off somebody office of competition company, maybe. I think.
WILLIAMS: Taiwan is at the cutting edge of miniaturized technology. And few know the business better than Mr. Lee.
L. LEE: We set this microchip in the telephone, and this one already will become a spy phone.
WILLIAMS: He's never been busier. It seems there are few things that won't accommodate a secret camera.
(on camera): This is a maintenance (ph) plug.
L. LEE: Yeah, yeah.
WILLIAMS: And the camera -- this is the camera here?
LEE: This hole, huh -- this one.
WILLIAMS (voice-over): With bulging order books, his workshop is a hive of activity. He says that most devices have been ordered by companies, as well as government agencies at home and abroad.
L. LEE: Everybody wants to become God, because God knows everything, but you don't know. But if I know, you don't know, I'm better than you. I'm the God.
WILLIAMS: But Mr. Lee plays both sides of the fence. Thanks to the new city rules, he's now advising the authorities on how to detect hidden devices and avoid being filmed by them.
This one is a particular curiosity. A filter that allows you to see trough certain artificial fabrics and plastics, used for detecting false IDs, but now a favorite of the metro voyeur.
L. LEE: Somebody discovered this filter can see through the nylon clothes.
WILLIAMS: His wisdom has been passed on in television warnings, urging commuters to avoid wearing certain artificial fibers.
But Mr. Lee has even been called in by Taiwan's Parliament to advise jittery lawmakers.
YONG-PING LEE, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT: For a month or two, I really got scared. When I went home to take a shower, I would just like so hysterical that I had to look around all the time.
WILLIAMS: Legislator Yang-Ping Lee is now sponsoring a bill to extend the city laws across Taiwan. But at the same time, try and curb the abuse of more standard security cameras.
Y.-P. LEE: We want to limit the possible usage for the security camera. For example, if you cannot -- if you are an honor (ph) for public space, then you can put the security camera in the bathroom, or in the toilet, or in the -- in the changing room.
WILLIAMS: Tiny cameras are for sale all over Taipei's computer mouths, close to shelves straining with pornographic video disks. And in an island of small time big brothers, Lawrence Lee has become a celebrity. Today's appearance is on a TV chat show, where after a small adjustment to his (UNINTELLIGIBLE) camera, they are on air.
The show plays to the audience's latent fears, asking them to detect hidden devices. Taiwan struggling to protect its people privacy, a lesson, or perhaps a warning to us all. (END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: Spy cameras are a growing phenomenon in the U.S. too, but here they are mostly surveillance cameras installed by cities trying to beef up security. Casey Wian focuses on one of those communities, Palm Springs, California.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY WIAN, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Another hot day in Palm Springs, soon to be hotter for criminals. The desert resort city is installing 15 surveillance cameras to help police prevent street crime and catch perpetrators.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it's a great idea. Our crime rate has gone up and I think it's time that we do something about it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The major holidays, they always have a little bit of a overcrowding problem, and with the cameras, it just makes local residents feel safer.
WIAN: The cameras were first proposed two years ago as a cost effective alternative to more police officers.
MAYOR WILLIAM KLEINDIENST, PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA: There was some opposition, although not a majority of it, some opposition based on infringement of personal rights, privacy, and so on and so forth. It's been our belief and we still stand by it, that when you're on a public street, there is no privacy involved. You're on a public street. After 9/11 came along, a complete swing, the majority of people are in support of it, want it, want it as quick as possible.
WIAN: The system will be active this fall. Officials say the cameras, which can rotate 360 degrees and zoom in close enough to read a license plate, will not be used to monitor pedestrians or traffic, only to help respond to suspected crimes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think you should be able to walk down the street without having a camera on you, so I'm a little bit uncomfortable with that.
Inn owner Tom Mulhall is president of the Chamber of Commerce. He says the cameras may attract visitors.
TOM MULHALL, PALM SPRINGS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: It's more, I believe, a marketing tool in saying that don't worry about coming here. You will be so safe because bad people normally aren't going to go wherever you do have cameras.
WIAN (on camera): A growing number of cities in the United States and abroad are installing police monitored surveillance cameras. They watched tourists during the Fourth of July weekend in the nation's capitol, and in Great Britain, two and a half million surveillance cameras have been installed in public area.
