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Pet Tigers Very Popular In U.S.; Dirty Money, Literally Changes Hands Everyday; Iraqis Look Forward To New Cell Phone Network
Aired October 12, 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.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Today on NEXT@CNN, for the first time, millions of Iraqis can look forward to something as simple as calling a friend on a cell phone. We'll report on a new mobile phone network for Iraq.
Researchers studying deep sea jellyfish come face to face with something totally unexpected. We'll tell you about a very rare sighting.
And Andrew Brown will have a story of money laundering that might make you think twice next time you open your billfold.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You get nooks and crannies on the note, where things like fecal contamination can lodge.
ANNOUNCER: All that and more on NEXT.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everybody. Welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm Daniel Sieberg.
Before the war, they had only landline telephones. After the war, they didn't have much telephone service at all. But by the end of this month, Iraqis could be using cell phones. Phones will sell for about $50 each and calls will cost 8 to 10 cents per minute. And CNN's Michael Holmes reports on Iraq's first ever cell phone network.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In a country with precarious or nonexistent communications, people have been anxiously awaiting the announcement, which companies will build Iraq's first cellular phone network. All but hidden by media microphones, Iraq's communications minister made that announcement. Three consortiums will cover the country, north, central and south. Once they have covered that region, they can go national.
HAIDER AL ABADI, IRAQ 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 to better coordinate attacks.
(on camera): Thirty-five 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 multinationals to take the risk on their investment.
(voice-over): There had 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 in Europe 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're 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 (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
HOLMES: Those using those stores say they hope the minister is right when he says the first cell phones will be working by the 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, tens of millions of investment dollars now 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 in 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 said the testing won't affect relations between the two countries.
The United Nations released its annual State of the Population Report this week. And it's an eye opener for the world's young people. CNN 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 is extreme poverty, living on less than $1 a day.
STAN BERNSTEIN, U.N. POPULATION 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, and 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 their funding for reproductive health and family planning programs, while helping young people get the education and the 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 veck vehicle. In facts, 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 CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fasten your seatbelt. Moscow today looks like any big city, traffic jams, speeding, accidents, but here's what makes Moscow traffic unique: blue lights, what Russians call nigalgi (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Oh, I'm not even going to talk about it.
DOUGHERTY: With the special blue light on your roof, you can break almost every traffic law you want, like driving against traffic in the wrong lane.
(on camera): Whoops. Who are these guys?
(voice-over): 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 anyone 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: Moscovites are getting fed up with the driving habits of the nouveau riche.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (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 our 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 (voice-over): 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. And 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. Those impacts were similar to an infant falling out of a crib or off a changing table or from a high bunk bed. "The infant's brain 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, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: On a hard surface from a high enough height 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 injury.
KELLAN: Margulies adds, "Infants' skulls aren't as hard as an adult's, again making the infant's brain more vulnerable in a fall."
Ann Kellan, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SIEBERG: Imagine being subjected to sounds so unpleasant that you'd 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 some animals' deaths. Natalie Pawelski has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 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 dolphins around the world who have died after being exposed to military sonar. But is it coincidence or cause and effect?
(on camera): Scientists writing in the journal "Nature" say they may have found a link. They performed necropsies on whales who died after military exercises near the Canary Islands. They found tissue damage caused by gas bubbles consistent with rapid decompression. In human terms, it seems the whales got the bends.
(voice-over): In the same way that gas that's dissolved in soda can explode into bubbles when the pressure is suddenly released, gases that the buildup 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. Sonars 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 a really big, ugly shark.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we're right at 3,000 feet. We got a shark down here that's a 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 (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
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 most sharks. After it had 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 a 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 we're taking that's used in diet analysis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The condition of both adult males and adult females has been declining over the past 20 years.
STRIEKER: There's a high concentration of bears here, a good place to see how climate change is affecting them.
(on camera): Polar bears spend most of their lives out on the sea ice, hunting for seals. But 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.
(voice-over): But scientists say Arctic Sea ice has been shrinking by three percent each decade since the 1970s.
LYNN ROSENTRATER, 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, and it's affecting the ability to reproduce cub 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: I mean, these are bears that have adapted very well to sea ice. That's where they make their living. They hunt on it, they travel on it, they 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.
