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Iraqis Will See First Cell Phone Network In Their Country; Pakistan Tests Nuclear Capable Missile Able to Reach New Dehli; New Goverment Test Begins To Ensure Safety Of SUVs

Aired October 11, 2003 - 15:00 ET

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

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

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CENTER: Hi, everybody, welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm Daniel Sieberg.
Before the war, they had only LAN-line telephones. After the war they didn't have much telephone service at all. By the end of this month, Iraqis could be using cell phones. Phones will sell for about $50 and calls will cost 8 cents to 10 cents per minute. Michael Holmes reports on Iraq's first-ever cell phone network.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In a country can precarious or nonexistent communications, people have been anxiously awaiting the announcement. Which companies bill build Iraq's first cellular phone network?

All but hidden by media microphones, Iraq's communications minister made the announcement. Three consortiums will cover the country -- north, central and south. Once they have covered that region, they can go national.

HAIDER AL ABADI, IRAQI COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER: The race is on, which of these three companies will be able to launch the first service to the public?

HOLMES: Plenty of security today, being a minister in Iraq has become a risky job. As Dr. Abadi said cell phones would enhance security, despite fears from some in the U.S. military it would do the opposite by giving insurgents the tools better to coordinate attacks.

And 35 companies made more than 100 bids for the three licenses. Few European or U.S. companies doing so, however. That's because these are two-year licenses. And say the experts, that's simply not long enough for big multi-nationals to take the risk on their investment.

There have been speculation that U.S. companies would be favored in the bid process. But in the end, the winning companies are regional. With up to 50 percent Iraqi ownership. Also significant, the type of system to be used; GSM, widely used Europe and in the Middle East, but less so in the United States.

Under Saddam Hussein, there was no cellular network in Iraq. After the war, much of Iraq's land-based network was damaged or simply dilapidated. Now, if you are not an aid worker or a soldier, expensive satellite phones are still the only way to communicate with the outside world. Phone stores sprouting up around Baghdad for just that purpose.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello!

HOLMES: Those using those stores say they hope the minister is right when he says the first cell phones will be working by end of the month.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We look forward to this. It is a presentable and democratic thing. And God willing things will settle down and communications will be easier.

HOLMES: These are seen as among the most lucrative post-war contracts awarded. With 10's of millions of investment dollars headed Iraq's way. Millions of Iraqis simply happy they'll be able to call a friend when they want.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: In Pakistan, authorities on Wednesday tested a missile that's able to carry nuclear weapons. Authorities say the medium- range rocket is capable of hitting New Delhi and most other targets neighboring India. The test took place less than a week after the test of a short-range missile also capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

Tensions are high between Pakistan and India. But Pakistan says it notified India about the tests and says the testing won't affect relations between the two countries.

The United Nations released its annual State of the Population Report this week. It's an eye opener for the world's young people. CNN's Skip Loescher explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SKIP LOESCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS threaten 20 percent of adolescents worldwide, according to the United Nations report.

REP. CAROLINE MALONEY (D), NEW YORK: If this report is not a wakeup call to the crisis situation of our young people, I don't know what is.

LOESCHER: Half of youth age 10 to 19 are poor. And 25 percent live in what the U.N. determined what is extreme poverty. Living on less than $1 a day.

STAN BERNSTEIN, U.N. POPULAITON FUND: We know that there are 100 to 250 million street children.

LOESCHER: The report shows about 14 million teenage women married and unmarried give birth each year, often when they're still physically immature. Many, the report says, get unsafe abortions. Millions of others contract life-threatening diseases like HIV/AIDS.

BERNSTEIN: Half of all new cases occur to those between the ages of 15 and 24; over 60 percent of them to young women.

LOESCHER (on camera): The U.N. is urging member nations to increase funding for reproductive health and family planning programs while helping young people get the education and training they need to get out and stay out of poverty.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: In Moscow, when a car flashes blue lights and blares a siren, it's not necessarily an emergency vehicle. In fact, odds are it's not. CNN's Jill Dougherty reports on a phenomenon that lets drivers steer clear of traffic laws.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF (voice over): Fasten your seatbelt.

Moscow today looks like any big city. Traffic jams, speeding, accidents, but here is what makes Moscow traffic unique.

(SIRENS)

Blue lights, what Russians call, nigalgi (ph)..

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, I'm not even going to talk about it.

DOUGHERTY: With the special blue light on your roof, can you break almost any traffic law you want. Like driving against traffic in the wrong lane.

Oops! Who are these guys?

Blue lights used to be used just for emergency and government cars. In the 1980s police say there were just 124 of them. Now, there are at least 3,500. And they're owned by classes of people who didn't even exist in the Soviet Union.

Almost any one in Moscow will tell you, with money and the right connections, bankers, businessmen, almost any fat cat can get blue lights.

"You can buy a blue light," this driver tells me. No one seems to check if they're legal. And most cars with them are luxury imports.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They think they're really cool. They never give anyone a break.

DOUGHERTY: Muscovites are getting fed up with the driving habits of nouveau riche.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): When they get behind the wheel of an expensive car, they think they're better than anybody else.

DOUGHERTY: There's light at the end of the tunnel. If the Russian parliament passes a proposed law limiting the use of blue lights. For Moscow's harried drivers, it couldn't happen too soon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Speaking of driving later in the program, we'll tell you about new rollover tests that the U.S. government is conducting on sport utility vehicles.

Also ahead, are whales being killed by military tests?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do car seats protect infants' heads as well as they should? New research from the University of Pennsylvania finds infants' brains are more vulnerable to injuries than adult brains. Safety infant gear may not protect enough. Bioengineer Susan Margulies dropped a specially designed test dummy from various heights. And observed the impact on the skull and brain.

The impacts were similar to an infant falling out of a crib or off a changing table or from a high bunk bed. The infants' brains suffered more damage than adult brains would, she says. An infant's neck is more flexible, causing a rebound effect that rattles the brain.

SUSAN MARGULIES, UNIV. OF PENNSYLVANIA: On a hard surface, the head rebounds rapidly, producing a whipping motion of the head that actually causes the brain, within the skull, to slosh. And that distortion can produce brain injuries.

KELLAN: Margulies adds, infants' skulls aren't as hard as an adult. Again, making the infant's brain more vulnerable in a fall. Anne Kellan, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Imagine being subjected to sounds so unpleasant that you do just about anything to get away. Well, new research suggests that may be what happens when marine mammals are exposed to underwater sonar tests. And efforts to escape may be leading to the animals' deaths. Natalie Pawelski has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The same day the U.S. Navy tested sonar off the Washington coast earlier this year, eight harbor porpoises washed up dead. Just like dozens of whales and dolphin is a round the world, who have died after being exposed to military sonar.

But is it coincidence or cause and effect? Scientists writing in the journal "Nature", say they may have found a link. They performed necropsies on whales who died after military exercising in the Canary Islands. They found tissues damage caused by gas bubbles consistent with rapid depression. In human terms it seems, the whales, got the "bends".

In the same way that gases dissolved soda can explode into bubbles when the pressure is suddenly released, gases that is build up in a diver's body, under the pressure of water, can suddenly form dangerous bubbles if he surfaces too quickly.

That's what could be happening to dolphins and whales researchers say. Sonar might prompt them to shoot to the surface, making them vulnerable to the bends. An ailment normally found in people, perhaps caused by people, too.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Scientists exploring the depths of the Atlantic last month ran into a creature they never expected to find there. John Zarrella has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Late September off the New England coast, the weather was ideal for a night dive.

