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South American Squid Invade Popular California Beach; A Look At Weapons, Security Training For Commercial Airline Pilots; Tips on How To Pick A Bigscreen TV

Aired January 30, 2005 - 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.


RUDI BAKHTIAR, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Welcome back everyone. I'm Rudi Bakhtiar at the CNN Center here in Atlanta. Stories in the news right now, two Americans have been killed, five others wounded in a rocket attack near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The nighttime attack comes just hours before voters across Iraq go for the polls. Earlier, insurgents hit three polls stations in Baghdad.
And across Iraq, voters prepare to go to the polls amid strict security measures. Curfews are in place and travel is restricted. Voting officially begins inside of Iraq tonight at 11:00 Eastern and CNN is going to bring you comprehensive coverage around the clock.

The freezing rain and sleet in the southeast have kept portions of at least two major interstates in metro Atlanta shut down. The storm is coating the region with a layer of ice. Hundreds of flights have been canceled. Those affected include a charter plane carrying the Atlanta Hawks team. They were stranded on board all night trying to fly out to Memphis and are now waiting in a downtown hotel for on word whether they'll play tonight.

Let's check in with Orelon Sidney who has a look at where the winter storms are heading next. Orelon.

ORELON SIDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Rudi thanks a lot. The winter is certainly across the eastern United States. The areas in red here are winter storm warnings, which mean winter weather conditions are already occurring or are imminent. The blue areas, winter weather advisories. That's because of this big area of low pressure, continuing to bring moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to collide with cold air working down the eastern side of the Apolashon Mountains. Put that together and you have quite a bit of icing.

The areas in pink are the most concern, because those are the areas of ice. From Raleigh down through Saltville, through Columbia, South Carolina, Augusta and still back to the Atlanta metro area. Tonight, you could continue to see quite a bit of icing, 70 percent chance of at least a quarter inch from northeastern Georgia to the southern portions of Virginia. Tomorrow the low moves up the coast, the ice will end from west to east, it looks a lot better by Monday morning -- Rudi.

BAKHTIAR: Thank you Orelon. We'll be checking in with you later again. I'm Rudi Bakhtiar here at the CNN Center in Atlanta. More news at the bottom of the hour. NEXT@CNN begins right now. Keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news. DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Hi there, I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, the cost of protecting airliners from shoulder-fired missiles, and protecting cockpits from hijackers, an inside look at pilots training to be gunslinger.

The mystery of the beached squid. Scientists are trying to figure out why hundreds of squid from South American recently invaded a popular California beach.

And if you're looking for a big TV for the big game, we'll have some tips to help you out. All that and more on NEXT.

So you thought it would be a good idea to put antimissile technology on airliners, especially in this age of concern over terrorism? Well, a new study says it's not, at least not yet. Jeanne Meserve reports in CNN's ongoing "Security Watch" coverage.

BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): 2003, Baghdad, this tape purports to show insurgents firing a man portable air defense system or man pads at a DHL cargo plane. They hit it, though the plane landed safely.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the missile.

MESERVE: Man pads have been recovered in Iraq. Featured in Al Qaeda training tapes, and some believe sooner or later man pads will be used right here to take down a commercial aircraft.

REP. STEVE ISRAEL, (D) NEW YORKL There are 500,000 of them out there in the hands of 27 separate terrorist groups. They are easy to get, they are easy to use. That is the most potent threat we have --

MESERVE: There are anti-man pads technology. The military uses flares to protect them but a new RAND study says now is not the time to deploy anti missiles systems on commercial aircraft.

JACK RILEY, RAND: We're saying at this point is the technology is not there, we don't know enough about the reliability and the cost seems relatively high.

MESERVE: High indeed. According to RAND, it would cost $11 billion to put the equipment on the nation's 6,800 commercial airliners, and another $2.1 billion annually to operate and maintain it. RAND recommends more research, but that doesn't satisfy Congressman Israel.

ISRAEL: The RAND study seems to me to defy common sense, a single shoulder-fired missile that costs about $5,000 that strikes a single United States commercial aircraft would be the absolute end of the aviation industry as we know it.

MESERVE (on camera): RAND looked at that too. It estimates that economic losses resulting from a successful man pads attack could rise above $15 billion, not to mention the cost in lives. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well one person who knows firsthand the dangers of shoulder launched missiles is the pilot of an airliner targeted by two of them. Frank Buckley has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In Tel Aviv, pilot Rafi Marek is preparing to fly. It's been two years since his near-miss with disaster. It was November 2002. Marek was at the controls of an Arkia Airline jets with 271 people aboard as he took off from Labassa, (ph), Kenya.

RAFI MAREK, ARNIA FLIGHT, PILOT: Everything was normal until just a few seconds after takeoff we reached an altitude of about 500 feet, when we heard a bang.

BUCKLEY: Some of the passengers heard it too, the sound from two shoulder-launched missiles that just missed the plane.

MAREK: I just looked to the left and I saw two stripes of smoke just coming up over the left wing.