STRIEKER: 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.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up on NEXT@CNN, a planetarium show (UNINTELLIGIBLE) style.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guiding principle was to make something really cool.
ANNOUNCER: We'll check out a star show with a new vision.
And later, the ferocious interest people have keeping wild animals as pets.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(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 no earlier than September, 2004, NASA will nearly double its imaging capabilities.
Parts 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 heavily 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 Earth-bound 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 NATIONAL 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 room (ph) was really stimulating and titillating.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It sort of swept you into different worlds.
MOOS: It used to be that sitting in the dark looking up at a planetarium dome meant you were going to see stars, but at this launch the star was Moby (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guiding principle was to make something really cool.
MOOS: Moby (ph) 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: SonicVision, 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 projected on a gigantic dome make for a 3-D experience that you can't fully appreciate on TV. Everybody had a favorite part.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eyes. The eyes.
MOOS (on camera): The eyes, all of those eyes, yeah. I've never done acid, but it seems to me this is what an acid trip would be like.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know. I don't have much experience with psychedelic drugs, but friends of mine who have tried the drug DMT, I think is a lot closer to what a DMT experience is supposed to be like.
MOOS: I don't even know what DMT stands for.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It comes from the rain forest. It's 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: Well, we're at the end of our first half-hour. But don't go away. There's a lot more to come after a commercial break and a check of the latest headlines from the CNN newsroom.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up: should tigers be kept at 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.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(NEWS BREAK)
SIEBERG: 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 Pavelski will have more on exotic pets, but first Ed Lavandera reports from a haven for tigers in Texas.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This sanctuary north of Fort Worth, Texas, is where tigers come to grow old.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of the sancuaries in the United States right now are full of unwanted, abused and abandoned exotic cats. And they're still breeding them and people are still buying them.
LAVENDARA: Richard Gilbreath is the director of the sancuary. He cares for more than two dozen tigers here and says he often gets five calls a week from people looking to get rid of the tiger they just bought as a pet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lots of people are buying these as ego trips to show everybody, you know, look, I've got a tiger.
LAVENDARA: The best estimates show 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 can show up in unusual places. This tiger was found in this Antwoine Bates' Harlem apartment.
ANTOINE BATES, TIGER OWNER I realize that this is my calling in life. I'm trying to create a Garden of Eden, something that this world lacks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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.
LAVENDARA: While humans seem excited of the idea of having the pet tigers, the tigers don't appear to be that interested. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Its not just tigers, it's lions, hippos, alligators, pythons, all kinds of wild animals living in houses and back yards. 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 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 largest animals a dangerous situation for people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aside from attacks which can happen with traditional pets, too, exotic pets can carry hidden dangers. Most reptiles 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 monkeypox to the western hemisphere this year via pet prairie dogs. They caught it from Gaimbian Giant Pouched Rats imported from Africa for the trade.
PACELLE: All for what? So we can be amused by the latest pet?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 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.
Just ahead -- new competition 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 awarded this week honored achievments ranging from medical imaging to superconductivity. The prize in medicine was split between two scientists who helped make MRI, 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 psysics was shared by three researches who investigated what happened when matter is chilled to almost absolute zero. Ptoly Ginsburg (ph) of the Lebedev Physical Istitute in Moscow and Alexei Aberkosov of 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 could someday lead to much faster trains that float above the tracks and more efficient electric transmission. Anthony Leggatt (ph) of the University of Illinois explained superfluidity. Its 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. Robert McKinnon of Howard Hughes Medical Institute at New York's Rockefeller University shares the prize with Peter Agri of Johns Hopkins University.
The folks who started the Napster 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: With a click and a credit card, can you 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 will cost you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sounds pretty good.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sounds really good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Almost makes you want to download the whole album and pay for it yourself.
SNOW: And getting downloaders to pay for his music is what hip- hop artist Ludacris is hoping for. The artist is helping relaunch Napster and try to crack downloading unlawfully.
LUDACRIS, ARTIST: It's a way to receive publishing money and being compensated for creative work. We work hard as an artist. We work very hard.
SNOW: And using Ludacris as a pitch man is part of an overall effort to appear edgey and cool and capitalize on the maverick Napster name. Following the lead of iTunes and Rhapsody, Roxio CEO welcomes the competition.