Marine scientists from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution were conducting deep-sea explorations to study jellyfish that have been causing problems for fishermen.

The submersible and its four-man crew descended to 3,000 feet below the surface. As they approached the bottom, the crew experienced an encounter of the most unexpected kind.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A shark of some kind. It's really big, ugly shark.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're right at 3,000 feet. We have a shark down here, that's good 12, 15 feet long. Right out in front of us.

ZARRELLA: What the submersible crew had come face to face with was a 15-foot Greenland shark, a very rare sighting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh my god! Look at this! Don't come through here

ZARRELLA: The Greenland shark primarily lives deep beneath the surface in the Arctic region. This one appeared as interested in the humans as they were in it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look at that tail. That's a weird tail.

ZARRELLA: To the marine scientists, the Greenland came across as a gentle, slow-moving beast. Hardly the stereotype of type of most sharks. After it finished investigating the submersible that had so rudely invaded its space, the shark turned and swam away into the darkness. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: The polar bear is another fierce creature that's won our respect and our fear. CNN's Gary Strieker traveled up north to Hudson's Bay to take look at a new threat to these big bears.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): On the western shore of Canada's Hudson Bay, researchers immobilize polar bears with drugs. With every bear, they take measurements and samples. The objective, to monitor how global warming is taking a physical toll on polar bears.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another fat sample that we're taking gets used in diet analysis. The condition of both adult males and adult females has been declining over the past 20 years.

STRIEKER: There is a high concentration of bears here, a good place to see how climate change is affecting them.

STRIEKER (on camera): Polar bears spend most of their lives on the sea ice, hunting for seals. In the summer when the ice melts on Hudson Bay, the bears are stranded on land, waiting and fasting for months until the sea freezes again in the fall.

But scientists say arctic sea ice has been shrinking by 3 percent each decade since the 1970s.

LYNN ROSENSTRATER, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND: As air temperatures have increased, sea ice has decreased. It's actually melting earlier in the spring.

STRIEKER: That means bears have less time on the sea ice, less time to hunt and build up their fat reserves.

ROSENTRATER: So the polar bears are coming ashore lighter. It's affecting the ability to reproduce can you be litters.

STRIEKER: At the top of the food chain, here, polar bears are a key indicator of what is happening to the arctic ecosystem, a region that can change dramatically with small increases in temperature.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are bears that have adapted to sea ice. That's the way they make their living. They hunt on it, travel on it, mate on it. They require the sea ice. And in the long term if there's no sea ice, there won't be polar bears.

STIEKER: Experts now say if the trend continues, within 100 years by the end of each summer, there will be no ice at all in the Arctic Ocean.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: An ancient mummified leg fragment found in Siberia has scientists mystified. They think the leg section is several thousand years old. It doesn't seem to come from any known animal and is more like a human leg than anything else.

But the structure of the toe is definitely not human. Suggesting that it's from some previously unknown creature. The leg is covered with red hair and the knee joint suggests the animal walked on two legs. It was found by mountain climbers at an altitude of almost 10,000 feet.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up on NEXT@CNN a planetarium show, Moby style.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guiding principle was to make something really cool.

We'll check out a star show with a new vision.

And later, the ferocious interests people have in keeping wild animals as pets.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Now the latest on NASA's return to flight in the wake of the Columbia accident. Investigators say NASA was unable to pinpoint where foam struck the underside of the space shuttle because of inadequate camera coverage during launch.

Before the next launch, now scheduled for no earlier than September 2004, NASA will nearly double its imaging capabilities. Part of the upgrades, HDTV. The new cameras will provide twice the detail for engineers to analyze in the hours after launch.

Engineers will still rely on film cameras for greater detail. But they will digitize the film in a new $3 million computer lab to aid their analysis.

The local planetarium has always been a place for earthbound enthusiasts to experience some of the wonders of space. Now, one planetarium is offering a show that's more about the wonders of being spaced out. Jeanne Moos reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It's a new kind of entertainment and if it comes across as a little alien, it's supposed to. This is the Hayden Planetarium.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The visual is really stimulating.

MOOS (on camera): Boy, you OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And titillating.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It sort of swept you into a different world.

MOOS (voice over): It used to be sitting in the dark looking at a planetarium dome meant you'd see stars. But at this launch, the star was Moby. MOBY: The guiding principle was to make something really cool.

MOOS: Moby mixed the music from groups like Audio Slave and Prodigy. Creative director Chris Harvey has a name for it.

CHRIS HARVEY, CREATIVE DIRECTOR: I call it a dream dome.

MOOS: Sonic Vision is its official title. The idea is to entice a younger crowd into the planetarium for Friday and Saturday night showings.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I like the parts that were like a ride, parts that moved me. Even though I was, you know, sober.

MOOS: Computer graphics project order a gigantic dome make for a 3-D experience that you can't fully appreciate on TV. Everybody had a favorite part.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The eyes.

MOOS (on camera): Oh, all the eyes, yeah.

I've never done acid. But it seems like this is what an acid trip would be like.

MOBY: I don't know. I don't have much experience with psychedelic drugs. But friends of mine who tried the drug DMT, I think this is a lot closer to what a DMT experience is supposed to be like.

MOOS: I don't know what DMT stands for.

MOBY: DMT comes from the rain forest. It is an intense hallucinogenic drug.

MOOS (voice over): And like a bad trip on drugs, prepare to crash at the end of this one.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: We're at the end of our first half hour. But don't go away. There is a lot more to come after a commercial break and a check of the latest headlines from the CNN newsroom.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, should tigers be kept as pets?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think people have any idea what they're getting into.

ANNOUNCER: We'll take to you a retirement home for abandoned exotic cats. And later, a story that gives new meaning to the term "dirty money", that and more when NEXT@CNN returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

Mary Snow Julie Vallese Kristie Lu Stout Ann Kellan Andrew brown.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNICAL CORRESPONDENT: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. No doubt you've heard about the tiger found living in a Harlem apartment, well it seems that pet tigers are not as unusual as you might think, in fact, there's a huge market for all sorts of exotic animals.

We have two reports. CNN environment correspondent, Natalie Pawelski, will have more on exotic pets, but first Ed Lavandera reports from a haven for tigers in Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This sanctuary, north of Fort Worth, Texas, is where tigers come to grow old.

RICHARD GILBRETH, DIRECTOR INTERNATIONAL EXOTIC FELINE SANCTUARY: All of the sanctuaries in the United States right now, are full of unwanted and abused and abandoned exotic pets, and they're still breeding them and people are still buying them.

LAVANDERO: Richard Gilbreth is the director of this sanctuary. He cars for than two dozen tigers, here, and says he often get five calls a week from people looking to get rid of the tiger the just bought as a pet.

GILBRETH: Lots and lots of people are buying these as ego trips and to show everybody -- you know, look I've got a tiger.

LAVANDERO (on camera): The best estimates show that some 15,000 people in the U.S. have tigers as pets. Less than 20 states in this country have banned the practice all together. Tigers can be bought for less than $1,000, and they show up in unusual places. This tiger was found in Antoine Yates' Harlem apartment.

ANTOINE YATES, TIGER OWNER: I realized that this is my calling in life -- you know what I'm saying? I'm trying to create a garden of eon (SIC), something that this world lacks.