BUCKLEY: On the ground authorities found the launchers, but not the terrorists who fired them. In the air, most of the passengers were unaware of the attack, except for a few who wondered about the bang and the smoke.

MAREK: They asked what it was, we tried to, you know, to avoid the direct questions, and we told them that everything is fine. We didn't want to create any kind of panic, and there was an uncertainly of things.

BUCKLEY: They weren't issue if the Boeing 757 had escaped unharmed, but as Marek and the crew entered Israeli airspace, they had to inform the passengers so they wouldn't be alarmed when they saw this -- an Israeli military jet which came to inspect the Arkia airliner for damage.

MAREK: He flew around us, took a look, we took our landing gear down, he checked it, everything looks fine. He confirmed that everything is normal.

BUCKLEY: As the jet approached for landing, passengers broke out in song. Celebrating their narrow escape. Their pilot, relieved when he finally got his aircraft back on solid ground.

MAREK: When you think of what might have happened and you feel that you were lucky.

BUCKLEY: The passengers also realized how lucky they had been this time.

MAREK: The frightening thing is you can't know when it will hit next time. It could be almost anywhere. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Many pilots say the danger of shoulder-fired missiles is actually rather low on their list of things to worry about. Others want to be prepared for every possibility, including the chance that an armed terrorist will storm the cockpit. Miles O'Brien has more on that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Airline pilots are used to spending airless hours drilling in simulators for unlikely problems. But this is not your average simulation or your traditional aviation emergency. They are training to be pistol-packing pilots, sworn federal officers with perhaps the smallest jurisdiction in the world -- an airliner cockpit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People have to realize hijackers, they're professionals they've been through training also.

O'BRIEN: He is a captain for a major airline, and for security reasons, we agreed to leave it at that. We met at the federal law enforcement training center in remote Arteasia, New Mexico, a vertebral boot camp for federal agents of all stripes, including for the past two years federal flight deck officers, or Fidos.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you look at the personality of pilots, a lot of us have never been into a fight, some of us make in the second grade on the sandbox, but most of us are so naive in this area that we wouldn't have a clue what to do.

O'BRIEN: They are here on their own time, their own dime, to get a clue. You could call it hijack defense 101, a week long course in the basics. Hand-to-hand combat --

GEORGE BARRETT, TRAINER: We're fighting in a phone booth-type cockpit. Not a whole lot of room. Everything we do is designed for fighting in close quarters.

O'BRIEN: Marksmanship, and shoot/don't shoot scenarios.

BARRETT: You need to do it aggressively and someone acting as though a pack of hyenas do when they take the animals down in some of those African shows as they have their teeth sunk in and they're shaking their heads back and forth, delivering as much pain as they can.

JOHN WILEY, CNN AVIATION CONSULTANT: I've been through training all my lives for situations -- engine failures, hydraulic failures and stuff.

O'BRIEN: Retired U.S. Airways captain John Wiley carried a gun to work for the last seven months of his 25-year career.

WILEY: I have to prepare myself. Although engine failures are remote, the likelihood that I would incur an attack, that's remote too, but you prepare for the worst.

O'BRIEN: The TSA won't say just how many pilots have gone through this training program so far, security reasons for that, but this program is about deterrence as much as anything else. Simply the perception that a pilot might be armed forces a would-be hijacker to change tactics.

JOHN MORAN, TRANSPORTATION SAFETY ADMIN: Our idea is to have as many of those folks out there to represent the largest deterrence we can possibly put forth, as well as tactically respond should it be necessary.

O'BRIEN: John Moran is a former federal air marshal and the man in charge of the FIDO program. While he and the government are pushing the program now, the Bush administration initially fought the idea of this program. It happened only after the pilots unions and ultimately Congress forced the issue. Why the resistance?

MORAN: I think the perception was how would you have a pilot who is not a law enforcement person become a law enforcement person?

O'BRIEN: To allay that concern, pilots who hand here must first endure a raft of personal questions, a psychological screening and a thorough background check. If they pass the course, and the vast majority do, they must carry their gun in a locked case except when they're in the cockpit or at a shooting range.

WILEY: It's a bit burdensome, but again you find these guys who are willing to take on that additional responsibility for whatever reason, whatever their philosophy or whatever, they came to the point that they said I want to be involved in this program, I want to care a weapon, I want to be able to defend myself and the cockpit.

O'BRIEN: But not all pilots are on board. Many believe guns are a distraction from their primary task, flying the airplane.

ALAN PRICE, RETIRED DELTA CHIEF PILOT: When you get into armed resistance, I think you introduce a new element in the cockpit and all along that was the concern.

O'BRIEN: Alan Price is a recently retired chief pilot for Delta.

PRICE: Our primary focus needs to be on safe flying, not on worrying about constantly being alert to possibly an armed intervention.

