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U. S. Says It Has Saddam on the Run; Is the World More or Less Dangerous Since the Korean Conflict?; Electronic Voting Found Not to be Foolproof; Dolphinquest Tracks and Studies Bottlenose Dolphins; Breakdown in Communications Reason for Columbia Disaster; Tips on Saving Home Energy Costs; "Tomb Raider" Makes Successful Leap From Video to Screen

Aired July 27, 2003 - 17:00   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.


ANDREA KOPPEL, HOST: Welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm Andrea Koppel, and coming up in this hour, a raid in Iraq may have Saddam Hussein on the run. Could coalition forces be closing in on the dictator? We'll tell you about the limits of technology when it comes to targeting one man.
Today marks the 50th year since fighting ended the Korean Conflict. How safe is the region a half a century later?

And on the lighter side, scientists are tracking some of Flipper's cousins. We'll tell you how you can to.

But first, U. S. forces raided three farmhouses earlier today in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. Officials say they had good intelligence that Saddam's security chief, or even possibly Saddam himself, might have been there. Nic Robertson joins us now from Baghdad with more details. Bring us up to speed, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Andrea, since that happened overnight last night, we understand that there was a raid very close to the center of Baghdad in the Mansour District, a very upmarket residential neighborhood, a raid we're told by Iraqi police that was targeting Saddam Hussein. There were a lot of troops out on the streets there, and a number of Iraqi passersby, according to witnesses, were caught up in the incident, some of them in their vehicles shot and killed. At least three Iraqis were shot and killed in this particular, according to eyewitnesses. They were innocent passersby who were unable to stop in time, as U. S. troops told them to slow down.

What eyewitnesses say happened in this residential neighborhood, they say some black clad, very specialist looking U. S. troops were in the area. There were a large number of them fanned out. They were telling the crowds to stay back. There was a shooting that resulted in the deaths of a number of Iraqis.

According to Iraqi police, it was a hunt for Saddam Hussein, and according to coalition officials here, the Elite Task Force 20 Group was involved in this particular operation. That group, Task Force 20, is only involved in operations targeting very, very senior Ba'ath Party officials. Every indication from the Iraqi police that this was a raid targeting Saddam Hussein. It's not clear if they caught anyone.

Certainly, the numbers of troops decreasing quite rapidly, we are told, an indication that perhaps that high value target wasn't found at that scene.

Those raised in Tikrit, however, the night before, an indication that U.S. troops have told us they're getting good intelligence, that they believed on this occasion they had intelligence indicating Saddam Hussein was in those farms, and they say that they now have him effectively on the run -- Andrea.

KOPPEL: A lot of excitement today in Baghdad and Tikrit. Nic Robertson in Baghdad. Thank you so much.

The U.S. Military has enormous capabilities for gathering electronic intelligence, but often when it comes down to nabbing one man, it's good old human intelligence that pays off.

Pentagon correspondent Chris Plante now joins us to talk about that. Chris, tell us more about what kind of intelligence gathering is put into this on the part of the U.S. in the search for Saddam.

CHRIS PLANTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I would imagine that everything they have to throw at the situation is being thrown at the situation. As you mentioned, there are two basic categories of intelligence gathering.

The first is technical intelligence gathering. United states has unmatched capabilities in the arena of technical intelligence gathering. Billions and billions of dollars of satellites, reconnaissance satellites, photographic satellites, eavesdropping -- electronic eavesdropping satellites, and then below that a layer of aircraft, a whole family of eavesdropping aircraft, also capable of listening in on telephone calls, on satellite transmissions, satellite telephone calls, on radio transmissions, on pretty much anything electronic.

Below that on the ground, there's another layer of technical gathering equipment, also capable of listening to radio transmissions. You listen to known Iraqi military radio transmissions and so on, looking for any clue of movements of Saddam Hussein or any of the senior regime leaders.

There's voice recognition programming. Keep in mind that the United States is administrating the country now. So, they own the phone company. They can listen in on the telephone calls. But you have to realize also that Saddam Hussein probably knows about most of this. So, he's got somebody else making his phone calls for him, and they're avoiding doing certain things.

Down on the ground, you have human intelligence gathering, CIA operatives on the ground, other intelligence operatives, but mostly what they're doing is developing relationships with people on the ground, Iraqis that may be able to provide them with information. That's where the tip is most likely to come from that will -- that will lead them to Saddam Hussein in the end. It was a human being that provided a tip to the U. S. as to the whereabouts of Uday and Qusay Hussein, the sons of Saddam who were killed the other day. And that certainly sent a message across Iraq. The fact that Uday and Qusay are no longer there, they were an important part of Saddam Hussein's apparatus of fear and of terror.

It would appear, certainly, to many Iraqis that that apparatus is now crumbling. Even loyalists have to be looking around and wondering, well, am I going to allow Saddam Hussein to stay at my house knowing what happened to the house up in Mosul where Uday and Qusay were staying? There's a $25 million reward. It's pretty clear at this point that the United States isn't going away. And it's pretty clear also that the regime is crumbling.

But you've got to keep in mind also that there's a $25 million reward on Osama bin Laden. That hasn't worked yet. And in America, we had Eric Rudolph, who started bombing places in 1996 and was on the run for five years before he was caught here in the United States. So, it's not easy to find a single person -- Andrea.

KOPPEL: OK, Chris Plante at the Pentagon. Thanks so much for that explanation.

A half century after the gunfire between North and South Korea ended, the region is still one of the most tense on the planet. On this anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting of 1953, veterans in the U.S. and South Korea are remembering that conflict. Memorials also are under way in North Korea. But is the world much safer than it was 50 years ago?

Joining us to look at some of today's threats is Jim Walsh from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, University. So, Mr. Walsh, is the world more or less dangerous in the last 50 years?

JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, I think the first thing we ought to do is celebrate this anniversary. It's impressive that for 50 years the peace in the Korean Peninsula has held. So, those 37,000 men and women, American men and servicewomen who died in that war actually died for a good cause. It's been successful. The peace has held. South Korea is a strong and prosperous country.

But unfortunately, it would be hard to say we're going to have 50 more years of peace on the peninsula because things do not look very good right now, Andrea.

KOPPEL: And, of course, one of the reasons has to do with North Korea what had been a secret and has been outed by the Bush administration, a now public nuclear weapons program. Is there any diplomatic way that you think the U.S. can convince the Stalinist North to give up that program?

WALSH: I think there may yet be an opportunity to negotiate a peaceful resolution to this. I haven't given up hope on that. I think there's been a deal to be made that's been out there for at least a couple of years. We really haven't taken advantage of that opportunity, and now...

KOPPEL: And what is that deal?

WALSH: Well, I think the deal is that -- it is a version of the agreed framework from 1993. Essentially, neither side lived up to what they promised back in 1993. We did not fully recognize North Korea. We did not provide them with the reactor. We did not give them economic assistance.

And they did not live up to their side of the bargain. They started a parallel uranium enrichment program, which was not part of the deal. And so both sides have reasons to be skeptical, but I think North Korea is a desperate country that is clinging to power, and it is open to a deal, or at least it was open to a deal.

And that would include a nonaggression pact. We would promise not to attack North Korea, and we would give them economic assistance. And in return, they would shut down the nuclear program and open it to intrusive inspection. It's something like that that's out there that needs to be found, but we are quite some distance from that now.

KOPPEL: Well, the Bush administration has publicly said it has no intention to invade North Korea. The question, of course, is whether they'd put that in writing. It's something they've said they're not really looking to do.

But explain to us if you would, Mr. Walsh, why it is that North Korea is so insistent on having one on one dialogue with the U.S., while the U.S. is saying, no, we want multiparty talks?

WALSH: Well, it's very funny. I think the only place in the world where President Bush talks about multilateralism is in the Korean Peninsula, although I guess we get more of that in Iraq now. But in the Korean Peninsula, it's sort of a silly thing. The North Koreans want to talk to the U.S. because they think we're calling the shots. They think we're the top dog, that nothing happens in the Korean Peninsula without U.S. approval. And so if anything's going to get done, the U.S. has to be at the table. The U.S. is saying, no, no, no, no. We won't talk to you unless we talk -- unless other people are sitting at the table.

My own view is that this is going to get resolved. We'll have three-party talks between China, North Korea, and the United States probably in September. And China is an important player here. And on occasion, China will get up, and they will leave the room, and then the Americans and North Koreans will actually talk to each other, and then hopefully some progress will be made.