(voice-over): The United States is quickly catching up with an estimated two million cameras in 50 cities.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, new evidence that Alaska's remote glaciers are melting faster and faster.
And from melting ice to melting chocolate. Later in the show, a study on how long people have been eating chocolate produces a surprise, and there's no fudging on this research.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: A new study shows Alaska's glaciers are shrinking, and the melting is happening faster than anyone expected. As Natalie Pawelski reports, that adds to concerns about just where all that water is going.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scientists have long said global warming could mean rising sea levels, brought on, in part, by shrinking ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland and by melting mountain glaciers around the world. Now comes word that glaciers in Alaska are melting a lot faster than anybody thought.
ANTHONY ARENDT, GLACIOLOGIST: Glaciers in Alaska seem to be thinning from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s, and the rate at which they are thinning has about doubled between about the mid-1990s to 2001.
PAWELSKI: For a paper just published in the journal "Science," researchers used laser altimetry, relying on an airborne laser and a global positioning system to plot glaciers' altitudes and calculate their volume. They compared data gathered over the past few years with data gathered in the early '90s, and with topographical maps dating back as far as the 1950s.
ARENDT: For this more recent period, the mid-1990s to 2001, we think that Alaskan glaciers are losing mass at about twice the rate of the Greenland ice sheet. So, it puts it in perspective.
(on camera): A group of scientists that reports regularly to the United Nations on global warming project sea levels could rise between 3.5 inches and 2.5 feet over the next 100 years. News that Alaska's glaciers may be melting more rapidly can expected could effect their forecast, while providing one more piece of evidence that the Earth is heating up.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: Wildfires have already blackened millions of acres in the Western U.S. this year, and officials expect a record fire year. Modern wildfires don't just burn trees, they can destroy entire ecosystems. Carol Lin explains how the devastation of some fires can last for centuries. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Imagine a wildfire burning so hot, it not only kills the trees, but the entire forest ecosystem -- plants, animals, even bacteria and other microorganisms. That's what happened outside Flagstaff, Arizona on Mount Eldon, where a 4,500 acre wildfire tore through the mountainside June, 1977.
This is what's left, 25 years later. Skeletons of ponderosa pines standing in an ecological graveyard. The fire, started by a teenager's campfire, burned so fast and at temperatures hot enough to melt steel, hot enough to kill the nutrients in the topsoil of an entire mountain.
And in perhaps the ultimate irony, later that year, Arizona's wildfire season was followed by monsoon rains that swept away Mount Eldon's scorched earth, leaving only bedrock.
STEVE OVERBY, SOIL SCIENTIST, ROCKY MTN. RESEARCH STATION: We are basically starting over as if there was a landslide on this area. We lose not only all of our microorganisms, but also the seed source that was originally here to develop the whole vegetative community.
LIN: Gone are the ponderosa pines, the oaks, the wild flowers, and wildlife that was a living, breathing forest. Scientist estimate it will take thousands, thousands of years for Mount Eldon to recover and return to the healthy ponderosa pines forest, like this one, that once covered its slopes.
Fire ecologists from Northern Arizona University warn there will be more Mount Eldons. The U.S. Forest Service says 73 million acres in the west are vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires like the ones we've seen in June alone. Why? Fire researchers say over the last 100 years, the forests themselves have been mutating.
Too understand what's been happening, take a look at this controlled burn set by Northern Arizona University. This is how fires used to act, burning slowly and low to the ground. That's because 100 years ago the forest were not thick with trees and shrubs. But these researches say we have gotten so good at fire fighting that forests have gone from wide, grassy areas to thickets of trees, where fire has no place to go but up, crowning in the trees and out of control.
Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Project is researching how to rebuild and restore entire forest ecosystems using plants and insects, working in the shadow of Mount Eldon where wildfire changed the landscape for the next 1,000 years.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Later, on NEXT@CNN, a U.S. Navy sonar program gets the go-ahead. Could whales be in harm's way? Also ahead, pasta that won't pack on the pounds. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HATTORI: From the jungles of Central America comes a scientific discovery bound to shock the confectionery world. We're talking about chocolate, which, OK, may be more of a sin than a science. As Ann Kellan reports, archaeologists may have discovered the earliest chocoholics.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Only Patricia Reeb knows why she married Robert, a third-generation French chocolate maker.