GILBRETH: I don't think people have any idea what they're getting into. When a private individual is buying these animals, they're buying potentially a loaded gun with a hammer cocked.

LAVANDERO (voice-over): While humans seem excited by the idea of having pet tigers, the tigers really don't appear to be that interested.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT: It's not just tigers, it's lions, hippos, alligators, pythons, all kinds of wild animals living in houses and backyards. You can take the animal out of the wild. But can you take the wild out of the animal?

WAYNE PACELLE, HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE U.S.: Wild animals, even if you attend to their needs as best you can, are not going to be very happy, they're not going to be satisfied, and it's often going to be, especially with the larger animals, a dangerous situation for people.

PAWELSKI: Aside from attacks, which can happen with traditional pets too, exotic pets can carry hidden dangers. Most reptiles, for example, seem harmless enough, but the Centers for Disease Control says each year they are responsible for 90,000 cases of salmonella in people.

The pet trade also brought monkey pox to the Western hemisphere, this year, via pet prairie dogs. They caught it from Gambian giant pouched rats imported from Africa for the pet trade.

PACELLE: All for what? So we can be amused by the latest fad pet?

PAWELSKI: The rules of what animals can be kept as pets vary from state to state and town to town. Some argue it's better to stick to domesticated animals -- dogs and cats, bred for generations to live with people and readily available for free in shelters across the country. But, fans of exotic pets say as long as people take good care of their animals, it's nobody else's business what other species might share a human home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, new competitions in the animated movie biz. A partnership involving "Big Blue" may herald the next big thing in computer animated flicks.

Also ahead, Napster is back, no longer illegal, but no longer free, either. How will it stack up against its competition?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Science Nobel prizes is awarded this week, honored achievements ranging from medical imaging to super conductivity. The prize in medicine was split between two scientists who helped make Magnet Resonance Imaging, or MRIs, an important tool for doctors. Paul Lauterbur from the University of Illinois made the discovery 30 years ago. A new way to create images using radio waves.

Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham, England, refined the process into a usable technique.

The prize in physics was shared by three researchers who investigated what happens when matter is chilled to almost absolute zero. Vitaly Ginzburg of the Lebedev Physical Institute in and Alexei Abrikosov or Argon National Lab in Illinois made the discoveries in superconductivity, the ability of some materials to conduct electricity without resistance. Superconductivity is used in MRI scanners and can someday lead to much faster trains that is float above the tracks, and more efficient electric transmission. Anthony Leggett of the University of Illinois explained superfluidity. It's a strange behavior shown by very cold liquid helium.

The prize in chemistry went to two Americans for their studies of the tiny channels in cell walls that let water pass in and out. Roderick MacKinnon of Howard Hughes Medical Institute at New York's Rockefeller University shares the prize with Peter Agre of Johns Hopkins University.

The folks who started the Napster music-sharing site may never win a Nobel, but they did launch a revolution in the music industry. As you know, the original Napster was forced to shut down, but now it's back in a totally new and legal form and it's facing a lot of competition. More from Mary Snow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With a click and a credit card, you can now download music on Napster and not break the law. But this is not your father's Napster, this is Napster 2.0. It's legal and it'll cost you.

LUDACRIS, HIP HOP ARIST: Sound sounded pretty good.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sounds great.

LUDACRIS: Almost makes you want to download the whole album and pay for it yourself, huh?

SNOW: And, getting downloaders to pay for his music his is what Hip Hop artist. Ludacris is hoping for. The artist is helping re- launch Napster and trying crack down on internet piracy.

LUDACRIS: And it's a way for us to receive publishing money and being compensated for creative work, because we work hard as artists, man. We work very hard.

SNOW: And, using Ludachris as a pitchman is part of an overall effort to appear edgy and cool and capitalize on the maverick Napster name.

Hey, what's up?

SNOW: Original founder Shawn Fanning even helps tout the new site owned by Roxio. Follwing the lead of iTunes and Rhapsody, Roxio's CEO welcomes the competition.

CHRIS GOROG, CHAIRMAN/CEO, ROXIO: Well, that's right. I think there is somewhat of a gold rush into the online music business, right now, which in -- from our perspective, it is a great thing. It means there's really something substantial here.

SNOW: Napster is charging 99 cents to download a song, $9.95 for an album, for just under $10 a month you can listen to songs and radio stations, but no down loading. Rhapsody charges a monthly fee with a 79 cent charge for songs, iTunes and MusicMatch charge 99 cents a song with not monthly fee.

And, some industry watchers predict the online music business will grow to just over $3 billion in five years.

MARK MULLIGAN, JUPITER RESEARCH: The record labels realizing that the internet will be a truly important medium for them distributing contribute content. It's not about to replace the CD. The CD is going to remain the dominant form of our music for the foreseeable future.

SNOW: The key question, though, is -- will the people who continue to find ways to illegally download music for free now fork over the cash?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: As Napster contends with its competition, in the movie business the animation studio Pixar is also facing new competition. The studio that produced this summer's blockbuster "Finding Nemo" has spawned a flood of imitators. Jen Rogers looks at one new studio aiming to be the next generation Pixar.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEN ROGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A baboon doing a break flip, a stuntman perfecting his fight scene, an Olympic athlete dancing the tango. It's just your average day at Threshold Digital Research Labs, an upstart Hollywood studio.

While real people populate the halls, Threshold's movies will be strictly computer generated. The company's first feature in production is "FoodFight!"

LARRY KASANOFF, CHAIRMAN, THRESHOLD DIGITAL RESEARCH LABS: Food fight is the story of what happens in a supermarket at night when the people leave and the lights go out. This is the Chinese foods aisle in -- during the day when you know it. But, at light when the lights go out, in the movie "FoodFight!" it becomes Chinatown.

ROGERS: Threshold is the latest entrant in the animation gold rush following in the footsteps of the undisputed box office champ Pixar, whose movies have grossed more than $2 billion worldwide.

KASANOFF: We're huge fans of Pixar. I think they do an amazing job, but we have to think to ourselves -- well, how can we go out and try and do something different?

ROGERS: Threshold's answer, do it cheaper, with the backing of an unlikely Hollywood partner -- IBM.

KASANOFF: Because of the deal we have with IBM now, we make these movies at about half the cost of the competition. And frankly, that's just good business. ROGERS: The deal uses IBM technology to help speed up the animation process and make it more realtime. It's allowed the company to create a complex digital world, with over 100 characters, nearly 200 sets, and tens of thousands of extras.

GEORGE JOHNSEN, THRESHOLD DIGITAL LABS: We feel that where IBM is placing us at this point is about 18 months ahead of the rest of the world is.

ROGERS: It will be another 18 months until "FoodFight!" hits the big screen and threshold finds out if their deal with "Big Blue" translates into big bucks at the box office.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Ahead on Next@CNN: More and more people in China using remotes to control everything from lighting to air conditioning. Could wired walls join electricity and water as standard in home construction?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Nearly half of all new cars sold are sport utility vehicles. But, you've probably heard about the problems some of them may have with rolling over in sharp turns. CNN's Julie Vallese reports on new government tests designed to help you make safer decisions when is you go SUV shopping.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Will this vehicle rollover? Until now, the government has used mathematics and the laws of physics to make a best guest rating.

DR. JEFFREY RUNGE, NHTSA ADMINISTRATOR: The idea was to maintain the integrity of the star rating system so that we -- so that consumers could know what cars are likely to rollover at what rate in a single vehicle crash.