KOPPEL: Well, the saga continues. How do these nuclear dangers -- the threats on the Korean Peninsula, perhaps even in Iran and the Middle East -- how do they impact the rest of the world?

WALSH: Well, I think they have the potential to have a very, very large impact. This is a dangerous region of the world -- or North Korea's arguably a more dangerous country than Iraq. And so, China has stakes in this. There could be millions of refugees that flow over into China.

Obviously, South Korea is at risk, Japan is at risk. There are 300,000 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen stationed in South Korea. They are at risk.

And, more broadly, it is the issue again of weapons of mass destruction, of nuclear proliferation. And so the regime -- the regime that we built to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons also is at risk. So, there are big stakes, and it's got to be handled carefully because it could all blow up.

KOPPEL: Jim Walsh joining us from Harvard University in Boston, thank you so much.

Later on NEXT@CNN, once again, a video game makes it to the big screen as the new "Tomb Raider" flick opens. We'll take a look back at its predecessors, some of which were less than a success.

Also, strange things were afloat this week, and this Chevy is just one of them. You know what they say about necessity.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: Checking some stories making technology news this week, the plot thickens in the online music war. Buymusic.com is the latest competitor to enter the fray, hoping to catch on with the public that may or may not be ready to start paying for music downloads. The service lets PC owners buy songs for as little as $.79 each. The licensing firms, however, are not as liberal as those offered by Apple's iTunes service. Will music.com take off? Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: The cross country car race known as the Solar Challenge wrapped up this week in Claremont, California, near L.A. The Solar Miner IV, built and operated by a team from the University of Missouri at Rolla, crossed the line first. The race was billed as the longest solar car race in the world, 2300 miles in all, starting in Chicago and traveling parts of historic Route 66. A total of 20 vehicles competed.

A retired Air Force -- a retired Air France Concorde was on the move against, recently not flying at supersonic speeds, but floating slowly down the Rhine River. It was on its way to a museum in southern Germany. Air France ended its Concorde service last month. Other Concords will wind up in museums in France and in Washington.

Another unusual water craft sighting. Get this. The Coast Guard said Thursday it had intercepted a dozen Cubans heading for Florida last week in a boat made out of a 1951 Chevy truck. The truck sat on empty drums that acted as pontoons, and a propeller was used as a drive shaft. In this case, inventive boat design didn't do the trick. The occupants were sent home to Cuba, and the Chevy boat was sunk by the Coast Guard because it was considered a hazard to navigation.

A fluke find on the internet is raising some red flags about electronic voting. Computer security experts say they found vulnerabilities that could lead to vote tampering. Brian Cabell has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you thought the fiasco with hanging dimples and pregnant chads in the presidential election in Florida in 2000 dictated a move away from paper ballots and toward electronic voting, you might want to think again. Johns Hopkins University researchers, after studying the computer code for Diebold Election Systems electronic equipment, have asserted the equipment is vulnerable to massive fraud.

AVI RUBIN, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: I would say a 15-year-old computer science student or someone who's a hobbyist in computers could sit in a garage and manufacture smart cards that could be sold to people and give them the ability to vote unlimited number of times.

CABELL Researchers got the Diebold code after it was posted anonymously on a public web site earlier this year. Thirty-three thousand Diebold voting stations were used in 2002, including in Georgia, where Republican Sonny Perdue and Saxby Chambliss upset the Democratic incumbents for governor and U. S. senator. There is no evidence any fraud took place.

Diebold insists its voting equipment is secure but confirms it's studying the research.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We really want to pour through that and make sure that, you know, we are covering our bases in terms of the issues they uncovered and at this stage, any public concerns that may be out there.

Approximately one-fifth of all U. S. voters now use electronic ballots manufactured by 19 different and competing companies. The trend, especially after the chad crisis, has been toward more electronic voting. Requiring only a touch, it seems easier and more accurate than conventional balloting. Now, however, state elections officials may want to take a second look.

CINDY COHN, ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION: I think it's important now for the company who have sold these voting machines to the various counties to step forward and demonstrate to the public that the kinds of problems that were found by the Hopkins study -- and, frankly, there are other reports out there as well -- that those don't exist in their systems.

CABELL: The Johns Hopkins researchers emphasize only that electronic voting fraud is possible. They do not claim that any has occurred so far. Brian Cabell, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: Don't go away. You won't want to miss what's coming up NEXT@CNN. Not all dolphins are as friendly as Flipper. Some don't want to have anything to do with people. Researchers are studying why, and you can get in on the act. We'll tell you how.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: Well, it might not have anything to do with plastic, but think of dolphins, and Flipper might come to mind. Flipper is an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. Researchers are studying these dolphins, not the ones you see performing at Sea World, but ones that live far offshore and are much less accustomed to humans.

CNN science correspondent Ann Kellan joins us with details. Ann, how long have they been investigating these dolphins?

ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: This is brand new. This is a new study. A nonprofit organization called Dolphinquest is studying offshore bottlenose dolphins.

Yes, it's the same species as Flipper, but these dolphins act a little different. Researching the coastal bottlenose dolphins, the ones known to interact with humans -- they're trained as performers, used in therapy, even follow shrimp boats for food. Their personalities, in essence, have changed, thanks in part to living so close to humans along the coastline.

Well, researchers are now discovering these dolphins are different when they live offshore away from humans. They truly live in the wild in the middle of the Atlantic. What they eat, what they look like, is a little different from their coastal cousins.

Researchers at Dolphinquest are tracking and studying a few of them right now, and joining us to discuss their findings so far, to tell us how we can track the study's progress on the internet is Billy Hurley, director of Dolphinquest. He flew in to our L.A. bureau from Hawaii, Oahu. Thank you for joining us.

Billy, tell us about how you track them in the first place and what you're learning about them. I hear you have a track device with you. You might want to hold that up.

BILLY HURLEY, DOLPHINQUEST: Sure, I would be happy to do it. This is actually a satellite tag. It enables different scientists and researchers to follow animals when they're moving about in places that you can't follow, for instance, going under the water. So, these are really great when you consider the technology finally sort of caught up to things.

As far as how we're able to find these animals, we have to do it the old fashioned way. Everybody has got to go out in the boats and keep their eyes peeled and talk to local fishermen, and once the group has found -- we have a big team that gets together. We are able to acquire one of the animals, and to attach this kind of equipment onto them is really no big deal for us. After that, the work is done with computers and satellites.

KELLAN: So, what are you learning about them so far?

HURLEY: Well, a lot actually. The jury is still out. We've got a lot of data to collect for the next couple of months, but some of the depths that they're diving has been very interesting to us and the strategies that they're using for diving and the hunting for food or even playing around during the day. The locations that they're swimming are very important to us.

So, we're getting a really good glimpse as to what these animals are doing in a 24 hour period, something you just can't do sitting on a boat.

KELLAN: I was reading that they're bigger and they have richer blood, according to your Web site, right?

HURLEY: That's true. Bottlenose dolphins -- there are about 30 species, or a little bit more than that in the world of dolphins, but bottlenose are the most prolific. Those that are found in cold water are larger, and certainly animals that are offshore in the Atlantic should be a larger species, and these animals are, much larger, maybe 200, 300 pounds larger in some cases.

And the blood is definitely a little bit different, too. They have to dive deeper. Their food is a lot further down in that water column. They're again way off shore, they are not in that coastal area. So, things like hematocrit and hemoglobin, things that work with the red blood cells to enable them to put oxygen in their muscles, are a really big deal for them. So, they've got a lot of it.

KELLAN: And we talked about diving. They don't dive as deep as other mammals like the sperm whale or the elephant seal, but they are diving, what, 1,300 feet you're finding they dive?

HURLEY: Well, there are some champion divers in the world. Certainly, the sperm whale and the northern elephant seal are some that you think about that can dive up to 6,000 feet and be down for two hours. And bottlenose dolphins, at least up to now, have not been seen going that deep. They don't need to necessarily do that.

However, you are right. This particular group of dolphins we are seeing are doing dives up near 500 meters, and that is something that has never been seen before in the bottlenose dolphin.

KELLAN: Ok. Let's check the Internet site. Now we can keep track of these dolphins that you have tracking devices on. You go to www.dolphinquest.org. You actually have mapped it out so we can go every day, and we can check out how one like dolphin, if you check out one of the dolphins, you can check out where he's been and, I guess, where he's going.