(on camera): Did you marry him for his chocolate?
PATRICIA REEB, CHOCOLATIER: It makes me feel good.
KELLAN (voice-over): They've been making chocolate together at Maison Robert for 30 years.
It's no surprise our love of chocolates. But what surprises scientists is how long this love affair has been going on. Until now, we thought it started with the Mayans around 400 A.D. But according to a report in the journal of "Nature," after analyzing the contents of this ancient Mayan pot, turns out that chocolate dates as far back as 600 B.C., 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Jeff Husrt, a biochemist at the Hershey Company, was asked by archaeologists at the University of Texas to analyze residue they found in 14 Mayan pots unearthed in Belize. Using a machine called a mass spectrometer, Hurst identified the compound theobromine in some of that residue. Theobromine is a key compound in chocolate.
JEFF HUSRT, SCIENTIST, HERSHEY FOODS: There are other plants in that region that do have theobromine, but none have it as the major compound, and that was what we were able to key on.
KELLAN: But Mayan chocolate, according to archaeologists is a lot different than a...
HURST: ... good old Hershey chocolate bar. It would not have been sweetened. From what, at least, we know.
PROF. PAUL GEPTS, UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA-DAVIS: The Mayans, for example, would add peppers to it. They would also add vanilla, as far as we can tell. They would also add hallucinogenic mushrooms.
KELLAN (on camera): Now, the Mayans didn't eat chocolate like this. According to archaeologists, they mostly drank it, or they used the cocoa powder as seasoning for food. It was so valuable the Mayans even used cocoa beans as currency.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people say it's an aphrodisiac.
KELLAN (voice-over): With 300 chemical compounds...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think there is an addiction. KELLAN: ... and 2,600 years of pleasure...
GEPTS: I would go for a Belgian (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
KELLAN: ... the taste of chocolate has changed. But our love for it...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's nice. You know, in your mouth, it melts slowly. This is why I love it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: Another food people love -- bread. What would really be amazing is if we could make bread without all those carbohydrates that go immediately to your waistline. Well, somebody has. And of course, Jeanne Moos has the skinny.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Pass the pasta. Have another slice of bread, supposedly all you have to lose is weight when it's carbohydrate-free.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's good.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's heinous.
MOOS: Heinous? That's a term usually reserved for bloody crimes rather than bread.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Almost rubbery.
MOOS (on camera): I mean, I agree, I don't think it's the best bread I ever ate, but it tastes like bread.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It does taste like bread.
MOOS (voice-over): The inventor of carbohydrate-free flour claims it could mean...
(on camera): ... the end of obesity.
DR. MATHIAS CHRISTIAN ZOHOUNGBOGBO, INVENTOR, CARBOHYDRATE-FREE FLOUR: Exactly.
MOOS (voice-over): Dr. Mathias Christian Zohoungbogbo has spent more than a decade working on carbohydrate-free flour. He has naming his creation Ros '95, '95 for the year he came up with the now patented formula and Ros...
ZOHOUNGBOGBO: Ros is my wife. It is his name.
MOOS: Imagine having a flour named after you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She says, "Very important." MOOS: Dr. Christian runs a major obesity clinic in Italy. He has managed to replace the carbohydrates in flour with vegetable proteins and fiber to make everything from muffins...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. So this is marginal.
MOOS: ... to bread sticks...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is very nondescript.
MOOS: ... to a sort of rice substitute.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chewy or gummy.
MOOS: Just when everyone is chewing over the "New York Times" story, "What if Fat Doesn't Make You Fat," what if it has all been a big, fat lie, just when Dr. Atkins' high fat, low carb diet is back on the table, Dr. Christian is trying to bring his low and carb-free products to the United States.
(on camera): Do you use your own diet?
ZOHOUNGBOGBO: I was very, very fat, and I begin with myself.
MOOS (voice-over): Nutritionists like Julie Walsh have their doubts. For instance, about using so much fiber to replace carbohydrates.
JULIE WALSH, NUTRITIONIST: I think some people would have a little bit of gastrointestinal distress.
MOOS: For a taste test, we headed for the experts.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It has some crumb to it.
MOOS: At Le Madri restaurant, owner Pino Luongo analyzed the pasta.
PINO LUONGO, OWNER, LE MADRI: The color, it is scary.