VALLESE: In its demonstration of the new dynamic on the road stability test, NHTSA used a 2000 Toyota Forerunner and 2003 Forerunner with improved vehicle stability control. The 2003 performed much better than its predecessor by keeping all tires on the road in every test. It was a series of rollovers involving the Ford Explorer and Firestone Tires that prompted congress, three years ago, to order the safety agency to develop the test.

(on camera): Carmakers are taking a wait-and-see approach, saying they want to assess whether these tests provide consumers with any useful information on the likelihood of a rollover.

(voice-over): But, some consumer watchdog groups are already voicing concern.

JOAN CLAYBROOK, PUBLIC CITIZEN: If you fail a test you can still sell the car. We think it's important they move forward from here, to issue a minimum safety standard, so that no vehicle could be made that does less well than the average.

VALLESE: Claybrook also says the dealers should be required to post the rollover ratings on the car's sticker instead of just a website. NHTSA hopes to test about 80 percent of the upcoming model year and make the findings public in early 2004.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: A Hong Kong court has ruled that the city can go ahead with plans to fill in part of its harbor to make room for more roads. Environmentalists have challenged the plan saying that a series of so- called reclamation projects is turning the famous harbor into something that looks more like a river. The judge said on Tuesday that the Harbor Protection Society hadn't proved the project was harmful. But, he said if the higher courts rule differently, the reclamation work will have to be reversed. City officials say for now, all they're doing is dredging. The environmentalists promise more legal action.

Hong Kong has been a center of western style technology and luxury for a long time. But, Mainland China is taking great leaps forward and catching up. Kristie Lu Stout reports on some high-tech homes in Shanghai.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet the Jong family. Expert couch potatoes that don't need to get up for anything. And it's not just the chandelier; the entire flat is wired up so everything is virtually at their fingertips.

(on camera): Luxury villas and apartments are sprouting up here, every day and with them, a rising middleclass that will spare no expense to furnish their castles in the sky.

(voice-over): The Jong's spent about $1,000 to wire their high- rise home. On the other side of town, Cheng Pin is considering a $2,000 version to control the lights and central heating.

CHENG PIN, PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMER (through translator): If I had this type of system and thought today's temperature is very cold, I can then use it and come home assured that my treasured fish were looked after.

STOUT: Behind all the magic is this Hong Kong entrepreneur, David Tsui.

DAVID TSUI, CYPRESS SYSTEMS: People are excited to try new things, that's why -- you know, I think, I'm helping people to use the technology -- you know, to apply to their daily life.

STOUT: Selling to both homeowners and developers, Tsui is riding the wave of a major property boom. Official statistics say in the past three years, individuals and companies have taken out mortgages on residential real estate, worth more than a trillion dollars. Like water and electricity, wired walls could become a new utility in a new China.

TSUI: In maybe two or three years, it will become a standard, here.

STOUT: So, a typical middleclass home in the heart of Shanghai can come to life before the owner returns from work -- air Con on, coffee pot percolating, all controlled by a web interface, or mobile phone call. A network nirvana that's winning its share of converts.

YU SHEN ZHANG, WIRED HOME RESIDENT (through translator): Even though the system is relatively new in Shanghai, my friends who come over and see it say it's something they must install in their next home. They're not afraid of spending the money.

STOUT: And, turn into to a true maestro of the remote control.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still ahead: What's in your wallet, could be bacteria.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What do you find sexy? Long or short hair?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Short.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I like long.

KELLAN: Do you prefer blondes or brunettes?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Brunette, or red head.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably jet black.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blondes.

KELLAN: Blondes may have more fun, but men, so it seems, prefer brunettes. According to an informal study conducted by a grad student at Florida State University, Panama City, only a small percent of men surveyed prefer blondes. Both sexes overwhelmingly like darker hair on their partners.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think I like blondes for a moment and brunettes for a lifetime.

KELLAN: As far as sex appeal does length of the hair make a difference? Men in the study were asked to rate women based on these pictures. Three of the pictures were actually the same woman with different hair lengths. They rated the long-haired version most attractive. While this study does not reflect a cross-section of society, it did raise questions researchers hope to study. Could it be that long hair throughout history has been a sign of women's fertility? Or is long hair just a fad of the time? Keri Russell's "Felicity" lost fans when she chopped her locks. And Julia Roberts' "Tinkerbelle" didn't ring up sales at the box office.

Ladies, before you grow out your hair or reach for the dye, you may want to remember, this study only included 126 people in a specific geographic area. And, let's face it, attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of the time when I had long hair, I was cute, you know, nobody wanted to date me and I cut off my hair (UNINTELLIGIBLE), "boom" there is my boyfriend.

KELLAN: Ann Kellan, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: You've probably never thought about laundering your money, after all that's for drug dealers or crooked politicians. But, our next report may change your mind. Here's Andrew brown.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREW BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you spot something you want to buy, out on the street or in a store, when you pay for that something what are the chances you're handing over dirty money? Most consumers don't know their wallets and purses may be teaming with bacteria. Recently, CNN collected a small number of paper notes from seven Asian economies, and asked Desmond O'Toole, a bacteriologist at Hong Kong City University, to test them for germs. The first thing he noticed was the wear and tear they've suffered.

DESMOND O'TOOLE, HONG KONG CITY UNIVERSITY: You get nooks and crannies on the note where things like fecal contamination can lodge.

BROWN: Tests results on older notes from Hong King, China, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, and the Philippines showed thousands of bacteria. O'Toole said without more lab work, it's hard to say how much of a risk these bacteria pose to humans. But, of course older notes with a higher count are more likely to cause infections. For instance, this Chinese money with 178,000 bacteria on it, had 9,500 organisms from the E. coli family.

O'TOOLE: When these organisms get inside you, they can cause chronic disease, and they can cause infections of the gut, which are very, very unpleasant.

BROWN: The newer notes O'Toole tested were less contaminated. If you are off to the secretive communist state of North Korea anytime soon, you will be happy to hear O'Toole found almost no bacteria on this pristine North Korean won, and a crisp note we withdrew from a Hong Kong ATM had a fairly low bacteria count. Some Asian banks of made hygiene a priority. In Japan, UFJ Bank heats up its notes before dispensing them which the bank says helps kill bacteria. That may be a good thing.

O'TOOLE: Handling money is like shaking hands with somebody.

BROWN: Although O'Toole was testing just a handful of notes, his results do reinforce other studies. U.S. Researcher who looked at 68 bills collected in the Dayton area found more than 90 percent of dollar bills had colonies of bacteria. Scientists say consumers everywhere need to take precautions, improving personal hygiene, and...

O'TOOLE: I suppose they could wash their money.

BROWN (on camera): Oh, well, this is definitely one way to clean out your bank account.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well, it kind of makes you look forward to that cashless society we keep hearing about. And those newer, cleaner $20 bills.

That's all the time we have for now. Here is what's coming up next week.

Friday, is the 30th anniversary of OPEC's decision to cut back drastically on the world's oil supply and raise prices bringing long lines at the gas station and some new ideas about conservation. Could it happen again? And, have we cut down on our gas guzzling habits? That's coming up on NEXT.

Until then, let us hear from you. You can e-mail us at NEXT@CNN.com. And, for more information on the stories in this program, check out our website, at cnn.com/next.

Thanks so much for joining us this week. For all of us on the CNN SciTech beat, I'm Daniel Sieberg.

See you Next time.