HURLEY: It's some really neat stuff. We've got a lot of groups of people working together. We've got Lee Klaske (ph), who is the investigator in this program and digitaria (ph) and then our own creative crew at Dolphinquest, trying to basically put a project together that kids and folks that are in schools and other organizations far away from, say, Bermuda, will have the opportunity to not only track these animals, but get a sense of what it's like to be a bottlenose dolphin because, certainly, we're not going to conserve what we don't understand, and this is our effort with our Web site to make conservation come to life. It is certainly a big part of Dolphinquest's mission.

KELLAN: Ok, thank you so much for joining us today. Billy Hurley with Dolphinquest. It gives you an idea that dolphins are setting examples as a way that we can learn to study other animals in the wild as well. Andrea?

KOPPEL: It makes it a lot of fun for folks at home to be able to follow along. Ann Kellan, thank you so much.

Lots more to come in the next half hour of NEXT@CNN. We'll find out how NASA officials handled the news that a chunk of foam had hit the space shuttle Columbia. Could they have prevented disaster?

And later, we'll tell you why this polar bear looks like a refugee from a Day-Glo paint factory.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: NEXT@CNN continues in just a moment after a quick check of the news headlines at this hour.

(NEWS BREAK)

KOPPEL: Breakdown of communication and a lack of information. Those are the reasons given by top space shuttle managers as to why they did not see the foam that struck Columbia's left wing as potentially catastrophic. For the first time since Columbia was lost on February 1, Linda Ham, the former chairwoman of the shuttle's management meeting, spoke out. Miles O'Brien reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two days after Columbia launched, the film was processed, and the picture was there. Eighty-two seconds after liftoff, some sort of debris, probably insulating foam, flew off the external fuel tank and struck the orbiter's left wing.

Shuttle managers and engineers had seen this happen before on other missions. And while there was some damage then, it wasn't anything that threatened the vehicle and crew, and that appears to have lulled them into complacency.

LINDA HAM, FORMER CHAIRWOMAN, MISSION MANAGEMENT TEAM: Based on the information that I had at the time I made those decisions in the MMT and information that we as a team had at the time, we were really doing the best we could.

O'BRIEN: Linda Ham, then the number two person in the shuttle program, chaired the MMT, or mission management team meeting, where the debris strike was first discussed five into the flight. She heard from senior engineer Don McCormick, who talked about previous foam strikes.

DON MCCORMICK, NASA ENGINEER: We saw some, you know, fairly significant damage in the area between rcc panels 8 and 9 and the main landing gear door on the bottom at sts-87. We did some analysis prior to sts-89. So...

HAM: And really, I don't think there's much we can do, so, you know, it's not really a factor during the flight because there isn't much we can do about it.

O'BRIEN: There was no talk of using spy satellites or ordering a space walk for a closer look of the left wing. No sense of urgency. January 24, eight days after launch, Don McCormick offers an update after a computer model concludes the damage was not serious enough to allow hot gases to burn through to Columbia's aluminum skin.

HAM: No burn through means no catastrophic damage, and localized heating damage would mean a tile replacement?

MCCORMICK: It would mean possible impacts to turn around repairs and that sort of thing, but we do not see any kind of, you know, safety of flight issue here yet in anything that we've looked at.

O'BRIEN: Ham defends her actions.

HAM: When he said, we made statements like no burn through, that that meant no safety in flight issue, I was trying to reassure even myself that that was a true fact.

O'BRIEN: The debris issue comes up one more time at a meeting held on January 27, and they once again determine it is not a safety of flight issue.

HAM: I think we all take some personal responsibility for this, and I certainly feel accountable for the MMT. So, it's been very difficult through this.

O'BRIEN: The difficult truth is tests conducted by the independent board investigating the disaster show the foam strike was the likely cause of a fatal breach in Columbia's heat shield, causing it to burn up on reentry on February 1.

Miles O'Brien, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: Joining me now to talk about the risks that NASA takes is Keith Cowing, the creator of the nasawatch.com. Mr. Cowing, the Columbia managers knew that it was this foam strike within a, you know, day or so of the launch, but assume that it did no serious damage. Would it have changed things in the end, in perhaps saving the crew of the Columbia, if they had come to a different conclusion sooner?

KEITH COWING: Well, we're having this conversation like a lot of other people have had in hindsight. So, you know, that said, this is kind of like living in a remote country road with a gravel surface, and you drive up and down every day, and rocks fly, but you never had a problem with it. And then one day, somebody drives by you, a rock comes up and hits you in the windshield, and you're surprised. I think Miles had it correct in terms of using the words "lulled" and "complacency". They were used to seeing this, they were used to seeing foam come off of the tank. Well, the foam wasn't supposed to come off from the tank. It wasn't designed to do that. Yet every time they'd seen it in the past, they said, oh, it wasn't an issue. So, based on their experience that they were dealing with and the pressure of the moment and while the mission was going on, they did what they could. Linda Ham is not incorrect in saying that.

However, you know, just because you haven't seen damage before doesn't mean it couldn't happen. And, indeed, early on in the mission when we went to cover this, reporters would sit there, and NASA would say, oh, we know, it's like a foam core coming off your car in a parking lot.

Well, it wasn't. We've just seen tapes that showed exactly that that wasn't the case. So, NASA could have looked into a lot of things. This is, unfortunately, one case where they didn't look into something, and it got them.

KOPPEL: I'm sure you'll agree that it is not an understatement to say that a shuttle mission is hugely complicated involving hundreds of people. Obviously, there are people who have to work together to try to make this mission come off successfully. So, is it inevitable that some sort of, you know, management group think is going to set in?

COWLING: Well, of course. You know, I worked at NASA, and I have to say that I've never worked with a more amazing group of people. But, you know, shuttle launches are a miracle in and of themselves, as are any other space missions. And you have to go through many, many events in a very short period of time, and you have to decide ahead of time, if I see this, is this acceptable? If this happens, do I stop the mission?

And as you go through a shuttle launch, they did this with -- they didn't see this as an issue. As you go through the mission, it's the same sort of thing. So, you have to -- it's the same sort of thing that allows NASA to pull these missions off is the very same thing that, well, has prevented them from getting outside the box of their experience and saying, this might be an issue.

KOPPEL: Shouldn't one person, in your opinion, be ultimately responsible for making these final decisions?

COWING: Well, you know, technically, there is a management chain. I mean, it does go up to the associate administrator for space flight, and he makes the decision, and they have a series of very methodical meetings before and up to and right at the moment of launch. So, that command chain is there.

KOPPEL: Linda Ham, who was the head of the mission management team and we saw in Miles' report there, is no longer in her position at NASA. But no one is really taking direct blame for the Columbia disaster. What message do you think that sends if no one is held accountable? COWING: Well, you know, after NASA crashed two perfectly good probes into Mars a few years back, they said, well, nobody's going to be fired. Now, you know, on one hand, maybe everybody was responsible. But on the other hand, if there's no threat or risk or any consequences to not doing things properly, you know, people may not necessarily perform up to snuff.

Now, Linda Ham husband's an astronaut, and I don't think anybody walked in that day and said, let's got kill somebody or I'm busy. It happened as it happened, but if you just say that these things can happen and there are no real career consequences from this and she still has her job -- now, I'm not saying she should be singled out or anybody -- any specifically, you know, person or organization should be singled out, but that should not be precluded.

And as the report comes out, I think we'll see some evidence that maybe some changes need to be made in specific individuals and within organizations.

KOPPEL: Well, obviously, the space program is something that not only the Bush administration, but many administrations place a tremendous amount of import on. Hopefully, it will continue safely. Keith Cowing with nasawatch.com. Thank you so much.

COWING: My pleasure.

KOPPEL: If you're looking for ways to beat the heat this summer, you'll want to stay tuned. Coming up next, we'll show you how to stay cool and save money at the same time.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: Common sense tells you that hot temperatures mean high energy bills for millions of Americans every year. But even with energy costs on the rise, there are things that you can do to keep more of your money in the bank.

Joining us with his hot tips in energy saving strategies is Dennis Creech, executive director of the Southface Energy Institute. Dennis, thanks so much for being here.

Well, let's get right into it. What are some practical tips that folks at home can use to try to save money on their heating bills -- on their cooling bills?