MOOS: Chef Pippa Calin (ph) tried to resuscitate the imitation rice with a sauce.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's called CPR, is what it is called.
MOOS: But no sauce could revive the pasta. Our first bite was followed by stunned silence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cardboard.
MOOS (on camera): Cardboard?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wet cardboard.
MOOS (voice-over): Unsuspecting diners were diplomatic.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, I can see that it would be filling, even if not the taste you might want.
MOOS: But this woman, who has previously been on the Atkins Diet, appreciated the pasta.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you haven't had it in a long time, it does do the job for the pasta feel.
MOOS (on camera): Like if you had no sex for three years, I guess any sex is good sex.
(voice-over): She liked the rice. She liked the bread sticks.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now, this is doable.
MOOS: The carb-free products will be available at lightflour.com in the next month or two. But who knows if they'll fly?
(on camera): They don't seem to mind.
Come on guys, Carbo-free bread.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: The flour currently costs three times more than regular flour, but the price is expected to drop when it's produced in quantity.
Well, time now for a break, and a look at the latest headlines from the CNN newsroom. Don't go away. We'll be back in a bit.
ANNOUNCER: There's lots more to come on NEXT@CNN. 'N Sync star Lance Bass lends new meaning to his band's hit, "It's Gonna Be Me."
Also, a fiery crash on the road to the next generation of supersonic jet.
And the twists and turns of one of the nation's top female stunt pilot. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: Hello again. You're watching NEXT@CNN. I'm James Hattori at Pier 39 along San Francisco Bay.
Plans by the U.S. Navy to implement a low-frequency sonar system out in the Pacific this fall have some environmentalists at battle alert. The Bush administration OK'ed those plans this week, despite concerns the high intensity sound waves could harm, perhaps even kill, underwater marine life, including whales.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): The U.S. Navy is steaming ahead with its low frequency active sonar system, a critical tool according to officials, for detecting a new generation of quiet running submarines. JOE JOHNSON, U.S. NAVY: So it's necessary because we have deficiencies against these very quiet modern diesel submarines, which are extremely difficult to detect on passive capabilities.
HATTORI: But environmentalists say marine animals like whales are endangered by the powerful sound waves, as strong as 230 decibels. The system emits low frequency sound waves from 18 huge underwater speakers on a line towed by a ship. The signals are reflected or pinged off the submarine below.
MARK PALMER, EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE: This is a sonar bomb that has been developed by the Navy to attack whales and other sorts of things in the name of finding submarines, and we don't think it's appropriate.
HATTORI: The Navy concedes that a test of a similar but different frequency sonar caused 16 whales to beach in the Bahama Islands two years ago. At least six died from damage to brain and inner ear. To protect marine mammals, the Navy will set up monitoring devices covering a mitigation zone of just over a mile around the sonar. If an animal comes too close, they will shut it off.
JOHNSON: Therefore, the likelihood of an animal being injured is extremely remote.
HATTORI: So how loud is the sonar? An environmental group, Earth Island, created a simulation.
HATTORI (on camera): I can feel that in my body.
MICHAEL STOCKER, ACOUSTICAL ENGINEER: This is still half as loud as what the mitigation zone is. Is that enough?
HATTORI: Yeah, I think that's enough.
How loud of a sound are we talking about?
STOCKER: Well, if we were broadcasting it from San Francisco right now, you could hear it at the outskirts of Nashville.
HATTORI (voice-over): Environmentalists say the Navy's sonar could affect marine life in other uncertain ways, even outside the mitigation zone.
PALMER: We know very little about the effects on fish, on squid, on other types of marine organisms that we depend on for food, that the world depends on and the ecosystem depends on.
HATTORI: The Navy, which plans two ships equipped with the sonar, says risks to sea animals can be managed. The critics fear the harm it causes will be, like an elusive sub, hard to find until it's too late.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: An orphaned baby killer whale is back in the wild with her extended family, and scientists are keeping an eye on the reunion.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free to go!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HATTORI: The 2-year-old orca known as Springer was released into the wild last weekend. Her troubles began earlier this year when she wandered into Puget Sound near Seattle after her mother died and she got separated from her pod. Scientists finally captured her and took care of some health problems. Last week, Springer was loaded on a specially designed ferry for the 400-mile trip to her home waters off Canada's Vancouver Island. She was released near her pod. Scientists say she is exchanging calls with them.