CHRIS GOROG, CEO ROXIO: Well taht right. I think there's a gold rush into the online music business right now, which from our perspective, is a great thing. It means there's 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 songs and radio stations, but no downloading. Rhapsody charges a monthly fee with 79 cents charge for songs, iTunes and music match 99 cents a song with no 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 content. It's not about to replace the CD. The CD is going to remain the dominant form of 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 n 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 the next generation Pixar.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEN ROGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A baboon doing a back flip. A stunt man 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 companies first feature in production is "Food Fight."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Food Fight" is the story of what happens in the supermarket at night when all of the people leave and the lights go out. This is the chinese foods during the day, but when the lights go out in the movie "Food Fight" 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.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're huge fans of Pixar. They do an amazing job but we have to think to ourselves, well how can we go out and do something different?
ROGERS: Threshold's answer, do it cheaper with the backing of an unlikely hollywood partner, IBM.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because of the deal we have with IBM we make movies at 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 RESEARCH: We feel that where IBM is placing us at this particular point is 18 months ahead of where the rest of the world is.
ROGERS: It will be another 18 months until "Food Fight" hits the big screen and tleshhold if their deal with big blue translates into big bucks at the box office.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ahead on next@CNN, more and more people in China are using remotes to control everything from lighting to air conditioning. Could wired walls join electricity and water as standard in home construction?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)
SIEBERG: You have been listening to a team of neurosurgeons, a very exhausted but very happy team of neurosurgeons at Children's Medical Center in Dallas talking about the successful separation of conjoined twins Ahmed and Mohammed Ibrahim after about 26 hours of surgery.
The boys are said to be medically stable. They are still completing the skin closure operations. They're going to keep the boys in a medically-induced coma for several days, but so far they have not seen any signs of problems.
One of the neurosurgeons saying the most difficult part was the actual separation. They had not expected the brains to be that close together of the two boys when they were in the conjoined state. It's also too early to tell of any neurological impact, but so far so good for the conjoined Egyptian twins.
I'm Renay San Miguel. We're going to take a quick break and then Carol Lin will take you into CNN live Sunday.
END
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Changes Hands Everyday; Iraqis Look Forward To New Cell Phone Network>
Aired October 12, 2003 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Today on NEXT@CNN, for the first time, millions of Iraqis can look forward to something as simple as calling a friend on a cell phone. We'll report on a new mobile phone network for Iraq.
Researchers studying deep sea jellyfish come face to face with something totally unexpected. We'll tell you about a very rare sighting.
And Andrew Brown will have a story of money laundering that might make you think twice next time you open your billfold.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You get nooks and crannies on the note, where things like fecal contamination can lodge.
ANNOUNCER: All that and more on NEXT.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everybody. Welcome to NEXT@CNN. I'm Daniel Sieberg.
Before the war, they had only landline telephones. After the war, they didn't have much telephone service at all. But by the end of this month, Iraqis could be using cell phones. Phones will sell for about $50 each and calls will cost 8 to 10 cents per minute. And CNN's Michael Holmes reports on Iraq's first ever cell phone network.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In a country with precarious or nonexistent communications, people have been anxiously awaiting the announcement, which companies will build Iraq's first cellular phone network. All but hidden by media microphones, Iraq's communications minister made that announcement. Three consortiums will cover the country, north, central and south. Once they have covered that region, they can go national.
HAIDER AL ABADI, IRAQ 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 to better coordinate attacks.
(on camera): Thirty-five 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 multinationals to take the risk on their investment.
(voice-over): There had 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 in Europe 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're 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 (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
HOLMES: Those using those stores say they hope the minister is right when he says the first cell phones will be working by the 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, tens of millions of investment dollars now 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 in 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 said the testing won't affect relations between the two countries.
The United Nations released its annual State of the Population Report this week. And it's an eye opener for the world's young people. CNN Skip Loescher explains.
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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 is extreme poverty, living on less than $1 a day.
STAN BERNSTEIN, U.N. POPULATION 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, and 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 their funding for reproductive health and family planning programs, while helping young people get the education and the 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 veck vehicle. In facts, 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 CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fasten your seatbelt. Moscow today looks like any big city, traffic jams, speeding, accidents, but here's what makes Moscow traffic unique: blue lights, what Russians call nigalgi (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Oh, I'm not even going to talk about it.