DENNIS CREECH, SOUTHFACE ENERGY INSTITUTE: Well, the good news is that many of the measures will do both, will save on air conditioning as well as heating. First thing to do is try and button up the holes in your house. About one-third of the air conditioning costs and heating costs can be just from air escaping from your house. The easiest way to do that is simple weather stripping. You can put this in the cracks in the kitchen sink is a great best place to go first. There's always going to be a big hole there. Or use some of the spray foam sealant there.

KOPPEL: Why don't you hold it up to the camera so folks can see it.

CREECH: Oh, ok. Right.

KOPPEL: Ok.

CREECH: So, this comes out like shaving cream and just sets up firm and cuts down on the air that leaks in and out of your house. What's nice is it also keeps the insects and bugs from coming in your home as well.

A couple other things -- on air conditioning costs, sunlight coming through windows is always going to be a problem. So, simply pulling your curtains down during the daytime so they bounce the sunlight back out through the windows is a good idea. And then if you want to take another step, this is a very simple insect screen that has got a little bit heavier weave, and that blocks the sunlight. So, you can put this on the outside of your windows, and that keeps the hot summer sun from coming in and will save you on your air conditioning bills.

But for every home that has a central heating and cooling system, this little tub has got the key that will cut your heating and cooling costs usually 10 to 30 percent. It's a special paste that you use to seal the duct work. You know, the air that gets blown into your house? Those ducts are usually up in the attic or down in the crawl space or the basement of a home, and when they leak, you're losing all that energy, all your money, to the outside. It always surprises most people that duct tape doesn't do a good job of sealing your ducts. And so you want to use this special paste to seal the ducts. That will keep your home a lot more comfortable.

KOPPEL: So, in terms of sort of some cheaper things that folks can do -- and that certainly, I'm sure, doesn't cost a lot of money, is there anything that people can do in terms of, you know, changing home air filters that might save money?

CREECH: Right. And I brought one here, too.

KOPPEL: Well, look at that.

CREECH: Because when the air filter gets dirty in your home, it blocks the flow of air, and that adds to your energy costs. And so, changing the filter a few times a year is a good idea. Filters are fairly inexpensive, and it's a good do it yourself project as well.

KOPPEL: So, how frequently should people change these?

CREECH: Well, a lot depends on how clean you keep your house. And so, if you keep your house a little bit tidier, then maybe, oh, every few months. If you've got pets and other sources of dust inside your home, then you might want to change it about once a month.

KOPPEL: And what's that contraption down at the end of the table there?

CREECH: Well, this is another great way to save on your energy costs. The standard light bulb is a great antique. Now, that's starting to get hot to the touch. The new energy efficient light bulbs are so energy efficient, they produce a lot of light but almost no heat. And so, I can keep my hand on this light bulb really for a long time because it's giving me light and not heat. Now, this saves on my lighting bill, but also on my air conditioning bill because I don't have to take all that waste heat from the lights out with the air conditioner. Great energy saving tip.

KOPPEL: If people want to maybe get an audit of their home in terms of their energy efficiency, is there a person that they can go to? Is this something that they need to seek outside help for?

CREECH: Well, almost every area of the country now have got utilities or energy offices or what are known as home energy raters. These are people that are trained to do energy audits of homes. And so at Southface, at our Web site, which is www.southface.org, we have a link to really energy auditors around the country. So, people can get professionals to come in and give them advice on the low-cost kind of measures we talked about, as well as more expensive energy upgrades to make.

KOPPEL: Just out of curiosity, if folks were to put some of these tips into place, how much could they save a month?

CREECH: Well, in my home, I cut my energy bills about a third. And I live in a 1950s brick ranch that you see all over the country. And so, what's great is it's also a lot more comfortable as well as saves me money.

KOPPEL: Well, that money can sure come in handy for a lot of folks. David Creech, executive director of Southface Energy Institute. Thank you so much.

CREECH: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

KOPPEL: Still to come, Lara Croft hit the ground running as the new "Tomb Raider" movie opened this weekend. We'll look at other video games that have made the leap to the silver screen when we come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: (voice-over): It's virtual reality imitating life. Strap on the right gear, and this animated character makes every move you make almost as you're making it. It's called live actor, developed at the University of Pennsylvania.

Players in this virtual world wear a special suit that positions 30 infrared light sensors on various parts of the body. As a person moves, 540 cameras track the senses. The data is fed to a computer, and the virtual reality character comes to life on a seven-foot stereo screen. NORM BADLER, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: The display is what's called passive stereo. Basically, you just wear polarized sunglasses, and each eye gets a different image. So, these characters appear to be right in the space, full size, performing or interacting with you. And it's very effective. It's very different to interact with people that are six feet high than three inches high on the TV screen.

KELLAN: Researchers plan in the future to use the technology in video games and in training sessions, where the character will be programmed to react to your moves instead of just mimicking them.

Ann Kellan, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: Checking some NEXT news headlines for this Sunday. Firefighters in Montana are struggling to save buildings and homes in Glacier National Park threatened by a wildfire that has been burning for days. Today they started a defensive backfire to stop the fire spread. Officials told residents to be ready to evacuate. Most tourists have already left. Three major fires in and around the park have burned more than 44,000 acres.

In Arizona, one firefighter was killed and two others injured yesterday when their helicopter crashed on the fort Apache Indian Reservation. The chopper was taking expert firefighters from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to battle a new fire.

A Cancun, Mexico, aquatic park today has 22 new dolphins amid charges the animals were brought to Mexico illegally. Environmentalists say two other dolphins died and that some of the surviving animals appear to be in shock. Animal rights groups say the dolphins were taken from waters off the Solomon Islands without proper authorization and flown out of the country in small crates. Park officials say environmentalists are spreading misinformation and that no dolphins died. They say all the dolphins are in good spirits and will be trained to swim with tourists.

Do not adjust your TV set. This polar bear really is purple. The bear lives in a zoo in Medosa City, Argentina. Her fur turned violet from a treatment for a skin infection. Vets say there's nothing to be alarmed about. She'll be purple for only a few days. In the meantime, she's become a major attraction for schoolchildren and tourists.

Angelina Jolie is back this weekend in a new "Tomb Raider" flick, "Cradle of Life." the first Lara Croft movie was one of only a handful of video game inspired films that have made a box office success. And the sequel made an estimated $21.8 million in its opening weekend.

CNN technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg takes a look now at how some other video game based films fared at the box office.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Blockbuster movies like "Star Wars," "Lord of the Rings," and "Spider- Man" have consistently been the catalyst for great video games. But video games rarely inspire successful movies. This weekend Lara Croft is back and trying to continue one of the few video game based success stories in Hollywood.

The first "Tomb Raider" film rode squarely on the coattails of the wildly popular Lara Croft game, the latest we have running behind me here, and the flick raked in more than $130 million at the box office.

But you might remember past fabulous game inspired flops like "Super Mario." One of the most successful game franchises in history -- here's the original -- not so as a movie. The film made back less than half its $48 million production budget.

And who could forget gems like "Street Fighter" and "Double Dragon," the latter barely managing to scrounge up $2.3 million at the box office. And the animated "Final Fantasy," which made $30 million in ticket sales but cost $130 million to make. The inaugural "Mortal Kombat" could arguably be considered the first game based success with a now modest $70 million domestic take. But "Annihilation," its successor, made less than half that much.

Leading ladies may be the answer to box office glory for game based flicks. Both "Tomb Raider" and "Resident Evil" have seen profits that kept pace with game sales. Both the game and the movies have ways to keep your attention. The games may have the graphics.

Films have Angelina Jolie and Mila Jovovich. Paramount Pictures is no doubt hoping Angelina can keep the "Cradle Of Life" going, at least for the rest of the summer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: And that's all the time we have for now. Before we go, here's a peek at what's coming up next weekend. Tens of thousands of people make friends and play nice in the Sins online videogame. But some are in it just to make other players' lives, or at least the lives of their characters, miserable. We'll tell you about Griefers next weekend. Hope you can join us.

Coming up next, "CNN LIVE SUNDAY" with Sophia Choi. Harris Whitbeck will have today's developments in the hunt for Saddam Hussein. That's followed by "PEOPLE IN THE NEWS" at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, profiling Laci and Scott Peterson and John Walsh. And at 8:00 p.m., CNN presents "SCHEDULED TO DIE."

I'm Andrea Koppel. CNN continues right after a quick break.