ANNOUNCER: Later on NEXT@CNN, a public service for air travelers. A Web site where you can share your experiences with airline food.
Also ahead, an entrepreneur gets emotional about electric cars.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: Well, guess which boy band superstar is rocketing up the celestial charts? Yes, it seems that Lance Bass is going from 'N Sync to in orbit. Here's Miles O'Brien.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): So, could this be the right stuff? Apparently so. Bye, bye, bye, Chuck Yeager. Meet Lance Bass, a teen heartthrob in the boy band 'N Sync, and now apparently a cosmonaut-in-training with a ticket to ride to the space station at the end of October.
DAVID KRIEFF, DESTINY PRODUCTIONS: We have signed a deal with the Russian space agencies. And we're very excited about it.
O'BRIEN: Excited after leaving a crucial meeting at the Beverly Hills offices of the powerhouse William Morris Agency. It was an unlikely place to find a Russian space commissar, as he readily admitted.
ALEXANDER DERECHIN, RSC ENERGIA: My reaction: It is an absolutely stupid idea. It is impossible. It cannot be done. It's not for us, etcetera. But after I met with him, I changed the mind.
O'BRIEN: The Russians are charging somewhere between $15 and $20 million for a ride on their Soyuz rocket and a visit at the station. And so the deal hinged on luring a galaxy of sponsors and a TV network deal. It should come as no surprise that an outfit with a healthy teenage girl demographic and a moon-walker logo no less, MTV, has signed on.
JIM MCDONALD, RADIO SHACK: What we're talking about here, really, is the first candidate that can engage tens of millions of viewers and youth in particular.
O'BRIEN: The cable music outlet will air an eight-part series called "Lance in Space." They will follow him through his training, which began six weeks ago, offer live coverage of the launch and mission, and air a welcome-home extravaganza, 'N Sync concert included.
KRIEFF: It is fantastic television. I think it's brilliant television. It's as interesting, certainly, as "The Osbournes" or anything else on TV in reality. It is the ultimate reality show.
LANCE BASS, 'N SYNC: That was crazy.
O'BRIEN: If he flies, the 23-year-old teen idol would be the youngest spacefarer ever. Even though NASA and the other agencies that run the station aren't complaining publicly about all this, there is some private grumbling. But they know the Russians own the rocket and need the cash.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: Electric cars, aside from the occasional golf cart, have not really caught on in the United States. Maybe because people don't want to own a car that can't go very far between charges. What if you could rent one? Well, that's the idea behind a new enterprise revving up in Atlanta. Sean Callebs reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It certainly gets a lot of looks. An electric car that a company called E-motion hopes to bring to the streets within a year.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This thing has, you know, air conditioning and heating like you would expect in a normal car. All of the air bags, all of the safety equipment.
CALLEBS: But it won't be for sale. E-motion wants to set up what it calls "stations" and a small fleet with anywhere from a couple to a dozen vehicles for rent, just like Avis or Hertz.
JOHN WILSON, CEO, E-MOTION MOBILITY: You would be able to reserve the use of the car by joining the service and go on the Internet, reserve a car at a certain time at a certain location, go down, pick up the car.
CALLEBS: Simply punch in a pin number, and you're off.
(on camera): E-motion believes it's going to be the curiosity that first brings the customer to try the service. But they believe it's going to be the efficiency, the reliability and the service that brings them back.
(voice-over): E-motion wants to start in Atlanta and branch out to California and major cities in the Northeast. The draw back, the battery limits trips to about 70 miles before they run out of juice. TERRY PENNEY, NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LAB: Their comfort level for an electric vehicle is typically limited to your ability to go a certain number of miles. And most electric vehicles, like I say, don't -- you know, don't go that far.
CALLEBS: But E-motion believes its car will have enough power for a number of errands around the city. It's a big gamble, not the least of which, some say, is convincing Americans to turn their back on their love affair with their own gas-powered car.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up, how a new passenger jet could help lessen congestion at the nation's airports. That and more when NEXT@CNN returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: Japanese researchers working on the next generation supersonic jet say they're not discouraged despite the spectacular crash of a test flight last weekend. A 36-foot-long model of the jet attached to a boost rocket crashed after take-off Sunday in the Australian desert. No one was hurt. The jet is designed to travel twice as fast as the Concorde, and carry three times as many people. They hope to enter the market before the year 2012. Researchers say they'll figure out what went wrong and try another test, later this year or early next.