DOUGHERTY: With the special blue light on your roof, you can break almost every traffic law you want, like driving against traffic in the wrong lane.
(on camera): Whoops. Who are these guys?
(voice-over): 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 anyone 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: Moscovites are getting fed up with the driving habits of the nouveau riche.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (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 our 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 (voice-over): 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. And 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. Those impacts were similar to an infant falling out of a crib or off a changing table or from a high bunk bed. "The infant's brain 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, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: On a hard surface from a high enough height 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 injury.
KELLAN: Margulies adds, "Infants' skulls aren't as hard as an adult's, again making the infant's brain more vulnerable in a fall."
Ann Kellan, CNN, Atlanta.
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SIEBERG: Imagine being subjected to sounds so unpleasant that you'd 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 some animals' deaths. Natalie Pawelski has the story.
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NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 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 dolphins around the world who have died after being exposed to military sonar. But is it coincidence or cause and effect?
(on camera): Scientists writing in the journal "Nature" say they may have found a link. They performed necropsies on whales who died after military exercises near the Canary Islands. They found tissue damage caused by gas bubbles consistent with rapid decompression. In human terms, it seems the whales got the bends.
(voice-over): In the same way that gas that's dissolved in soda can explode into bubbles when the pressure is suddenly released, gases that the buildup 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. Sonars 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.
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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 a really big, ugly shark.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we're right at 3,000 feet. We got a shark down here that's a 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 (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
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 most sharks. After it had finished investigating the submersible that had so rudely invaded its space, the shark turned and swam away into the darkness.
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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 a 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 we're taking that's used in diet analysis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The condition of both adult males and adult females has been declining over the past 20 years.
STRIEKER: There's a high concentration of bears here, a good place to see how climate change is affecting them.
(on camera): Polar bears spend most of their lives out on the sea ice, hunting for seals. But 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.
(voice-over): But scientists say Arctic Sea ice has been shrinking by three percent each decade since the 1970s.
LYNN ROSENTRATER, 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, and it's affecting the ability to reproduce cub 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: I mean, these are bears that have adapted very well to sea ice. That's where they make their living. They hunt on it, they travel on it, they 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.
STRIEKER: 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.
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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.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up on NEXT@CNN, a planetarium show (UNINTELLIGIBLE) style.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guiding principle was to make something really cool.
ANNOUNCER: We'll check out a star show with a new vision.
And later, the ferocious interest people have keeping wild animals as pets.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(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 no earlier than September, 2004, NASA will nearly double its imaging capabilities.
Parts 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 heavily 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 Earth-bound 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 NATIONAL 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 room (ph) was really stimulating and titillating.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It sort of swept you into different worlds.
MOOS: It used to be that sitting in the dark looking up at a planetarium dome meant you were going to see stars, but at this launch the star was Moby (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guiding principle was to make something really cool.
MOOS: Moby (ph) 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: SonicVision, 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 projected on a gigantic dome make for a 3-D experience that you can't fully appreciate on TV. Everybody had a favorite part.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eyes. The eyes.
MOOS (on camera): The eyes, all of those eyes, yeah. I've never done acid, but it seems to me this is what an acid trip would be like.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know. I don't have much experience with psychedelic drugs, but friends of mine who have tried the drug DMT, I think is a lot closer to what a DMT experience is supposed to be like.
MOOS: I don't even know what DMT stands for.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It comes from the rain forest. It's 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: Well, we're at the end of our first half-hour. But don't go away. There's a lot more to come after a commercial break and a check of the latest headlines from the CNN newsroom.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Coming up: should tigers be kept at 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.
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(NEWS BREAK)
SIEBERG: 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 Pavelski will have more on exotic pets, but first Ed Lavandera reports from a haven for tigers in Texas.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This sanctuary north of Fort Worth, Texas, is where tigers come to grow old.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of the sancuaries in the United States right now are full of unwanted, abused and abandoned exotic cats. And they're still breeding them and people are still buying them.
LAVENDARA: Richard Gilbreath is the director of the sancuary. He cares for more than two dozen tigers here and says he often gets five calls a week from people looking to get rid of the tiger they just bought as a pet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lots of people are buying these as ego trips to show everybody, you know, look, I've got a tiger.