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





Less Dangerous Since the Korean Conflict?; Electronic Voting Found Not to be Foolproof; Dolphinquest Tracks and Studies Bottlenose Dolphins; Breakdown in Communications Reason for Columbia Disaster; Tips on Saving Home Energy Costs; "Tomb Raider" Makes Successful Leap From Video to Screen>


Aired July 27, 2003 - 17:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDREA KOPPEL, HOST: Welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm Andrea Koppel, and coming up in this hour, a raid in Iraq may have Saddam Hussein on the run. Could coalition forces be closing in on the dictator? We'll tell you about the limits of technology when it comes to targeting one man.
Today marks the 50th year since fighting ended the Korean Conflict. How safe is the region a half a century later?

And on the lighter side, scientists are tracking some of Flipper's cousins. We'll tell you how you can to.

But first, U. S. forces raided three farmhouses earlier today in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. Officials say they had good intelligence that Saddam's security chief, or even possibly Saddam himself, might have been there. Nic Robertson joins us now from Baghdad with more details. Bring us up to speed, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Andrea, since that happened overnight last night, we understand that there was a raid very close to the center of Baghdad in the Mansour District, a very upmarket residential neighborhood, a raid we're told by Iraqi police that was targeting Saddam Hussein. There were a lot of troops out on the streets there, and a number of Iraqi passersby, according to witnesses, were caught up in the incident, some of them in their vehicles shot and killed. At least three Iraqis were shot and killed in this particular, according to eyewitnesses. They were innocent passersby who were unable to stop in time, as U. S. troops told them to slow down.

What eyewitnesses say happened in this residential neighborhood, they say some black clad, very specialist looking U. S. troops were in the area. There were a large number of them fanned out. They were telling the crowds to stay back. There was a shooting that resulted in the deaths of a number of Iraqis.

According to Iraqi police, it was a hunt for Saddam Hussein, and according to coalition officials here, the Elite Task Force 20 Group was involved in this particular operation. That group, Task Force 20, is only involved in operations targeting very, very senior Ba'ath Party officials. Every indication from the Iraqi police that this was a raid targeting Saddam Hussein. It's not clear if they caught anyone.

Certainly, the numbers of troops decreasing quite rapidly, we are told, an indication that perhaps that high value target wasn't found at that scene.

Those raised in Tikrit, however, the night before, an indication that U.S. troops have told us they're getting good intelligence, that they believed on this occasion they had intelligence indicating Saddam Hussein was in those farms, and they say that they now have him effectively on the run -- Andrea.

KOPPEL: A lot of excitement today in Baghdad and Tikrit. Nic Robertson in Baghdad. Thank you so much.

The U.S. Military has enormous capabilities for gathering electronic intelligence, but often when it comes down to nabbing one man, it's good old human intelligence that pays off.

Pentagon correspondent Chris Plante now joins us to talk about that. Chris, tell us more about what kind of intelligence gathering is put into this on the part of the U.S. in the search for Saddam.

CHRIS PLANTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I would imagine that everything they have to throw at the situation is being thrown at the situation. As you mentioned, there are two basic categories of intelligence gathering.

The first is technical intelligence gathering. United states has unmatched capabilities in the arena of technical intelligence gathering. Billions and billions of dollars of satellites, reconnaissance satellites, photographic satellites, eavesdropping -- electronic eavesdropping satellites, and then below that a layer of aircraft, a whole family of eavesdropping aircraft, also capable of listening in on telephone calls, on satellite transmissions, satellite telephone calls, on radio transmissions, on pretty much anything electronic.

Below that on the ground, there's another layer of technical gathering equipment, also capable of listening to radio transmissions. You listen to known Iraqi military radio transmissions and so on, looking for any clue of movements of Saddam Hussein or any of the senior regime leaders.

There's voice recognition programming. Keep in mind that the United States is administrating the country now. So, they own the phone company. They can listen in on the telephone calls. But you have to realize also that Saddam Hussein probably knows about most of this. So, he's got somebody else making his phone calls for him, and they're avoiding doing certain things.

Down on the ground, you have human intelligence gathering, CIA operatives on the ground, other intelligence operatives, but mostly what they're doing is developing relationships with people on the ground, Iraqis that may be able to provide them with information. That's where the tip is most likely to come from that will -- that will lead them to Saddam Hussein in the end. It was a human being that provided a tip to the U. S. as to the whereabouts of Uday and Qusay Hussein, the sons of Saddam who were killed the other day. And that certainly sent a message across Iraq. The fact that Uday and Qusay are no longer there, they were an important part of Saddam Hussein's apparatus of fear and of terror.

It would appear, certainly, to many Iraqis that that apparatus is now crumbling. Even loyalists have to be looking around and wondering, well, am I going to allow Saddam Hussein to stay at my house knowing what happened to the house up in Mosul where Uday and Qusay were staying? There's a $25 million reward. It's pretty clear at this point that the United States isn't going away. And it's pretty clear also that the regime is crumbling.

But you've got to keep in mind also that there's a $25 million reward on Osama bin Laden. That hasn't worked yet. And in America, we had Eric Rudolph, who started bombing places in 1996 and was on the run for five years before he was caught here in the United States. So, it's not easy to find a single person -- Andrea.

KOPPEL: OK, Chris Plante at the Pentagon. Thanks so much for that explanation.

A half century after the gunfire between North and South Korea ended, the region is still one of the most tense on the planet. On this anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting of 1953, veterans in the U.S. and South Korea are remembering that conflict. Memorials also are under way in North Korea. But is the world much safer than it was 50 years ago?

Joining us to look at some of today's threats is Jim Walsh from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, University. So, Mr. Walsh, is the world more or less dangerous in the last 50 years?

JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, I think the first thing we ought to do is celebrate this anniversary. It's impressive that for 50 years the peace in the Korean Peninsula has held. So, those 37,000 men and women, American men and servicewomen who died in that war actually died for a good cause. It's been successful. The peace has held. South Korea is a strong and prosperous country.

But unfortunately, it would be hard to say we're going to have 50 more years of peace on the peninsula because things do not look very good right now, Andrea.

KOPPEL: And, of course, one of the reasons has to do with North Korea what had been a secret and has been outed by the Bush administration, a now public nuclear weapons program. Is there any diplomatic way that you think the U.S. can convince the Stalinist North to give up that program?

WALSH: I think there may yet be an opportunity to negotiate a peaceful resolution to this. I haven't given up hope on that. I think there's been a deal to be made that's been out there for at least a couple of years. We really haven't taken advantage of that opportunity, and now...

KOPPEL: And what is that deal?

WALSH: Well, I think the deal is that -- it is a version of the agreed framework from 1993. Essentially, neither side lived up to what they promised back in 1993. We did not fully recognize North Korea. We did not provide them with the reactor. We did not give them economic assistance.

And they did not live up to their side of the bargain. They started a parallel uranium enrichment program, which was not part of the deal. And so both sides have reasons to be skeptical, but I think North Korea is a desperate country that is clinging to power, and it is open to a deal, or at least it was open to a deal.

And that would include a nonaggression pact. We would promise not to attack North Korea, and we would give them economic assistance. And in return, they would shut down the nuclear program and open it to intrusive inspection. It's something like that that's out there that needs to be found, but we are quite some distance from that now.

KOPPEL: Well, the Bush administration has publicly said it has no intention to invade North Korea. The question, of course, is whether they'd put that in writing. It's something they've said they're not really looking to do.

But explain to us if you would, Mr. Walsh, why it is that North Korea is so insistent on having one on one dialogue with the U.S., while the U.S. is saying, no, we want multiparty talks?

WALSH: Well, it's very funny. I think the only place in the world where President Bush talks about multilateralism is in the Korean Peninsula, although I guess we get more of that in Iraq now. But in the Korean Peninsula, it's sort of a silly thing. The North Koreans want to talk to the U.S. because they think we're calling the shots. They think we're the top dog, that nothing happens in the Korean Peninsula without U.S. approval. And so if anything's going to get done, the U.S. has to be at the table. The U.S. is saying, no, no, no, no. We won't talk to you unless we talk -- unless other people are sitting at the table.

My own view is that this is going to get resolved. We'll have three-party talks between China, North Korea, and the United States probably in September. And China is an important player here. And on occasion, China will get up, and they will leave the room, and then the Americans and North Koreans will actually talk to each other, and then hopefully some progress will be made.

KOPPEL: Well, the saga continues. How do these nuclear dangers -- the threats on the Korean Peninsula, perhaps even in Iran and the Middle East -- how do they impact the rest of the world?