Another jet hoping to shake up the world of aviation has been unveiled. The Eclipse 500 may not look revolutionary, but the shocker is its sticker price. It cost $850,000, one-third to one-fourth the price of a similar sized jet. The jet's maker, Eclipse Aviation, says it achieved the savings through increased automation of assembly and a newly designed engine. The jet holds six passengers, is flown by a single pilot and can take off on short runways. Eclipse says this last fact, coupled with the low price tag, could help spread commercial aviation among more of the 10,000 airports around the country, thereby reducing congestion. Currently, only 29 airports handle 70 percent of domestic air travelers. The new jet should be commercially available in the year 2004.
The last time you had a meal on an airplane, were you delighted or disgusted? I think I can guess that one. Well, now you can warn your fellow air travelers via the Web. Andrew Brown has this week's "Nothin' but Net."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDREW BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Want to know what they'll be feeding you after take-off? Travelers from all over the world are taking pictures of food they have eaten onboard an aircraft so they can be posted on this Web site, airlinemeals.net.
Marco Othardt (ph) is the web master.
MARCO OTHARDT: These pictures clearly show that you get what you pay for.
BROWN: What, one may ask, did passengers pay for this cuisine from Druk Air (ph), or the food Oll Nepan (ph) was serving here?
OTHARDT: When I see some meals from domestic flights in Asia, sometimes I get scared.
BROWN: Some people are still happy to dine in the sky.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Great.
BROWN: Others are fed up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had lamb. And it wasn't good, right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Scrambled eggs was like rubber and you could have played cricket with it.
BROWN: And no wonder.
(on camera): Passengers on long long-haul flights will be just sitting there for up to 16 hours, and so will some of the food that they consume.
(voice-over): Gebi Scherrer managed food for airlines for more than 10 years. He says it's difficult to control what happens to a meal once it leaves a catering facility on the ground. Eventually, it has to be reheated in the air, and sometimes that leads to problems.
GEBI SCHERRER: Either it can be overheated, burnt, or it's cold.
BROWN: When the jet age was in its infancy, experts say airlines couldn't offer passengers much in terms of in-flight service. So the food at least had to be good.
SCHERRER: Today, you have the TV in front of you, there's movies that's on.
BROWN: Perhaps a site like this can help make meals once again a central part of the in-flight experience. The airlines are already scrambling to showcase their finest fair.
ORHARDT: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). They don't look very good or they're outdated, and we want to contribute new produce.
BROWN: Orhardt (ph) is displaying corporate pictures, but the main part of his site is still dedicated to photos like these. Check them out, at airlinemeals.net, if you dare.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: For a link to that Web site and more on this week's program, check out our Web site, cnn.com/next.
Coming up on NEXT, another story from the world of aviation. This one will take you on a wild ride with the first woman to win the National Aerobatic Championship. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HATTORI: Unless you're a pilot, you've probably never heard of Patty Wagstaff, but in flying circles, she's a legend -- the first woman to win the U.S. National Aerobatics title. Our Miles O'Brien went to Florida for the Patty Wagstaff story, and a plane ride he won't soon forget.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN (voice-over): No room for white knuckles or weak stomachs in the cockpit of this airplane.
PATTY WAGSTAFF, AEROBATICS PILOT: I think that Aerobatics combines for me everything that I love to do. If I was a kid looking ahead and somebody told me I'd be doing this today, I'd say absolutely.
O'BRIEN: Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of Patty Wagstaff.
WAGSTAFF: As I kid, I liked to stand on my head and I liked to go fast. I'd be the fastest kid on the go-cart track. And you know, a little bit the wildest kid out there.
O'BRIEN: It's just another day at the office for the Tiger Woods of acrobatic flying. And while this may look like reckless abandon in three dimensions, it's actually as carefully choreographed as Tiger's swing.
WAGSTAFF: A lot of people think we're up there flopping around and doing crazy stuff, and on my God, you're so brave and it's so dangerous. All that stuff. But it's really nothing like that. It's extreme precision. I know exactly where they're going to stop, and I know exactly what my entry speeds are, and I just make it look wild. It is wild, but it is also very, very much under control. Controlled chaos.