O'BRIEN: To be sure, the cockpit is much more secure these days. The door more stout, the screening better, and passengers and flight attendants are poised to intervene, as they did when the so- called shoe bomber tried to down a plane over the Atlantic. This captain will soon join the ranks, but even midway through his course, he already sees the world a little differently.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now you're looking, you're seeing, and you're going to be a lot more aware. That's what flying is 90 percent about, being aware of what's going on around you. O'BRIEN: And for thousands of airline pilots, that now means learning how to fly and fight, and if needed, shoot to kill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: For more on CNN's continuing "Security Watch" coverage, you can check out our Web site at CNN.COM/next.net And be sure to stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Coming up, a new report says it's now or never when it comes to dealing with climate change.

And the space station crew goes for a walk. We'll tell you what they found when NEXT@CNN returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: The two crew members on the International Space Station took a walk in space this week. Mission control described the results as "perfect." Leroy Challenge installed an experimental robotic arm during the 5 1/2 hour space walk on Wednesday. They also checked out some air vents on the outside of the station. Controllers suspected some blockage of the vents might be causing equipment breakdowns. Sure enough, the space walkers found patches of glop on them. They're scheduled to make another space walk in March and to head for home in April.

Back on Earth now an international report on climate change this week paints a rather grim picture. It says global warming is close to the point of no return. The task force included scientists and politicians from the U.S., Britain, Australia, and the U.N. Lawrence McGinty of Britain's ITV news has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAWRENCE MCGINTY, ITV CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Scientists say it's happening faster and faster, and unless politicians get their act together quickly, it will be too late to stop it. It's of course global warming. Cochairman of an international task force on climate change issued some of the starkest warnings yet.

STEPPHEN BYERS, TASK FORCE CO-CHAIR: Climate change is now a real threat to our planet. It's not 50 or 100 years off. In my lifetime, in the next 10 to 20 years, if we don't take steps now, the we will be paying a very high price. Our planet will not be able to sustain the severe weather conditions if they continue along their present path.

MCGINTY: Byers wants to knock heads together among the advanced countries of the g8. He wants them to switch to renewable energy, he wants them to set up a climate group, including China, which is rapidly industrializing and he wants a target to keep global warming under 2 degrees c.

JONATHON PORRITT, SISTANNABLE DEVELOPMENT COMM: Over two degrees cent grade, it's clear that a number of phenomena accelerate to such a point we will no longer be able to adapt to some of those consequences.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Byers co-chairs at the task force with U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine.

In California, scientists are trying to figure out why hundreds of giant squid are washing up on beaches there, that is far from the warmer South American waters where they're normally found. Miguel Marquez reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): They came from the deep. The question is why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're huge.

MARQUEZ: And they aren't even full-grown. Hundreds of jumbo or Humboldt squid recently beached on southern California shores. It's a mystery that's washed up eight or nine times since 1862.

ERIC HOCHBERG, ZOOLOGIST: This specimen is one of the ones from Alaska.

MARQUEZ: Doctor Eric Hochberg is curator at Santa Barbara's Museum of Natural History.

HOCHBERG: What you're looking at here is a male.

MARQUEZ: He says jumbo squid usually live in warmer water off the coast of South America, but now they've been found as far north as Alaska and that is only half the mystery. Also preserved in the alcohol vat, a giant octopus, usually a coldwater mollusk. It was found on a near by island.

HOCHBERG: For some reason we're getting records of these giant cold water octopuses down here, when we're getting records of warm tropical squid moving from Mexico to Alaska. So we're not quite sure what's going on.

LINDA BLANCHARD, NATURALIST, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA'S OCEAN INSTITUTE: They have a very big beak in here, right between all the tentacles.

MARQUEZ: Linda Blanchard is a naturalist with the Southern California's Ocean Institute. She's measuring, weighing and dissecting recently beached jumbo squid.

BLANCHARD: To make this lay down, I'll cut along here.

MARQUEZ: She's catalogs the squid's sex -- this one's a male.

BLANCHARD: All right, we're going to open the stomach.

MARQUEZ: And taking stock of whether the squid was starved or sick. The details could solve the mystery.

BLANCHARD: Right, in here there's a lot of fish scales, bones.

MARQUEZ: The squid isn't starved, which may eliminate the theory that they were chasing food into the shallow water. The squid also appears healthy.

BLANCHARD: Nothing looks discolored, there's no like oddball growth or anything on it.

MARQUEZ: Another theory for why squid and octopi are expanding their territory over fishing of their natural predators causing a population explosion. Proving that theory will take more dissections and more study of how squid and octopi live.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Next up, you think this is a lot of TV's try cramming 14 DVD screens in one car. We'll introduce you to a man who likes to watch and give you some dos and don't when it comes to customizing your ride.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Customizing your car is a great way to make it distinctively yours. It can also be a great way to get into trouble. Some changes can be dangerous and others are illegal. Julie Vallese reports in our "Getting There" segment.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): More and more as drivers turn on their cars, not only does the engine and radio come on, but a DVD player. In the backseat it may actually reduce in car distractions.

DR. JEFFREY RUNGE, NHTSA ADMINISTRATOR: Kids do pose their own distraction in the backseat of a vehicle and I presume that some form of entertainment would calm down that distraction.