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Pakistan Tests Nuclear Capable Missile Able to Reach New Dehli; New Goverment Test Begins To Ensure Safety Of SUVs>

Aired October 11, 2003 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN CENTER: Hi, everybody, welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm Daniel Sieberg.
Before the war, they had only LAN-line telephones. After the war they didn't have much telephone service at all. By the end of this month, Iraqis could be using cell phones. Phones will sell for about $50 and calls will cost 8 cents to 10 cents per minute. Michael Holmes reports on Iraq's first-ever cell phone network.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In a country can precarious or nonexistent communications, people have been anxiously awaiting the announcement. Which companies bill build Iraq's first cellular phone network?

All but hidden by media microphones, Iraq's communications minister made the announcement. Three consortiums will cover the country -- north, central and south. Once they have covered that region, they can go national.

HAIDER AL ABADI, IRAQI COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER: The race is on, which of these three companies will be able to launch the first service to the public?

HOLMES: Plenty of security today, being a minister in Iraq has become a risky job. As Dr. Abadi said cell phones would enhance security, despite fears from some in the U.S. military it would do the opposite by giving insurgents the tools better to coordinate attacks.

And 35 companies made more than 100 bids for the three licenses. Few European or U.S. companies doing so, however. That's because these are two-year licenses. And say the experts, that's simply not long enough for big multi-nationals to take the risk on their investment.

There have been speculation that U.S. companies would be favored in the bid process. But in the end, the winning companies are regional. With up to 50 percent Iraqi ownership. Also significant, the type of system to be used; GSM, widely used Europe and in the Middle East, but less so in the United States.

Under Saddam Hussein, there was no cellular network in Iraq. After the war, much of Iraq's land-based network was damaged or simply dilapidated. Now, if you are not an aid worker or a soldier, expensive satellite phones are still the only way to communicate with the outside world. Phone stores sprouting up around Baghdad for just that purpose.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello!

HOLMES: Those using those stores say they hope the minister is right when he says the first cell phones will be working by end of the month.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We look forward to this. It is a presentable and democratic thing. And God willing things will settle down and communications will be easier.

HOLMES: These are seen as among the most lucrative post-war contracts awarded. With 10's of millions of investment dollars headed Iraq's way. Millions of Iraqis simply happy they'll be able to call a friend when they want.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: In Pakistan, authorities on Wednesday tested a missile that's able to carry nuclear weapons. Authorities say the medium- range rocket is capable of hitting New Delhi and most other targets neighboring India. The test took place less than a week after the test of a short-range missile also capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

Tensions are high between Pakistan and India. But Pakistan says it notified India about the tests and says the testing won't affect relations between the two countries.

The United Nations released its annual State of the Population Report this week. It's an eye opener for the world's young people. CNN's Skip Loescher explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SKIP LOESCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS threaten 20 percent of adolescents worldwide, according to the United Nations report.

REP. CAROLINE MALONEY (D), NEW YORK: If this report is not a wakeup call to the crisis situation of our young people, I don't know what is.

LOESCHER: Half of youth age 10 to 19 are poor. And 25 percent live in what the U.N. determined what is extreme poverty. Living on less than $1 a day.

STAN BERNSTEIN, U.N. POPULAITON FUND: We know that there are 100 to 250 million street children.

LOESCHER: The report shows about 14 million teenage women married and unmarried give birth each year, often when they're still physically immature. Many, the report says, get unsafe abortions. Millions of others contract life-threatening diseases like HIV/AIDS.

BERNSTEIN: Half of all new cases occur to those between the ages of 15 and 24; over 60 percent of them to young women.

LOESCHER (on camera): The U.N. is urging member nations to increase funding for reproductive health and family planning programs while helping young people get the education and training they need to get out and stay out of poverty.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: In Moscow, when a car flashes blue lights and blares a siren, it's not necessarily an emergency vehicle. In fact, odds are it's not. CNN's Jill Dougherty reports on a phenomenon that lets drivers steer clear of traffic laws.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF (voice over): Fasten your seatbelt.

Moscow today looks like any big city. Traffic jams, speeding, accidents, but here is what makes Moscow traffic unique.

(SIRENS)

Blue lights, what Russians call, nigalgi (ph)..

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, I'm not even going to talk about it.

DOUGHERTY: With the special blue light on your roof, can you break almost any traffic law you want. Like driving against traffic in the wrong lane.

Oops! Who are these guys?

Blue lights used to be used just for emergency and government cars. In the 1980s police say there were just 124 of them. Now, there are at least 3,500. And they're owned by classes of people who didn't even exist in the Soviet Union.

Almost any one in Moscow will tell you, with money and the right connections, bankers, businessmen, almost any fat cat can get blue lights.

"You can buy a blue light," this driver tells me. No one seems to check if they're legal. And most cars with them are luxury imports.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They think they're really cool. They never give anyone a break.

DOUGHERTY: Muscovites are getting fed up with the driving habits of nouveau riche.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): When they get behind the wheel of an expensive car, they think they're better than anybody else.

DOUGHERTY: There's light at the end of the tunnel. If the Russian parliament passes a proposed law limiting the use of blue lights. For Moscow's harried drivers, it couldn't happen too soon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Speaking of driving later in the program, we'll tell you about new rollover tests that the U.S. government is conducting on sport utility vehicles.

Also ahead, are whales being killed by military tests?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do car seats protect infants' heads as well as they should? New research from the University of Pennsylvania finds infants' brains are more vulnerable to injuries than adult brains. Safety infant gear may not protect enough. Bioengineer Susan Margulies dropped a specially designed test dummy from various heights. And observed the impact on the skull and brain.

The impacts were similar to an infant falling out of a crib or off a changing table or from a high bunk bed. The infants' brains suffered more damage than adult brains would, she says. An infant's neck is more flexible, causing a rebound effect that rattles the brain.

SUSAN MARGULIES, UNIV. OF PENNSYLVANIA: On a hard surface, the head rebounds rapidly, producing a whipping motion of the head that actually causes the brain, within the skull, to slosh. And that distortion can produce brain injuries.

KELLAN: Margulies adds, infants' skulls aren't as hard as an adult. Again, making the infant's brain more vulnerable in a fall. Anne Kellan, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Imagine being subjected to sounds so unpleasant that you do just about anything to get away. Well, new research suggests that may be what happens when marine mammals are exposed to underwater sonar tests. And efforts to escape may be leading to the animals' deaths. Natalie Pawelski has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The same day the U.S. Navy tested sonar off the Washington coast earlier this year, eight harbor porpoises washed up dead. Just like dozens of whales and dolphin is a round the world, who have died after being exposed to military sonar.

But is it coincidence or cause and effect? Scientists writing in the journal "Nature", say they may have found a link. They performed necropsies on whales who died after military exercising in the Canary Islands. They found tissues damage caused by gas bubbles consistent with rapid depression. In human terms it seems, the whales, got the "bends".

In the same way that gases dissolved soda can explode into bubbles when the pressure is suddenly released, gases that is build up in a diver's body, under the pressure of water, can suddenly form dangerous bubbles if he surfaces too quickly.

That's what could be happening to dolphins and whales researchers say. Sonar might prompt them to shoot to the surface, making them vulnerable to the bends. An ailment normally found in people, perhaps caused by people, too.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Scientists exploring the depths of the Atlantic last month ran into a creature they never expected to find there. John Zarrella has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Late September off the New England coast, the weather was ideal for a night dive.