WALSH: Well, I think they have the potential to have a very, very large impact. This is a dangerous region of the world -- or North Korea's arguably a more dangerous country than Iraq. And so, China has stakes in this. There could be millions of refugees that flow over into China.

Obviously, South Korea is at risk, Japan is at risk. There are 300,000 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen stationed in South Korea. They are at risk.

And, more broadly, it is the issue again of weapons of mass destruction, of nuclear proliferation. And so the regime -- the regime that we built to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons also is at risk. So, there are big stakes, and it's got to be handled carefully because it could all blow up.

KOPPEL: Jim Walsh joining us from Harvard University in Boston, thank you so much.

Later on NEXT@CNN, once again, a video game makes it to the big screen as the new "Tomb Raider" flick opens. We'll take a look back at its predecessors, some of which were less than a success.

Also, strange things were afloat this week, and this Chevy is just one of them. You know what they say about necessity.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: Checking some stories making technology news this week, the plot thickens in the online music war. Buymusic.com is the latest competitor to enter the fray, hoping to catch on with the public that may or may not be ready to start paying for music downloads. The service lets PC owners buy songs for as little as $.79 each. The licensing firms, however, are not as liberal as those offered by Apple's iTunes service. Will music.com take off? Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: The cross country car race known as the Solar Challenge wrapped up this week in Claremont, California, near L.A. The Solar Miner IV, built and operated by a team from the University of Missouri at Rolla, crossed the line first. The race was billed as the longest solar car race in the world, 2300 miles in all, starting in Chicago and traveling parts of historic Route 66. A total of 20 vehicles competed.

A retired Air Force -- a retired Air France Concorde was on the move against, recently not flying at supersonic speeds, but floating slowly down the Rhine River. It was on its way to a museum in southern Germany. Air France ended its Concorde service last month. Other Concords will wind up in museums in France and in Washington.

Another unusual water craft sighting. Get this. The Coast Guard said Thursday it had intercepted a dozen Cubans heading for Florida last week in a boat made out of a 1951 Chevy truck. The truck sat on empty drums that acted as pontoons, and a propeller was used as a drive shaft. In this case, inventive boat design didn't do the trick. The occupants were sent home to Cuba, and the Chevy boat was sunk by the Coast Guard because it was considered a hazard to navigation.

A fluke find on the internet is raising some red flags about electronic voting. Computer security experts say they found vulnerabilities that could lead to vote tampering. Brian Cabell has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you thought the fiasco with hanging dimples and pregnant chads in the presidential election in Florida in 2000 dictated a move away from paper ballots and toward electronic voting, you might want to think again. Johns Hopkins University researchers, after studying the computer code for Diebold Election Systems electronic equipment, have asserted the equipment is vulnerable to massive fraud.

AVI RUBIN, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY: I would say a 15-year-old computer science student or someone who's a hobbyist in computers could sit in a garage and manufacture smart cards that could be sold to people and give them the ability to vote unlimited number of times.

CABELL Researchers got the Diebold code after it was posted anonymously on a public web site earlier this year. Thirty-three thousand Diebold voting stations were used in 2002, including in Georgia, where Republican Sonny Perdue and Saxby Chambliss upset the Democratic incumbents for governor and U. S. senator. There is no evidence any fraud took place.

Diebold insists its voting equipment is secure but confirms it's studying the research.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We really want to pour through that and make sure that, you know, we are covering our bases in terms of the issues they uncovered and at this stage, any public concerns that may be out there.

Approximately one-fifth of all U. S. voters now use electronic ballots manufactured by 19 different and competing companies. The trend, especially after the chad crisis, has been toward more electronic voting. Requiring only a touch, it seems easier and more accurate than conventional balloting. Now, however, state elections officials may want to take a second look.

CINDY COHN, ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION: I think it's important now for the company who have sold these voting machines to the various counties to step forward and demonstrate to the public that the kinds of problems that were found by the Hopkins study -- and, frankly, there are other reports out there as well -- that those don't exist in their systems.

CABELL: The Johns Hopkins researchers emphasize only that electronic voting fraud is possible. They do not claim that any has occurred so far. Brian Cabell, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: Don't go away. You won't want to miss what's coming up NEXT@CNN. Not all dolphins are as friendly as Flipper. Some don't want to have anything to do with people. Researchers are studying why, and you can get in on the act. We'll tell you how.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: Well, it might not have anything to do with plastic, but think of dolphins, and Flipper might come to mind. Flipper is an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin. Researchers are studying these dolphins, not the ones you see performing at Sea World, but ones that live far offshore and are much less accustomed to humans.

CNN science correspondent Ann Kellan joins us with details. Ann, how long have they been investigating these dolphins?

ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: This is brand new. This is a new study. A nonprofit organization called Dolphinquest is studying offshore bottlenose dolphins.

Yes, it's the same species as Flipper, but these dolphins act a little different. Researching the coastal bottlenose dolphins, the ones known to interact with humans -- they're trained as performers, used in therapy, even follow shrimp boats for food. Their personalities, in essence, have changed, thanks in part to living so close to humans along the coastline.

Well, researchers are now discovering these dolphins are different when they live offshore away from humans. They truly live in the wild in the middle of the Atlantic. What they eat, what they look like, is a little different from their coastal cousins.

Researchers at Dolphinquest are tracking and studying a few of them right now, and joining us to discuss their findings so far, to tell us how we can track the study's progress on the internet is Billy Hurley, director of Dolphinquest. He flew in to our L.A. bureau from Hawaii, Oahu. Thank you for joining us.

Billy, tell us about how you track them in the first place and what you're learning about them. I hear you have a track device with you. You might want to hold that up.

BILLY HURLEY, DOLPHINQUEST: Sure, I would be happy to do it. This is actually a satellite tag. It enables different scientists and researchers to follow animals when they're moving about in places that you can't follow, for instance, going under the water. So, these are really great when you consider the technology finally sort of caught up to things.

As far as how we're able to find these animals, we have to do it the old fashioned way. Everybody has got to go out in the boats and keep their eyes peeled and talk to local fishermen, and once the group has found -- we have a big team that gets together. We are able to acquire one of the animals, and to attach this kind of equipment onto them is really no big deal for us. After that, the work is done with computers and satellites.

KELLAN: So, what are you learning about them so far?

HURLEY: Well, a lot actually. The jury is still out. We've got a lot of data to collect for the next couple of months, but some of the depths that they're diving has been very interesting to us and the strategies that they're using for diving and the hunting for food or even playing around during the day. The locations that they're swimming are very important to us.

So, we're getting a really good glimpse as to what these animals are doing in a 24 hour period, something you just can't do sitting on a boat.

KELLAN: I was reading that they're bigger and they have richer blood, according to your Web site, right?

HURLEY: That's true. Bottlenose dolphins -- there are about 30 species, or a little bit more than that in the world of dolphins, but bottlenose are the most prolific. Those that are found in cold water are larger, and certainly animals that are offshore in the Atlantic should be a larger species, and these animals are, much larger, maybe 200, 300 pounds larger in some cases.

And the blood is definitely a little bit different, too. They have to dive deeper. Their food is a lot further down in that water column. They're again way off shore, they are not in that coastal area. So, things like hematocrit and hemoglobin, things that work with the red blood cells to enable them to put oxygen in their muscles, are a really big deal for them. So, they've got a lot of it.

KELLAN: And we talked about diving. They don't dive as deep as other mammals like the sperm whale or the elephant seal, but they are diving, what, 1,300 feet you're finding they dive?

HURLEY: Well, there are some champion divers in the world. Certainly, the sperm whale and the northern elephant seal are some that you think about that can dive up to 6,000 feet and be down for two hours. And bottlenose dolphins, at least up to now, have not been seen going that deep. They don't need to necessarily do that.

However, you are right. This particular group of dolphins we are seeing are doing dives up near 500 meters, and that is something that has never been seen before in the bottlenose dolphin.

KELLAN: Ok. Let's check the Internet site. Now we can keep track of these dolphins that you have tracking devices on. You go to www.dolphinquest.org. You actually have mapped it out so we can go every day, and we can check out how one like dolphin, if you check out one of the dolphins, you can check out where he's been and, I guess, where he's going.