VALLESE: But the customization of cars popularized on shows such as MTV's "pitch my ride" and TLC's "overhauling'" is raising concerns about safety in the front seat.

RUNGE: It is also hard to imagine that you have to education people to watch the road when they're driving, but I guess you do.

VALLESE: Take Tony he says he doesn't drive and watch, but his sports car has 14 DVD screens.

TONY KARIMI, CAR ENTHUSIAST: It's a hobby. It's another thing to do to make the car look prettier.

VALLESE: There are monitors in the visors, doors and the hatchback. Monitors basically encompass the car.

One place where there isn't a monitor is in the steering wheel, which is a good thing because to put one there would be removing the airbag and that's a federal offense.

So far, two companies have been fined for removing federally mandated equipment, the first of what the government expects to be many. Even if consumers don't know that's the law.

RUNGE: You have the responsibility to operate your vehicle in a safe manner, regardless of what electronics are in your vehicle.

VALLESE: And options such as a DVD player carries a price tag of about $1,500. Tony has spent about $29,000 on his additions. Safety experts say before buying consumers need to weigh not only the entertainment costs but the risks.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: More screens coming up on our next half hour, really big screens. They won't fit in a car, but they might be the ticket for Super Bowl weekend.

Also ahead a setback for efforts to save the sage grouse.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. Last fall we told you how environmentalists and New Mexico's governor were fighting a federal government proposal to allow exploratory drilling in two million acres of desert know as the Otero Mesa. Well, this week the Bureau of Land Management decided to go ahead with the plan. The decision will protect 124,000 acres of the desert grassland, but will allow drilling in the rest. Governor Bill Richardson says he'll take his fight to court.

Another recent federal decision has ruffled the feathers of those who want to protect the Sage Grouse. Gary Strieker has the story in this week's look at "Our Planet."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Showmanship like this has made the Greater Sage Grouse an icon of the high desert. A century ago there were millions of these birds in the West, but there are now far fewer than that. Most experts believe something more than a few thousand are left in scattered populations. They find shelter and food in sagebrush grassland, habitat that still covers vast landscapes, but is not what it use to be.

MARK SALVO, SAGEBRUSH SEA CAMPAIGN: Livestock grazing, energy exploitation, off-road vehicles, pesticides, herbicides, roads, fences, and utility corridors have all fragmented and eliminated Sage Grouse habitat across its range.

STRIEKER: Sage Grouse are still found in 11 Western states, but the bird's shrinking habitat led some conservationists to petition the federal government to give it protection under the Endangered Species Act. That idea meets strong opposition.

JEFF BISENBERG, NAT'L CATTLEMAN'S BEEF ASSN.: The fact is, they're nowhere near going extinct.

STRIEKER: Listing the Sage Grouse as a threatened or endangered species would mean restrictions on using sagebrush habitat. More regulations, costs, and delays for cattle ranchers, and for the oil and gas industry. Sagebrush covers some of the nation's richest gas fields, and developing these resources is a high priority for the Bush administration. In fact, interior secretary Gale Norton said protecting the Sage Grouse would cause far more economic pain than the cost of protecting the spotted owl has to the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest. Eleven Western governors also asked federal authorities not to list the Sage Grouse.

Early this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the bird will not be given federal protection, a decision, it says, is based on science, with no politics involved.

RALPH MOREGENWECK, USFWS: The area covered by the Sage Grouse range is still extremely large. While there have been impacts to the Sage Grouse over time, there is still a tremendous amount of habitat available out there.

STRIEKER: The decision is based, in part, on existing federal, state and local conservation efforts aimed at restoring and maintaining Sage Grouse habitat. Enough reasons, some say, to avoid resorting to the Endangered Species Act.

BISENBERG: We're pleased, because it introduces a new model for conservation of the species by relying on people on the ground to implement measures for conservation.

STRIEKER: But even the Fish and Wildlife Service admits most of those conservation measures are still in the planning stages or too new to be reliable.

MOREGENWECK: Obviously we are hopeful that they will conserve the Sage Grouse in the long term, but we simply don't know.

STRIEKER: That's too much uncertainly, say some conservationists.

SALVO: The Fish and Wildlife Service has based its decision on uncertain science, by its own admission, and conservation plans that are not proven to conserve the species.

STRIEKER: If the Sage Grouse continues to decline, watch for more petitions and probably lawsuits, again demanding federal protection for the bird.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: After the break, you'll meet the "Kingmaker," the tech columnist for the "Wall Street Journal," who is said can make or break a new gadget.

And later, a pacaderm who's potty trained.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: In this high tech age there are thousands of new products out there. So many that trying to keep up with it all is, well, more than a little intimidating, but some consumers do manage to keep up with things, one column at a time from "Wall Street Journal's" Walt Mossberg.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER MOSSBERG, TECH COLUMNIST: You know, the first line of the first column was "Personal computers are just too hard to use, and it's not your fault."

SIEBERG (voice-over): Columnist Walt Mossberg's straight-ahead no-nonsense reviews of computers, software, gadgets, and the endless bits and bytes that occupy our minds have turned him into an influential voice in the tech industry.