LAVENDARA: The best estimates show 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 can show up in unusual places. This tiger was found in this Antwoine Bates' Harlem apartment.
ANTOINE BATES, TIGER OWNER I realize that this is my calling in life. I'm trying to create a Garden of Eden, something that this world lacks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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.
LAVENDARA: While humans seem excited of the idea of having the pet tigers, the tigers don't appear to be that interested. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Its not just tigers, it's lions, hippos, alligators, pythons, all kinds of wild animals living in houses and back yards. 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 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 largest animals a dangerous situation for people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Aside from attacks which can happen with traditional pets, too, exotic pets can carry hidden dangers. Most reptiles 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 monkeypox to the western hemisphere this year via pet prairie dogs. They caught it from Gaimbian Giant Pouched Rats imported from Africa for the trade.
PACELLE: All for what? So we can be amused by the latest pet?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 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.
Just ahead -- new competition 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 awarded this week honored achievments ranging from medical imaging to superconductivity. The prize in medicine was split between two scientists who helped make MRI, 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 psysics was shared by three researches who investigated what happened when matter is chilled to almost absolute zero. Ptoly Ginsburg (ph) of the Lebedev Physical Istitute in Moscow and Alexei Aberkosov of 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 could someday lead to much faster trains that float above the tracks and more efficient electric transmission. Anthony Leggatt (ph) of the University of Illinois explained superfluidity. Its 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. Robert McKinnon of Howard Hughes Medical Institute at New York's Rockefeller University shares the prize with Peter Agri of Johns Hopkins University.
The folks who started the Napster 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.
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MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: With a click and a credit card, can you 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 will cost you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sounds pretty good.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sounds really good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Almost makes you want to download the whole album and pay for it yourself.
SNOW: And getting downloaders to pay for his music is what hip- hop artist Ludacris is hoping for. The artist is helping relaunch Napster and try to crack downloading unlawfully.
LUDACRIS, ARTIST: It's a way to receive publishing money and being compensated for creative work. We work hard as an artist. We work very hard.
SNOW: And using Ludacris as a pitch man is part of an overall effort to appear edgey and cool and capitalize on the maverick Napster name. Following the lead of iTunes and Rhapsody, Roxio CEO welcomes the competition.
CHRIS GOROG, CEO ROXIO: Well taht right. I think there's a gold rush into the online music business right now, which from our perspective, is a great thing. It means there's 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 songs and radio stations, but no downloading. Rhapsody charges a monthly fee with 79 cents charge for songs, iTunes and music match 99 cents a song with no 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 content. It's not about to replace the CD. The CD is going to remain the dominant form of 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 n 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 the next generation Pixar.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEN ROGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A baboon doing a back flip. A stunt man 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 companies first feature in production is "Food Fight."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Food Fight" is the story of what happens in the supermarket at night when all of the people leave and the lights go out. This is the chinese foods during the day, but when the lights go out in the movie "Food Fight" 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.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're huge fans of Pixar. They do an amazing job but we have to think to ourselves, well how can we go out and do something different?
ROGERS: Threshold's answer, do it cheaper with the backing of an unlikely hollywood partner, IBM.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because of the deal we have with IBM we make movies at 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 RESEARCH: We feel that where IBM is placing us at this particular point is 18 months ahead of where the rest of the world is.
ROGERS: It will be another 18 months until "Food Fight" hits the big screen and tleshhold if their deal with big blue translates into big bucks at the box office.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ahead on next@CNN, more and more people in China are using remotes to control everything from lighting to air conditioning. Could wired walls join electricity and water as standard in home construction?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)
SIEBERG: You have been listening to a team of neurosurgeons, a very exhausted but very happy team of neurosurgeons at Children's Medical Center in Dallas talking about the successful separation of conjoined twins Ahmed and Mohammed Ibrahim after about 26 hours of surgery.
The boys are said to be medically stable. They are still completing the skin closure operations. They're going to keep the boys in a medically-induced coma for several days, but so far they have not seen any signs of problems.
One of the neurosurgeons saying the most difficult part was the actual separation. They had not expected the brains to be that close together of the two boys when they were in the conjoined state. It's also too early to tell of any neurological impact, but so far so good for the conjoined Egyptian twins.
I'm Renay San Miguel. We're going to take a quick break and then Carol Lin will take you into CNN live Sunday.
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