HURLEY: It's some really neat stuff. We've got a lot of groups of people working together. We've got Lee Klaske (ph), who is the investigator in this program and digitaria (ph) and then our own creative crew at Dolphinquest, trying to basically put a project together that kids and folks that are in schools and other organizations far away from, say, Bermuda, will have the opportunity to not only track these animals, but get a sense of what it's like to be a bottlenose dolphin because, certainly, we're not going to conserve what we don't understand, and this is our effort with our Web site to make conservation come to life. It is certainly a big part of Dolphinquest's mission.

KELLAN: Ok, thank you so much for joining us today. Billy Hurley with Dolphinquest. It gives you an idea that dolphins are setting examples as a way that we can learn to study other animals in the wild as well. Andrea?

KOPPEL: It makes it a lot of fun for folks at home to be able to follow along. Ann Kellan, thank you so much.

Lots more to come in the next half hour of NEXT@CNN. We'll find out how NASA officials handled the news that a chunk of foam had hit the space shuttle Columbia. Could they have prevented disaster?

And later, we'll tell you why this polar bear looks like a refugee from a Day-Glo paint factory.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: NEXT@CNN continues in just a moment after a quick check of the news headlines at this hour.

(NEWS BREAK)

KOPPEL: Breakdown of communication and a lack of information. Those are the reasons given by top space shuttle managers as to why they did not see the foam that struck Columbia's left wing as potentially catastrophic. For the first time since Columbia was lost on February 1, Linda Ham, the former chairwoman of the shuttle's management meeting, spoke out. Miles O'Brien reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two days after Columbia launched, the film was processed, and the picture was there. Eighty-two seconds after liftoff, some sort of debris, probably insulating foam, flew off the external fuel tank and struck the orbiter's left wing.

Shuttle managers and engineers had seen this happen before on other missions. And while there was some damage then, it wasn't anything that threatened the vehicle and crew, and that appears to have lulled them into complacency.

LINDA HAM, FORMER CHAIRWOMAN, MISSION MANAGEMENT TEAM: Based on the information that I had at the time I made those decisions in the MMT and information that we as a team had at the time, we were really doing the best we could.

O'BRIEN: Linda Ham, then the number two person in the shuttle program, chaired the MMT, or mission management team meeting, where the debris strike was first discussed five into the flight. She heard from senior engineer Don McCormick, who talked about previous foam strikes.

DON MCCORMICK, NASA ENGINEER: We saw some, you know, fairly significant damage in the area between rcc panels 8 and 9 and the main landing gear door on the bottom at sts-87. We did some analysis prior to sts-89. So...

HAM: And really, I don't think there's much we can do, so, you know, it's not really a factor during the flight because there isn't much we can do about it.

O'BRIEN: There was no talk of using spy satellites or ordering a space walk for a closer look of the left wing. No sense of urgency. January 24, eight days after launch, Don McCormick offers an update after a computer model concludes the damage was not serious enough to allow hot gases to burn through to Columbia's aluminum skin.

HAM: No burn through means no catastrophic damage, and localized heating damage would mean a tile replacement?

MCCORMICK: It would mean possible impacts to turn around repairs and that sort of thing, but we do not see any kind of, you know, safety of flight issue here yet in anything that we've looked at.

O'BRIEN: Ham defends her actions.

HAM: When he said, we made statements like no burn through, that that meant no safety in flight issue, I was trying to reassure even myself that that was a true fact.

O'BRIEN: The debris issue comes up one more time at a meeting held on January 27, and they once again determine it is not a safety of flight issue.

HAM: I think we all take some personal responsibility for this, and I certainly feel accountable for the MMT. So, it's been very difficult through this.

O'BRIEN: The difficult truth is tests conducted by the independent board investigating the disaster show the foam strike was the likely cause of a fatal breach in Columbia's heat shield, causing it to burn up on reentry on February 1.

Miles O'Brien, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: Joining me now to talk about the risks that NASA takes is Keith Cowing, the creator of the nasawatch.com. Mr. Cowing, the Columbia managers knew that it was this foam strike within a, you know, day or so of the launch, but assume that it did no serious damage. Would it have changed things in the end, in perhaps saving the crew of the Columbia, if they had come to a different conclusion sooner?

KEITH COWING: Well, we're having this conversation like a lot of other people have had in hindsight. So, you know, that said, this is kind of like living in a remote country road with a gravel surface, and you drive up and down every day, and rocks fly, but you never had a problem with it. And then one day, somebody drives by you, a rock comes up and hits you in the windshield, and you're surprised. I think Miles had it correct in terms of using the words "lulled" and "complacency". They were used to seeing this, they were used to seeing foam come off of the tank. Well, the foam wasn't supposed to come off from the tank. It wasn't designed to do that. Yet every time they'd seen it in the past, they said, oh, it wasn't an issue. So, based on their experience that they were dealing with and the pressure of the moment and while the mission was going on, they did what they could. Linda Ham is not incorrect in saying that.

However, you know, just because you haven't seen damage before doesn't mean it couldn't happen. And, indeed, early on in the mission when we went to cover this, reporters would sit there, and NASA would say, oh, we know, it's like a foam core coming off your car in a parking lot.

Well, it wasn't. We've just seen tapes that showed exactly that that wasn't the case. So, NASA could have looked into a lot of things. This is, unfortunately, one case where they didn't look into something, and it got them.

KOPPEL: I'm sure you'll agree that it is not an understatement to say that a shuttle mission is hugely complicated involving hundreds of people. Obviously, there are people who have to work together to try to make this mission come off successfully. So, is it inevitable that some sort of, you know, management group think is going to set in?

COWLING: Well, of course. You know, I worked at NASA, and I have to say that I've never worked with a more amazing group of people. But, you know, shuttle launches are a miracle in and of themselves, as are any other space missions. And you have to go through many, many events in a very short period of time, and you have to decide ahead of time, if I see this, is this acceptable? If this happens, do I stop the mission?

And as you go through a shuttle launch, they did this with -- they didn't see this as an issue. As you go through the mission, it's the same sort of thing. So, you have to -- it's the same sort of thing that allows NASA to pull these missions off is the very same thing that, well, has prevented them from getting outside the box of their experience and saying, this might be an issue.

KOPPEL: Shouldn't one person, in your opinion, be ultimately responsible for making these final decisions?

COWING: Well, you know, technically, there is a management chain. I mean, it does go up to the associate administrator for space flight, and he makes the decision, and they have a series of very methodical meetings before and up to and right at the moment of launch. So, that command chain is there.

KOPPEL: Linda Ham, who was the head of the mission management team and we saw in Miles' report there, is no longer in her position at NASA. But no one is really taking direct blame for the Columbia disaster. What message do you think that sends if no one is held accountable? COWING: Well, you know, after NASA crashed two perfectly good probes into Mars a few years back, they said, well, nobody's going to be fired. Now, you know, on one hand, maybe everybody was responsible. But on the other hand, if there's no threat or risk or any consequences to not doing things properly, you know, people may not necessarily perform up to snuff.

Now, Linda Ham husband's an astronaut, and I don't think anybody walked in that day and said, let's got kill somebody or I'm busy. It happened as it happened, but if you just say that these things can happen and there are no real career consequences from this and she still has her job -- now, I'm not saying she should be singled out or anybody -- any specifically, you know, person or organization should be singled out, but that should not be precluded.

And as the report comes out, I think we'll see some evidence that maybe some changes need to be made in specific individuals and within organizations.

KOPPEL: Well, obviously, the space program is something that not only the Bush administration, but many administrations place a tremendous amount of import on. Hopefully, it will continue safely. Keith Cowing with nasawatch.com. Thank you so much.

COWING: My pleasure.

KOPPEL: If you're looking for ways to beat the heat this summer, you'll want to stay tuned. Coming up next, we'll show you how to stay cool and save money at the same time.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOPPEL: Common sense tells you that hot temperatures mean high energy bills for millions of Americans every year. But even with energy costs on the rise, there are things that you can do to keep more of your money in the bank.

Joining us with his hot tips in energy saving strategies is Dennis Creech, executive director of the Southface Energy Institute. Dennis, thanks so much for being here.

Well, let's get right into it. What are some practical tips that folks at home can use to try to save money on their heating bills -- on their cooling bills?

DENNIS CREECH, SOUTHFACE ENERGY INSTITUTE: Well, the good news is that many of the measures will do both, will save on air conditioning as well as heating. First thing to do is try and button up the holes in your house. About one-third of the air conditioning costs and heating costs can be just from air escaping from your house. The easiest way to do that is simple weather stripping. You can put this in the cracks in the kitchen sink is a great best place to go first. There's always going to be a big hole there. Or use some of the spray foam sealant there.