MOSSBERG: These are boxes that have come in in the last few days. This is -- what else to we got there? A digital pedometer. Believe it or not, this is a cell phone for your house.

SIEBERG: Some of the items end up in his column.

MOSSBERG: This is a thing we wrote about this last week, it's a DVD recorder, where you talk year videotapes and put them in here and turn them into a DVD.

SIEBERG: Other, according to his assistant, Katie, are kicked to the curb.

KATIE BOBHRET, MOSSBERG'S ASSISTANT: We don't know how they're related to technology, but somebody thought we would enjoy seeing it. We get tons of things like that.

MOSSBERG: There's just not enough columns to review all these things and they're not necessarily all of interest, either.

SIEBERG (on camera): Walt's column first appeared in the "Wall Street Journal" in 1991. Since that time he says he's been on a mission to bridge the gap between the people who make the technology and people like us who have to use it. He says he's not writing for novices or for techies, but for the average persons who just wants their personal technology to work.

MOSSBERG: With computers, the industry had succeeded in creating this kind of class division, where there were the techies and the rest of the world. And one of the reasons I started the column was to fight that mentality, to fight the idea that you're a dummy, and to say maybe we should put the blame where it belongs, which is on the people that make and design and sell these things.

SIEBERG (voice-over): But Walt's not all about laying blame.

MOSSBERG: This is probably the coolest computer on the market today.

SIEBERG: Crowned "Kingmaker" and the "Most Powerful Columnist in Technology" by other publications, some analysts say his praise can boost tech stocks and product sales. So does Walt himself buy into the so-called Mossberg affect?

MOSSBERG: I don't track it, I don't pay any attention to it, I don't get paid based on it, I don't get read based on it. My job is to help consumers, readers, weave their way through this stuff. That's my job.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: By the way, we asked Walt to name a couple of the top gadgets that he likes on the market today, and he picked -- drum roll, please -- the Trio and the iPod. Maybe a couple of obvious choices, we'll see how their stock does and they do have a loyal following.

These gadgets are little, but a lot of you may be out there shopping for something big, namely super-sized TVs, especially with the Super Bowl coming up next week. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, I got the lowdown on LCD and plasma screens from CNet's Brian Cooley for this week's "Techno File."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Brian, these are everywhere you go.

BRIAN COOLEY, CNET: Yeah.

SIEBERG: Here on the show floor. There's even a 102-inch one, now, from Samsung. That just seems unbelievable.

COOLEY: It's not for real, you can't buy it, but I does work, it's a real TV, 102-inch. I did some math on it. It's like having a double bed with like a California king length. But, you could sleep on this.

SIEBERG: It's not very comfortable.

COOLEY: No, very hard and cold.

SIEBERG: Right. But, what's the whole technology behind these devices? Isn't plasma better than, say, an LCD or a read projection?

COOLEY: For the money, let's tell what you our editors have in their homes. I've been to their homes and labs in New York, they typically don't have flat-panels, mainly they've got CRT and they've got rear-projection. These are guys who know every TV out there, they can have what they want and they don't use flat-panels. Flat panels are great for style, they're great for a very constrained space, but if you live in a studio that small, I doubt you can afford a big plasma. It's kind of a weird mix. I'm kind of a heretic when I say flat-panels are not the way to go. Go for a big projection CRT, go for a big projection to go really large, go for a projector to go super-large. Now, these guys are like "B" list for me, but I know they're hot.

SIEBERG: All right, well you're actually been out on the show floor and you've come across a few. Tell me about the first one.

COOLEY: Well, the first one that I really love, it's a rear projection set. This one is the Sharp 56DR650. It looks like a flat- panel until you, literally, walk up and peek around the back side of it. This is, to me, the really smart way to go, because you get that great floating flat-panel look, but without spending the huge dollars. It's going to have the wow factor, and the picture is extraordinary. It's a DLP rear projector. I'm very hot on it.

SIEBERG: All right. Now the next one, is the next one a flat- panel display, as well?

COOLEY: There are two flat-panels that amaze me and they are world record setters. One is the largest LCD TV that you can actually buy, it's a Sharp Aquos. I've got a bunch of small Aquos in my house. They're good LCDs. this guy is 65 inches, that's a new record for LCD. Now, by the way, you can't really buy it, because they're all sold out. The guys who are out to buy, you know, Lamborghinis and Ferrara GTs, they've pre-bought them all.

SIEBERG: They got their orders in early and they've got the money to buy them.

COOLEY: We're talking 40, 50, $60,000 TVs. There's a huge delta on these, because they're a rare item, but they are real and they give us a signpost of where things are going, so look for a 50, 60-inch range of LCDs maybe at the end of this year and certainly early 2006.

SIEBERG: OK, and is there one more that you wanted to talk about?

COOLEY: Yeah. Imagine a 71-inch plasma that dwarfs this one who's behind us, here.

SIEBERG: Right, this is like 42 inches.

COOLEY: This is big. Imagine almost double than that.

SIEBERG: OK.