Marine scientists from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution were conducting deep-sea explorations to study jellyfish that have been causing problems for fishermen.

The submersible and its four-man crew descended to 3,000 feet below the surface. As they approached the bottom, the crew experienced an encounter of the most unexpected kind.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A shark of some kind. It's really big, ugly shark.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're right at 3,000 feet. We have a shark down here, that's good 12, 15 feet long. Right out in front of us.

ZARRELLA: What the submersible crew had come face to face with was a 15-foot Greenland shark, a very rare sighting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh my god! Look at this! Don't come through here

ZARRELLA: The Greenland shark primarily lives deep beneath the surface in the Arctic region. This one appeared as interested in the humans as they were in it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look at that tail. That's a weird tail.

ZARRELLA: To the marine scientists, the Greenland came across as a gentle, slow-moving beast. Hardly the stereotype of type of most sharks. After it finished investigating the submersible that had so rudely invaded its space, the shark turned and swam away into the darkness. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: The polar bear is another fierce creature that's won our respect and our fear. CNN's Gary Strieker traveled up north to Hudson's Bay to take look at a new threat to these big bears.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): On the western shore of Canada's Hudson Bay, researchers immobilize polar bears with drugs. With every bear, they take measurements and samples. The objective, to monitor how global warming is taking a physical toll on polar bears.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another fat sample that we're taking gets used in diet analysis. The condition of both adult males and adult females has been declining over the past 20 years.

STRIEKER: There is a high concentration of bears here, a good place to see how climate change is affecting them.

STRIEKER (on camera): Polar bears spend most of their lives on the sea ice, hunting for seals. In the summer when the ice melts on Hudson Bay, the bears are stranded on land, waiting and fasting for months until the sea freezes again in the fall.

But scientists say arctic sea ice has been shrinking by 3 percent each decade since the 1970s.

LYNN ROSENSTRATER, WORLD WILDLIFE FUND: As air temperatures have increased, sea ice has decreased. It's actually melting earlier in the spring.

STRIEKER: That means bears have less time on the sea ice, less time to hunt and build up their fat reserves.

ROSENTRATER: So the polar bears are coming ashore lighter. It's affecting the ability to reproduce can you be litters.

STRIEKER: At the top of the food chain, here, polar bears are a key indicator of what is happening to the arctic ecosystem, a region that can change dramatically with small increases in temperature.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are bears that have adapted to sea ice. That's the way they make their living. They hunt on it, travel on it, mate on it. They require the sea ice. And in the long term if there's no sea ice, there won't be polar bears.

STIEKER: Experts now say if the trend continues, within 100 years by the end of each summer, there will be no ice at all in the Arctic Ocean.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: An ancient mummified leg fragment found in Siberia has scientists mystified. They think the leg section is several thousand years old. It doesn't seem to come from any known animal and is more like a human leg than anything else.

But the structure of the toe is definitely not human. Suggesting that it's from some previously unknown creature. The leg is covered with red hair and the knee joint suggests the animal walked on two legs. It was found by mountain climbers at an altitude of almost 10,000 feet.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up on NEXT@CNN a planetarium show, Moby style.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guiding principle was to make something really cool.

We'll check out a star show with a new vision.

And later, the ferocious interests people have in keeping wild animals as pets.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Now the latest on NASA's return to flight in the wake of the Columbia accident. Investigators say NASA was unable to pinpoint where foam struck the underside of the space shuttle because of inadequate camera coverage during launch.

Before the next launch, now scheduled for no earlier than September 2004, NASA will nearly double its imaging capabilities. Part of the upgrades, HDTV. The new cameras will provide twice the detail for engineers to analyze in the hours after launch.

Engineers will still rely on film cameras for greater detail. But they will digitize the film in a new $3 million computer lab to aid their analysis.

The local planetarium has always been a place for earthbound enthusiasts to experience some of the wonders of space. Now, one planetarium is offering a show that's more about the wonders of being spaced out. Jeanne Moos reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It's a new kind of entertainment and if it comes across as a little alien, it's supposed to. This is the Hayden Planetarium.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The visual is really stimulating.

MOOS (on camera): Boy, you OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And titillating.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It sort of swept you into a different world.

MOOS (voice over): It used to be sitting in the dark looking at a planetarium dome meant you'd see stars. But at this launch, the star was Moby. MOBY: The guiding principle was to make something really cool.

MOOS: Moby mixed the music from groups like Audio Slave and Prodigy. Creative director Chris Harvey has a name for it.

CHRIS HARVEY, CREATIVE DIRECTOR: I call it a dream dome.

MOOS: Sonic Vision is its official title. The idea is to entice a younger crowd into the planetarium for Friday and Saturday night showings.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I like the parts that were like a ride, parts that moved me. Even though I was, you know, sober.

MOOS: Computer graphics project order a gigantic dome make for a 3-D experience that you can't fully appreciate on TV. Everybody had a favorite part.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The eyes.

MOOS (on camera): Oh, all the eyes, yeah.

I've never done acid. But it seems like this is what an acid trip would be like.

MOBY: I don't know. I don't have much experience with psychedelic drugs. But friends of mine who tried the drug DMT, I think this is a lot closer to what a DMT experience is supposed to be like.

MOOS: I don't know what DMT stands for.

MOBY: DMT comes from the rain forest. It is an intense hallucinogenic drug.

MOOS (voice over): And like a bad trip on drugs, prepare to crash at the end of this one.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: We're at the end of our first half hour. But don't go away. There is a lot more to come after a commercial break and a check of the latest headlines from the CNN newsroom.

ANNOUNCER: Coming up, should tigers be kept as pets?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think people have any idea what they're getting into.

ANNOUNCER: We'll take to you a retirement home for abandoned exotic cats. And later, a story that gives new meaning to the term "dirty money", that and more when NEXT@CNN returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

Mary Snow Julie Vallese Kristie Lu Stout Ann Kellan Andrew brown.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNICAL CORRESPONDENT: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. No doubt you've heard about the tiger found living in a Harlem apartment, well it seems that pet tigers are not as unusual as you might think, in fact, there's a huge market for all sorts of exotic animals.

We have two reports. CNN environment correspondent, Natalie Pawelski, will have more on exotic pets, but first Ed Lavandera reports from a haven for tigers in Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This sanctuary, north of Fort Worth, Texas, is where tigers come to grow old.

RICHARD GILBRETH, DIRECTOR INTERNATIONAL EXOTIC FELINE SANCTUARY: All of the sanctuaries in the United States right now, are full of unwanted and abused and abandoned exotic pets, and they're still breeding them and people are still buying them.

LAVANDERO: Richard Gilbreth is the director of this sanctuary. He cars for than two dozen tigers, here, and says he often get five calls a week from people looking to get rid of the tiger the just bought as a pet.

GILBRETH: Lots and lots of people are buying these as ego trips and to show everybody -- you know, look I've got a tiger.

LAVANDERO (on camera): The best estimates show that some 15,000 people in the U.S. have tigers as pets. Less than 20 states in this country have banned the practice all together. Tigers can be bought for less than $1,000, and they show up in unusual places. This tiger was found in Antoine Yates' Harlem apartment.

ANTOINE YATES, TIGER OWNER: I realized that this is my calling in life -- you know what I'm saying? I'm trying to create a garden of eon (SIC), something that this world lacks.

GILBRETH: I don't think people have any idea what they're getting into. When a private individual is buying these animals, they're buying potentially a loaded gun with a hammer cocked.