O'BRIEN: Patty Wagstaff has spun the controlled chaos into a record-smashing, mid-piercing, thrill-a-second career. In 1991, she won the coveted U.S. National Aerobatic Championship. The first woman to do so. And to prove it was no fluke, she did it again and again.
WAGSTAFF: I do have a talent, and I have a desire and I have a passion for it, and I have all the ingredients to do what I do, and that is what it takes to succeed in a sport. You have to have all the ingredients.
O'BRIEN: But simply watching Patty fly wasn't enough for me. I literally ratcheted myself into a two-seat version of the Extra 300 she flies to see what it's really like.
WAGSTAFF: Now, I'm going to give you a little bit of a negative g just to feel it.
O'BRIEN: OK. Oh, my God. (CROSSTALK)
WAGSTAFF: You want to fly it for a minute?
O'BRIEN: Yeah, I'd love to.
WAGSTAFF: You got it. You can do a loop if you want.
O'BRIEN: All right. Here we go.
WAGSTAFF: A little bit of right rudder. Keep going up above. Not too hard on top.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: What did I do? What did I do?
WAGSTAFF: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). No big deal.
O'BRIEN: Her life does seem charmed here at her roots in St. Augustine, Florida. She lives well with her flock of parrots and another bird of a feather, air show performer Dale Snodgrass (ph), who dazzled crowds in old fighter planes.
But the hard playing comes with a price. Keeping sponsors happy, lining up as many as 15 air show performances a year. Business before pleasure.
WAGSTAFF: OK. Ready?
O'BRIEN: Yeah. Oh, baby.
WAGSTAFF: I love this part.
O'BRIEN: Oh, my gosh.
WAGSTAFF: Isn't this nice?
O'BRIEN: When you're flying, what are you thinking about?
WAGSTAFF: You know, you're not really thinking thinking. You kind of -- I don't think about extraneous things, which is probably what I like about it.
O'BRIEN: She grew up immersed in the world of aviation; her father a captain for Japan Airlines.
WAGSTAFF: He took me flying when I was a kid. The cockpit doors were always open. He'd jump out of the left seat, stick me in the left seat, and I'd fly the airplane. And he'd say, "honey, that's Mt. Fuji over there, we have a lot of honeymoon couples on board, why don't you go fly around Mt. Fuji." And honest to God. And we'd go do that, and I'd do turns, and I'd be flying. I thought it was the cutest thing in the world. I was like 10, 11 years old.
O'BRIEN: For Patty, a life-long passion was born. It is a passion she feels compelled to share, especially with young women.
WAGSTAFF: It's a big responsibility, it's an exhausting responsibility at air shows, and it is gratifying when a little girl comes up to me and says, I watched you fly 10 years ago and I just got my license.
O'BRIEN: The thing about flying with Patty Wagstaff is there's no real time for doing this. Straight level. As a matter of fact, this is kind of boring for you, isn't it?
WAGSTAFF: Well, we're not going to do it for long. We're not going to do it for long, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Show me what you got. Oh, my gosh. Oh.
(voice-over): No, I didn't get sick, but I had felt better. I walked away impressed with some amazing flying and an amazing person, who lives -- no, actually thrives by balancing risk and caution, chaos and precision.
WAGSTAFF: I'm very cautious with myself. People think I'm brave and courageous, and really I think I'm kind of a chicken.
O'BRIEN: Really?
WAGSTAFF: I like to keep my airplane in the best possible condition. I like to keep myself in good condition. I take every precaution that I can to minimize risk. And yeah, something can happen, but at least I would be going down and doing something that I love to do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HATTORI: If Miles look a little green up there, no need to adjust your TV sets.
Time for us to catch our breath. We have to get out of here. But here is a look at what's coming up next week.
Are you sick of spam? Well, we'll show you some ways to keep the electronic junk mail from ever reaching your in-box.
And we'll visit a planned community that's also a plane community, where residents can taxi their planes right up to their front doors.
That and a lot more coming up on NEXT. Until then, let us know how we're doing. You can drop us an e-mail. Our address is next@cnn.com.
Thanks so much for joining us this time. Thanks to our friends here at Pier 39. For all of us on the sci-tech beat, I'm James Hattori. We'll see you next time.
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