COOLEY: Seventy-one inch plasma, a real product, available from LG $75,000. So "available" is in quotes. This is, again, the idea of the major wow factor for the people that can afford it, but for so much less money I could do a projection television of about the same size and go buy a very nice luxury car for the money I save.

SIEBERG: Right. COOLEY: I mean, at CES we see a lot of wow products, but when I go home the stories I tell are about the things that are not necessarily the coolest, but the smartest.

SIEBERG: All right, well, from a smart guy, we're going to take your word at it. Brian Cooley from CNet, thanks so much for joining us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up next, a historic (UNINTELLIGIBLE) rescue from a scrap heap and one man's struggle to restore it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VERONICA DE LA CRUZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Oranges may be known for their juice, but orange peels could someday be used to make the cup that holds that juice.

PROF. GEOFFREY COATES, CORNELL UNIV.: The liquid is -- this is limonene oxide and this is the compound based on the orange peel oil. In this glass, the white powder is the final form of the plastic which can then be melted into typical, you know, things that you make plastics out of, such as a cup.

DE LA CRUZ: Chemistry professor, Geoffrey Coates, and his team at Cornell create polymers, or plastics, from nature. They use cheap readily available items, like plant gasses, with the goal of replacing some of the petroleum now needed for thousands of products. Their latest discovers uses limonene from citrus peels, carbon dioxide from the air, and a catalyst made from a tiny amount of zinc. And the orange is not the only natural ingredient with appeal.

COATES: We're really excited about the possibility of not only using a byproduct from the orange juice industry, but possibly also from the paper industry. There are a lot of other bio-renewable resources; we're trying to find out whether we can combine carbon dioxide with compound based from simple vegetable oil.

DE LA CRUZ: It may be years before the new plastic turns into actual products, but for chemists like Coates, an exciting begining.

COATES: What we've done here is kind of the first step in a many step process to come up with a new commercial plastic.

DE LA CRUZ: I'm Veronica De La Cruz and that's "Cool Science."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: All to often, bit of history slip away when no one's looking, and that almost happened recently at a thriving industrial park in New York City, but luckily someone at the Brooklyn Navy Yard had a good eye and good heart. Kathleen Koch has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For years it sat unnoticed in the corner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, now a city industrial park, but just as the sailboat was about to be scrapped to make way for more development, Elliott Matz noticed under the rust and the peeling paint, unique lines, unique lines and the solid keel.

ELLIOT MATZ, COO BROOKLYN NAVY YARD: It's clear this was not just your average ordinary derelict boat; there was something historic about it.

KOCH: A paper on the hull said it was the Ethel Lewis, one of the country's few remaining skipjacks. A hundred years ago, more than 1,000 of the long flat-bottom boats dredge oysters in the shallow waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

MATZ: I didn't realize that there were maybe only 40 or 50 left. So, at that point I knew, you know, we could not just junk it.

FRANK YOUNG, EASTERN VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY: So, the old (UNINTELLIGIBLE) has lost it all and boards tend to drop off.

KOCH: After months of searching, Matz contacted Frank Young of the Eastern Virginia Historical Society. Young formed an ad hock committee of boat lovers who arranged for a barge delivering pilings to New York to bring the Ethel Lewis home to Virginia to become a floating museum exhibit.

YOUNG: And while she looks terrible to look at, a lot of these boards are so hard that you cannot drive a ice pick in there over 1/16 of an inch.

RICHARD SCHAEFFER, FORMER BOAT OWNER: Oh, this is terrible. God help us.

KOCH: Richard Schaeffer knows those boards well. He had rescued the Ethel Lewis himself in 1977 from a New York boat-yard.

SCHAEFFER: See, I wasn't a millionaire, and I couldn't buy a yacht.

KOCH: So he refurbished the sailboat and for 21 years he used it as a pleasure craft for his ten children.

SCHAEFFER: Just sailed. Just sailed. We sailed the Great South Bay up and down with friends, had a great time.

KOCH: But by 1998, the children had grown, and the boat and Schaeffer aged. He didn't know when he donated to a maritime workshop program, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that program would shut down in a few years. Young knows reviving the Ethel Lewis won't be easy. He designed a special cradle so the sailboat wouldn't crumble when lifted onto the barge.

YOUNG: When I look at it and anybody else looks at it, they think we're not in our right mind to even do this. We think we are.

KOCH: A long three-day journey and the Ethel Lewis arrives in Onancock, Virginia, just five miles from where it was built nearly 100 years ago. Residents gather for the homecoming.

MAPHIS OSWALD, ONANCOCK BUSINESS CIVIC ASSN: It's a historic event, it's an historic town. We're built on the water, our history is all about the water and bringing this home is just going to be fantastic.

CADA GROVE, CMTE. TO SAVE THE ETHEL LEWIS: Well, we didn't have a lot of money and so getting her here has been a real challenge.

Well, as we said, when she arrived, it was good news and bad news. The good news is she's here, and the bad news is she's here, now we have to work on her.

KOCH (on camera): So, nothing come off, nothing shook loose, nothing broke, nothing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) apart?