LAVANDERO (voice-over): While humans seem excited by the idea of having pet tigers, the tigers really don't appear to be that interested.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT: It's not just tigers, it's lions, hippos, alligators, pythons, all kinds of wild animals living in houses and backyards. You can take the animal out of the wild. But can you take the wild out of the animal?

WAYNE PACELLE, HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE U.S.: Wild animals, even if you attend to their needs as best you can, are not going to be very happy, they're not going to be satisfied, and it's often going to be, especially with the larger animals, a dangerous situation for people.

PAWELSKI: Aside from attacks, which can happen with traditional pets too, exotic pets can carry hidden dangers. Most reptiles, for example, seem harmless enough, but the Centers for Disease Control says each year they are responsible for 90,000 cases of salmonella in people.

The pet trade also brought monkey pox to the Western hemisphere, this year, via pet prairie dogs. They caught it from Gambian giant pouched rats imported from Africa for the pet trade.

PACELLE: All for what? So we can be amused by the latest fad pet?

PAWELSKI: The rules of what animals can be kept as pets vary from state to state and town to town. Some argue it's better to stick to domesticated animals -- dogs and cats, bred for generations to live with people and readily available for free in shelters across the country. But, fans of exotic pets say as long as people take good care of their animals, it's nobody else's business what other species might share a human home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Just ahead, new competitions in the animated movie biz. A partnership involving "Big Blue" may herald the next big thing in computer animated flicks.

Also ahead, Napster is back, no longer illegal, but no longer free, either. How will it stack up against its competition?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Science Nobel prizes is awarded this week, honored achievements ranging from medical imaging to super conductivity. The prize in medicine was split between two scientists who helped make Magnet Resonance Imaging, or MRIs, an important tool for doctors. Paul Lauterbur from the University of Illinois made the discovery 30 years ago. A new way to create images using radio waves.

Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham, England, refined the process into a usable technique.

The prize in physics was shared by three researchers who investigated what happens when matter is chilled to almost absolute zero. Vitaly Ginzburg of the Lebedev Physical Institute in and Alexei Abrikosov or Argon National Lab in Illinois made the discoveries in superconductivity, the ability of some materials to conduct electricity without resistance. Superconductivity is used in MRI scanners and can someday lead to much faster trains that is float above the tracks, and more efficient electric transmission. Anthony Leggett of the University of Illinois explained superfluidity. It's a strange behavior shown by very cold liquid helium.

The prize in chemistry went to two Americans for their studies of the tiny channels in cell walls that let water pass in and out. Roderick MacKinnon of Howard Hughes Medical Institute at New York's Rockefeller University shares the prize with Peter Agre of Johns Hopkins University.

The folks who started the Napster music-sharing site may never win a Nobel, but they did launch a revolution in the music industry. As you know, the original Napster was forced to shut down, but now it's back in a totally new and legal form and it's facing a lot of competition. More from Mary Snow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With a click and a credit card, you can now download music on Napster and not break the law. But this is not your father's Napster, this is Napster 2.0. It's legal and it'll cost you.

LUDACRIS, HIP HOP ARIST: Sound sounded pretty good.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sounds great.

LUDACRIS: Almost makes you want to download the whole album and pay for it yourself, huh?

SNOW: And, getting downloaders to pay for his music his is what Hip Hop artist. Ludacris is hoping for. The artist is helping re- launch Napster and trying crack down on internet piracy.

LUDACRIS: And it's a way for us to receive publishing money and being compensated for creative work, because we work hard as artists, man. We work very hard.

SNOW: And, using Ludachris as a pitchman is part of an overall effort to appear edgy and cool and capitalize on the maverick Napster name.

Hey, what's up?

SNOW: Original founder Shawn Fanning even helps tout the new site owned by Roxio. Follwing the lead of iTunes and Rhapsody, Roxio's CEO welcomes the competition.

CHRIS GOROG, CHAIRMAN/CEO, ROXIO: Well, that's right. I think there is somewhat of a gold rush into the online music business, right now, which in -- from our perspective, it is a great thing. It means there's really something substantial here.

SNOW: Napster is charging 99 cents to download a song, $9.95 for an album, for just under $10 a month you can listen to songs and radio stations, but no down loading. Rhapsody charges a monthly fee with a 79 cent charge for songs, iTunes and MusicMatch charge 99 cents a song with not monthly fee.

And, some industry watchers predict the online music business will grow to just over $3 billion in five years.

MARK MULLIGAN, JUPITER RESEARCH: The record labels realizing that the internet will be a truly important medium for them distributing contribute content. It's not about to replace the CD. The CD is going to remain the dominant form of our music for the foreseeable future.

SNOW: The key question, though, is -- will the people who continue to find ways to illegally download music for free now fork over the cash?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: As Napster contends with its competition, in the movie business the animation studio Pixar is also facing new competition. The studio that produced this summer's blockbuster "Finding Nemo" has spawned a flood of imitators. Jen Rogers looks at one new studio aiming to be the next generation Pixar.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEN ROGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A baboon doing a break flip, a stuntman perfecting his fight scene, an Olympic athlete dancing the tango. It's just your average day at Threshold Digital Research Labs, an upstart Hollywood studio.

While real people populate the halls, Threshold's movies will be strictly computer generated. The company's first feature in production is "FoodFight!"

LARRY KASANOFF, CHAIRMAN, THRESHOLD DIGITAL RESEARCH LABS: Food fight is the story of what happens in a supermarket at night when the people leave and the lights go out. This is the Chinese foods aisle in -- during the day when you know it. But, at light when the lights go out, in the movie "FoodFight!" it becomes Chinatown.

ROGERS: Threshold is the latest entrant in the animation gold rush following in the footsteps of the undisputed box office champ Pixar, whose movies have grossed more than $2 billion worldwide.

KASANOFF: We're huge fans of Pixar. I think they do an amazing job, but we have to think to ourselves -- well, how can we go out and try and do something different?

ROGERS: Threshold's answer, do it cheaper, with the backing of an unlikely Hollywood partner -- IBM.

KASANOFF: Because of the deal we have with IBM now, we make these movies at about half the cost of the competition. And frankly, that's just good business. ROGERS: The deal uses IBM technology to help speed up the animation process and make it more realtime. It's allowed the company to create a complex digital world, with over 100 characters, nearly 200 sets, and tens of thousands of extras.

GEORGE JOHNSEN, THRESHOLD DIGITAL LABS: We feel that where IBM is placing us at this point is about 18 months ahead of the rest of the world is.

ROGERS: It will be another 18 months until "FoodFight!" hits the big screen and threshold finds out if their deal with "Big Blue" translates into big bucks at the box office.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Ahead on Next@CNN: More and more people in China using remotes to control everything from lighting to air conditioning. Could wired walls join electricity and water as standard in home construction?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Nearly half of all new cars sold are sport utility vehicles. But, you've probably heard about the problems some of them may have with rolling over in sharp turns. CNN's Julie Vallese reports on new government tests designed to help you make safer decisions when is you go SUV shopping.

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JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Will this vehicle rollover? Until now, the government has used mathematics and the laws of physics to make a best guest rating.

DR. JEFFREY RUNGE, NHTSA ADMINISTRATOR: The idea was to maintain the integrity of the star rating system so that we -- so that consumers could know what cars are likely to rollover at what rate in a single vehicle crash.