KOPPEL: Why don't you hold it up to the camera so folks can see it.

CREECH: Oh, ok. Right.

KOPPEL: Ok.

CREECH: So, this comes out like shaving cream and just sets up firm and cuts down on the air that leaks in and out of your house. What's nice is it also keeps the insects and bugs from coming in your home as well.

A couple other things -- on air conditioning costs, sunlight coming through windows is always going to be a problem. So, simply pulling your curtains down during the daytime so they bounce the sunlight back out through the windows is a good idea. And then if you want to take another step, this is a very simple insect screen that has got a little bit heavier weave, and that blocks the sunlight. So, you can put this on the outside of your windows, and that keeps the hot summer sun from coming in and will save you on your air conditioning bills.

But for every home that has a central heating and cooling system, this little tub has got the key that will cut your heating and cooling costs usually 10 to 30 percent. It's a special paste that you use to seal the duct work. You know, the air that gets blown into your house? Those ducts are usually up in the attic or down in the crawl space or the basement of a home, and when they leak, you're losing all that energy, all your money, to the outside. It always surprises most people that duct tape doesn't do a good job of sealing your ducts. And so you want to use this special paste to seal the ducts. That will keep your home a lot more comfortable.

KOPPEL: So, in terms of sort of some cheaper things that folks can do -- and that certainly, I'm sure, doesn't cost a lot of money, is there anything that people can do in terms of, you know, changing home air filters that might save money?

CREECH: Right. And I brought one here, too.

KOPPEL: Well, look at that.

CREECH: Because when the air filter gets dirty in your home, it blocks the flow of air, and that adds to your energy costs. And so, changing the filter a few times a year is a good idea. Filters are fairly inexpensive, and it's a good do it yourself project as well.

KOPPEL: So, how frequently should people change these?

CREECH: Well, a lot depends on how clean you keep your house. And so, if you keep your house a little bit tidier, then maybe, oh, every few months. If you've got pets and other sources of dust inside your home, then you might want to change it about once a month.

KOPPEL: And what's that contraption down at the end of the table there?

CREECH: Well, this is another great way to save on your energy costs. The standard light bulb is a great antique. Now, that's starting to get hot to the touch. The new energy efficient light bulbs are so energy efficient, they produce a lot of light but almost no heat. And so, I can keep my hand on this light bulb really for a long time because it's giving me light and not heat. Now, this saves on my lighting bill, but also on my air conditioning bill because I don't have to take all that waste heat from the lights out with the air conditioner. Great energy saving tip.

KOPPEL: If people want to maybe get an audit of their home in terms of their energy efficiency, is there a person that they can go to? Is this something that they need to seek outside help for?

CREECH: Well, almost every area of the country now have got utilities or energy offices or what are known as home energy raters. These are people that are trained to do energy audits of homes. And so at Southface, at our Web site, which is www.southface.org, we have a link to really energy auditors around the country. So, people can get professionals to come in and give them advice on the low-cost kind of measures we talked about, as well as more expensive energy upgrades to make.

KOPPEL: Just out of curiosity, if folks were to put some of these tips into place, how much could they save a month?

CREECH: Well, in my home, I cut my energy bills about a third. And I live in a 1950s brick ranch that you see all over the country. And so, what's great is it's also a lot more comfortable as well as saves me money.

KOPPEL: Well, that money can sure come in handy for a lot of folks. David Creech, executive director of Southface Energy Institute. Thank you so much.

CREECH: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

KOPPEL: Still to come, Lara Croft hit the ground running as the new "Tomb Raider" movie opened this weekend. We'll look at other video games that have made the leap to the silver screen when we come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: (voice-over): It's virtual reality imitating life. Strap on the right gear, and this animated character makes every move you make almost as you're making it. It's called live actor, developed at the University of Pennsylvania.

Players in this virtual world wear a special suit that positions 30 infrared light sensors on various parts of the body. As a person moves, 540 cameras track the senses. The data is fed to a computer, and the virtual reality character comes to life on a seven-foot stereo screen. NORM BADLER, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: The display is what's called passive stereo. Basically, you just wear polarized sunglasses, and each eye gets a different image. So, these characters appear to be right in the space, full size, performing or interacting with you. And it's very effective. It's very different to interact with people that are six feet high than three inches high on the TV screen.

KELLAN: Researchers plan in the future to use the technology in video games and in training sessions, where the character will be programmed to react to your moves instead of just mimicking them.

Ann Kellan, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: Checking some NEXT news headlines for this Sunday. Firefighters in Montana are struggling to save buildings and homes in Glacier National Park threatened by a wildfire that has been burning for days. Today they started a defensive backfire to stop the fire spread. Officials told residents to be ready to evacuate. Most tourists have already left. Three major fires in and around the park have burned more than 44,000 acres.

In Arizona, one firefighter was killed and two others injured yesterday when their helicopter crashed on the fort Apache Indian Reservation. The chopper was taking expert firefighters from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to battle a new fire.

A Cancun, Mexico, aquatic park today has 22 new dolphins amid charges the animals were brought to Mexico illegally. Environmentalists say two other dolphins died and that some of the surviving animals appear to be in shock. Animal rights groups say the dolphins were taken from waters off the Solomon Islands without proper authorization and flown out of the country in small crates. Park officials say environmentalists are spreading misinformation and that no dolphins died. They say all the dolphins are in good spirits and will be trained to swim with tourists.

Do not adjust your TV set. This polar bear really is purple. The bear lives in a zoo in Medosa City, Argentina. Her fur turned violet from a treatment for a skin infection. Vets say there's nothing to be alarmed about. She'll be purple for only a few days. In the meantime, she's become a major attraction for schoolchildren and tourists.

Angelina Jolie is back this weekend in a new "Tomb Raider" flick, "Cradle of Life." the first Lara Croft movie was one of only a handful of video game inspired films that have made a box office success. And the sequel made an estimated $21.8 million in its opening weekend.

CNN technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg takes a look now at how some other video game based films fared at the box office.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Blockbuster movies like "Star Wars," "Lord of the Rings," and "Spider- Man" have consistently been the catalyst for great video games. But video games rarely inspire successful movies. This weekend Lara Croft is back and trying to continue one of the few video game based success stories in Hollywood.

The first "Tomb Raider" film rode squarely on the coattails of the wildly popular Lara Croft game, the latest we have running behind me here, and the flick raked in more than $130 million at the box office.

But you might remember past fabulous game inspired flops like "Super Mario." One of the most successful game franchises in history -- here's the original -- not so as a movie. The film made back less than half its $48 million production budget.

And who could forget gems like "Street Fighter" and "Double Dragon," the latter barely managing to scrounge up $2.3 million at the box office. And the animated "Final Fantasy," which made $30 million in ticket sales but cost $130 million to make. The inaugural "Mortal Kombat" could arguably be considered the first game based success with a now modest $70 million domestic take. But "Annihilation," its successor, made less than half that much.

Leading ladies may be the answer to box office glory for game based flicks. Both "Tomb Raider" and "Resident Evil" have seen profits that kept pace with game sales. Both the game and the movies have ways to keep your attention. The games may have the graphics.

Films have Angelina Jolie and Mila Jovovich. Paramount Pictures is no doubt hoping Angelina can keep the "Cradle Of Life" going, at least for the rest of the summer.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: And that's all the time we have for now. Before we go, here's a peek at what's coming up next weekend. Tens of thousands of people make friends and play nice in the Sins online videogame. But some are in it just to make other players' lives, or at least the lives of their characters, miserable. We'll tell you about Griefers next weekend. Hope you can join us.

Coming up next, "CNN LIVE SUNDAY" with Sophia Choi. Harris Whitbeck will have today's developments in the hunt for Saddam Hussein. That's followed by "PEOPLE IN THE NEWS" at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, profiling Laci and Scott Peterson and John Walsh. And at 8:00 p.m., CNN presents "SCHEDULED TO DIE."

I'm Andrea Koppel. CNN continues right after a quick break.

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Less Dangerous Since the Korean Conflict?; Electronic Voting Found Not to be Foolproof; Dolphinquest Tracks and Studies Bottlenose Dolphins; Breakdown in Communications Reason for Columbia Disaster; Tips on Saving Home Energy Costs; "Tomb Raider" Makes Successful Leap From Video to Screen>