STEVE WALTON, CMTE. TO SAVE THE ETHEL LEWIS: We did a good job. You can see that she has a lot of wear and tear.

KOCH (voice-over): Committee member, Steve Walton, says even parts of the boat that are not salvageable will serve a purpose.

WALTON: The characteristics of each of those pieces will be recorded and documented, used as templates for restoration.

YOUNG: The only thing tricky about these pieces are the angle which they're set, but they're essentially a square piece of wood, about two inch by ten inches, we have a stack of it and someone shouts out some dimensions and we, you know, we put them up on a saw and cut it and set it.

KOCH (on camera): Once a shelter is build to protect the boats from the elements, the newest challenge begins, raising the money to restore the Ethel Lewis.

(voice-over): Estimates range from $30,000 to half a million dollars.

WALTON: I've seen larger pipe dreams come to be. There's a lot of people that would love to see her restored, but whether this Ethel Lewis sails again or not, I think she'll be well-served.

YOUNG: Once you lose it, you can't restore it, you can't get it back and this was a piece of history we didn't want to lose.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still to come, it may not be a match made in heaven, but zookeepers hope it's enough to help save black rhinos from extinction. That story when NEXT@CNN continues. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: You probably already know that elephants are pretty smart, but did you know they can use a toilet? Yes, at this elephant sanctuary in Thailand, they do. The trainers potty trained the elephants so they could put on a good show for tourists. The elephants even pull a chain to flush the toilet. They've also learned to dance, if you can call it that, and give back massages, but I don't think I'll be volunteering for that any time soon.

Rhinos aren't as smart as elephants, but hey, they have feelings, too. And Zookeepers are hoping a couple of rhinos they've brought together will develop romantic feelings. Denise Belgrave reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DENISE BELGRAVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two-thousand pound Rosie made a weighty first impression on her blind date, arriving by forklift at Miami's Metro Zoo. From her home at Zoo Atlanta, she went south to rendezvous with a male black rhino named Toshi. Ron Miguel is chaperoning their courtship.

RON MIGUEL, Miami METRO ZOO: She's on loan for not other reason but to be bred. There's a strong possibility they might not like each other and there'd be no breeding taking place at all.

BELGRAVE: Black rhinos are a highly endangered species, the International Rhino Foundation says there are only about 3,600 left in their native Africa. That makes Rosie's list of eligible bachelors a short one.

Rosie and Toshi will sniff out each other from separate corrals.

MIGUEL: So, it's a long process of having them side by side, now. He'll get to smell her and see her, and vice versa.

BELGRAVE: Short-sighted rhinos have a nasty habit at charging at unfamiliar obstacles, including one another. Flirting turned to fighting can make breeding a very tricky proposition.

MIGUEL: Rhino, lovemaking, so to speak, involves usually some rough foreplay generally speaking, anyway, but we have to be able to distinguish between either foreplay or they just don't like each other.

BELGRAVE: But Miguel and his team are optimistic that these solitary creatures will connect. One good sign, since Rosie's arrived, they say, Toshi's been showing off for her by rolling in the mud.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: You know, I tried that once and it didn't work. I don't understand. Well, maybe if he improves his technique a little, who knows.

All right. That's all the time we have for now. But, before we go, here's a peek at what we'll have next week:

If you think there's nothing good you can say about a hurricane, wait until you see what hurricanes Jeanne and Frances did for the coral reefs off the Florida.

That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let's hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at NEXT@CNN.com. And don't forget to check out our website, that's at cnn.com/next.

Thanks so much for joining us, for all of us, I'm Daniel Sieberg, we'll see you next time.

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


Aired January 30, 2005 - 15:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RUDI BAKHTIAR, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Welcome back everyone. I'm Rudi Bakhtiar at the CNN Center here in Atlanta. Stories in the news right now, two Americans have been killed, five others wounded in a rocket attack near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The nighttime attack comes just hours before voters across Iraq go for the polls. Earlier, insurgents hit three polls stations in Baghdad.
And across Iraq, voters prepare to go to the polls amid strict security measures. Curfews are in place and travel is restricted. Voting officially begins inside of Iraq tonight at 11:00 Eastern and CNN is going to bring you comprehensive coverage around the clock.

The freezing rain and sleet in the southeast have kept portions of at least two major interstates in metro Atlanta shut down. The storm is coating the region with a layer of ice. Hundreds of flights have been canceled. Those affected include a charter plane carrying the Atlanta Hawks team. They were stranded on board all night trying to fly out to Memphis and are now waiting in a downtown hotel for on word whether they'll play tonight.

Let's check in with Orelon Sidney who has a look at where the winter storms are heading next. Orelon.

ORELON SIDNEY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Rudi thanks a lot. The winter is certainly across the eastern United States. The areas in red here are winter storm warnings, which mean winter weather conditions are already occurring or are imminent. The blue areas, winter weather advisories. That's because of this big area of low pressure, continuing to bring moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to collide with cold air working down the eastern side of the Apolashon Mountains. Put that together and you have quite a bit of icing.