VALLESE: In its demonstration of the new dynamic on the road stability test, NHTSA used a 2000 Toyota Forerunner and 2003 Forerunner with improved vehicle stability control. The 2003 performed much better than its predecessor by keeping all tires on the road in every test. It was a series of rollovers involving the Ford Explorer and Firestone Tires that prompted congress, three years ago, to order the safety agency to develop the test.

(on camera): Carmakers are taking a wait-and-see approach, saying they want to assess whether these tests provide consumers with any useful information on the likelihood of a rollover.

(voice-over): But, some consumer watchdog groups are already voicing concern.

JOAN CLAYBROOK, PUBLIC CITIZEN: If you fail a test you can still sell the car. We think it's important they move forward from here, to issue a minimum safety standard, so that no vehicle could be made that does less well than the average.

VALLESE: Claybrook also says the dealers should be required to post the rollover ratings on the car's sticker instead of just a website. NHTSA hopes to test about 80 percent of the upcoming model year and make the findings public in early 2004.

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SIEBERG: A Hong Kong court has ruled that the city can go ahead with plans to fill in part of its harbor to make room for more roads. Environmentalists have challenged the plan saying that a series of so- called reclamation projects is turning the famous harbor into something that looks more like a river. The judge said on Tuesday that the Harbor Protection Society hadn't proved the project was harmful. But, he said if the higher courts rule differently, the reclamation work will have to be reversed. City officials say for now, all they're doing is dredging. The environmentalists promise more legal action.

Hong Kong has been a center of western style technology and luxury for a long time. But, Mainland China is taking great leaps forward and catching up. Kristie Lu Stout reports on some high-tech homes in Shanghai.

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KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet the Jong family. Expert couch potatoes that don't need to get up for anything. And it's not just the chandelier; the entire flat is wired up so everything is virtually at their fingertips.

(on camera): Luxury villas and apartments are sprouting up here, every day and with them, a rising middleclass that will spare no expense to furnish their castles in the sky.

(voice-over): The Jong's spent about $1,000 to wire their high- rise home. On the other side of town, Cheng Pin is considering a $2,000 version to control the lights and central heating.

CHENG PIN, PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMER (through translator): If I had this type of system and thought today's temperature is very cold, I can then use it and come home assured that my treasured fish were looked after.

STOUT: Behind all the magic is this Hong Kong entrepreneur, David Tsui.

DAVID TSUI, CYPRESS SYSTEMS: People are excited to try new things, that's why -- you know, I think, I'm helping people to use the technology -- you know, to apply to their daily life.

STOUT: Selling to both homeowners and developers, Tsui is riding the wave of a major property boom. Official statistics say in the past three years, individuals and companies have taken out mortgages on residential real estate, worth more than a trillion dollars. Like water and electricity, wired walls could become a new utility in a new China.

TSUI: In maybe two or three years, it will become a standard, here.

STOUT: So, a typical middleclass home in the heart of Shanghai can come to life before the owner returns from work -- air Con on, coffee pot percolating, all controlled by a web interface, or mobile phone call. A network nirvana that's winning its share of converts.

YU SHEN ZHANG, WIRED HOME RESIDENT (through translator): Even though the system is relatively new in Shanghai, my friends who come over and see it say it's something they must install in their next home. They're not afraid of spending the money.

STOUT: And, turn into to a true maestro of the remote control.

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ANNOUNCER: Still ahead: What's in your wallet, could be bacteria.

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ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What do you find sexy? Long or short hair?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Short.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I like long.

KELLAN: Do you prefer blondes or brunettes?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Brunette, or red head.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably jet black.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blondes.

KELLAN: Blondes may have more fun, but men, so it seems, prefer brunettes. According to an informal study conducted by a grad student at Florida State University, Panama City, only a small percent of men surveyed prefer blondes. Both sexes overwhelmingly like darker hair on their partners.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think I like blondes for a moment and brunettes for a lifetime.

KELLAN: As far as sex appeal does length of the hair make a difference? Men in the study were asked to rate women based on these pictures. Three of the pictures were actually the same woman with different hair lengths. They rated the long-haired version most attractive. While this study does not reflect a cross-section of society, it did raise questions researchers hope to study. Could it be that long hair throughout history has been a sign of women's fertility? Or is long hair just a fad of the time? Keri Russell's "Felicity" lost fans when she chopped her locks. And Julia Roberts' "Tinkerbelle" didn't ring up sales at the box office.

Ladies, before you grow out your hair or reach for the dye, you may want to remember, this study only included 126 people in a specific geographic area. And, let's face it, attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of the time when I had long hair, I was cute, you know, nobody wanted to date me and I cut off my hair (UNINTELLIGIBLE), "boom" there is my boyfriend.

KELLAN: Ann Kellan, CNN.

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SIEBERG: You've probably never thought about laundering your money, after all that's for drug dealers or crooked politicians. But, our next report may change your mind. Here's Andrew brown.

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ANDREW BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you spot something you want to buy, out on the street or in a store, when you pay for that something what are the chances you're handing over dirty money? Most consumers don't know their wallets and purses may be teaming with bacteria. Recently, CNN collected a small number of paper notes from seven Asian economies, and asked Desmond O'Toole, a bacteriologist at Hong Kong City University, to test them for germs. The first thing he noticed was the wear and tear they've suffered.

DESMOND O'TOOLE, HONG KONG CITY UNIVERSITY: You get nooks and crannies on the note where things like fecal contamination can lodge.

BROWN: Tests results on older notes from Hong King, China, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, and the Philippines showed thousands of bacteria. O'Toole said without more lab work, it's hard to say how much of a risk these bacteria pose to humans. But, of course older notes with a higher count are more likely to cause infections. For instance, this Chinese money with 178,000 bacteria on it, had 9,500 organisms from the E. coli family.

O'TOOLE: When these organisms get inside you, they can cause chronic disease, and they can cause infections of the gut, which are very, very unpleasant.

BROWN: The newer notes O'Toole tested were less contaminated. If you are off to the secretive communist state of North Korea anytime soon, you will be happy to hear O'Toole found almost no bacteria on this pristine North Korean won, and a crisp note we withdrew from a Hong Kong ATM had a fairly low bacteria count. Some Asian banks of made hygiene a priority. In Japan, UFJ Bank heats up its notes before dispensing them which the bank says helps kill bacteria. That may be a good thing.

O'TOOLE: Handling money is like shaking hands with somebody.

BROWN: Although O'Toole was testing just a handful of notes, his results do reinforce other studies. U.S. Researcher who looked at 68 bills collected in the Dayton area found more than 90 percent of dollar bills had colonies of bacteria. Scientists say consumers everywhere need to take precautions, improving personal hygiene, and...

O'TOOLE: I suppose they could wash their money.

BROWN (on camera): Oh, well, this is definitely one way to clean out your bank account.

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SIEBERG: Well, it kind of makes you look forward to that cashless society we keep hearing about. And those newer, cleaner $20 bills.

That's all the time we have for now. Here is what's coming up next week.

Friday, is the 30th anniversary of OPEC's decision to cut back drastically on the world's oil supply and raise prices bringing long lines at the gas station and some new ideas about conservation. Could it happen again? And, have we cut down on our gas guzzling habits? That's coming up on NEXT.

Until then, let us hear from you. You can e-mail us at NEXT@CNN.com. And, for more information on the stories in this program, check out our website, at cnn.com/next.

Thanks so much for joining us this week. For all of us on the CNN SciTech beat, I'm Daniel Sieberg.

See you Next time.

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