The areas in pink are the most concern, because those are the areas of ice. From Raleigh down through Saltville, through Columbia, South Carolina, Augusta and still back to the Atlanta metro area. Tonight, you could continue to see quite a bit of icing, 70 percent chance of at least a quarter inch from northeastern Georgia to the southern portions of Virginia. Tomorrow the low moves up the coast, the ice will end from west to east, it looks a lot better by Monday morning -- Rudi.

BAKHTIAR: Thank you Orelon. We'll be checking in with you later again. I'm Rudi Bakhtiar here at the CNN Center in Atlanta. More news at the bottom of the hour. NEXT@CNN begins right now. Keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news. DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN ANCHOR, NEXT@CNN: Hi there, I'm Daniel Sieberg. Today on NEXT@CNN, the cost of protecting airliners from shoulder-fired missiles, and protecting cockpits from hijackers, an inside look at pilots training to be gunslinger.

The mystery of the beached squid. Scientists are trying to figure out why hundreds of squid from South American recently invaded a popular California beach.

And if you're looking for a big TV for the big game, we'll have some tips to help you out. All that and more on NEXT.

So you thought it would be a good idea to put antimissile technology on airliners, especially in this age of concern over terrorism? Well, a new study says it's not, at least not yet. Jeanne Meserve reports in CNN's ongoing "Security Watch" coverage.

BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): 2003, Baghdad, this tape purports to show insurgents firing a man portable air defense system or man pads at a DHL cargo plane. They hit it, though the plane landed safely.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the missile.

MESERVE: Man pads have been recovered in Iraq. Featured in Al Qaeda training tapes, and some believe sooner or later man pads will be used right here to take down a commercial aircraft.

REP. STEVE ISRAEL, (D) NEW YORKL There are 500,000 of them out there in the hands of 27 separate terrorist groups. They are easy to get, they are easy to use. That is the most potent threat we have --

MESERVE: There are anti-man pads technology. The military uses flares to protect them but a new RAND study says now is not the time to deploy anti missiles systems on commercial aircraft.

JACK RILEY, RAND: We're saying at this point is the technology is not there, we don't know enough about the reliability and the cost seems relatively high.

MESERVE: High indeed. According to RAND, it would cost $11 billion to put the equipment on the nation's 6,800 commercial airliners, and another $2.1 billion annually to operate and maintain it. RAND recommends more research, but that doesn't satisfy Congressman Israel.

ISRAEL: The RAND study seems to me to defy common sense, a single shoulder-fired missile that costs about $5,000 that strikes a single United States commercial aircraft would be the absolute end of the aviation industry as we know it.

MESERVE (on camera): RAND looked at that too. It estimates that economic losses resulting from a successful man pads attack could rise above $15 billion, not to mention the cost in lives. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Well one person who knows firsthand the dangers of shoulder launched missiles is the pilot of an airliner targeted by two of them. Frank Buckley has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In Tel Aviv, pilot Rafi Marek is preparing to fly. It's been two years since his near-miss with disaster. It was November 2002. Marek was at the controls of an Arkia Airline jets with 271 people aboard as he took off from Labassa, (ph), Kenya.

RAFI MAREK, ARNIA FLIGHT, PILOT: Everything was normal until just a few seconds after takeoff we reached an altitude of about 500 feet, when we heard a bang.

BUCKLEY: Some of the passengers heard it too, the sound from two shoulder-launched missiles that just missed the plane.

MAREK: I just looked to the left and I saw two stripes of smoke just coming up over the left wing.

BUCKLEY: On the ground authorities found the launchers, but not the terrorists who fired them. In the air, most of the passengers were unaware of the attack, except for a few who wondered about the bang and the smoke.

MAREK: They asked what it was, we tried to, you know, to avoid the direct questions, and we told them that everything is fine. We didn't want to create any kind of panic, and there was an uncertainly of things.

BUCKLEY: They weren't issue if the Boeing 757 had escaped unharmed, but as Marek and the crew entered Israeli airspace, they had to inform the passengers so they wouldn't be alarmed when they saw this -- an Israeli military jet which came to inspect the Arkia airliner for damage.

MAREK: He flew around us, took a look, we took our landing gear down, he checked it, everything looks fine. He confirmed that everything is normal.

BUCKLEY: As the jet approached for landing, passengers broke out in song. Celebrating their narrow escape. Their pilot, relieved when he finally got his aircraft back on solid ground.

MAREK: When you think of what might have happened and you feel that you were lucky.

BUCKLEY: The passengers also realized how lucky they had been this time.

MAREK: The frightening thing is you can't know when it will hit next time. It could be almost anywhere. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Many pilots say the danger of shoulder-fired missiles is actually rather low on their list of things to worry about. Others want to be prepared for every possibility, including the chance that an armed terrorist will storm the cockpit. Miles O'Brien has more on that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Airline pilots are used to spending airless hours drilling in simulators for unlikely problems. But this is not your average simulation or your traditional aviation emergency. They are training to be pistol-packing pilots, sworn federal officers with perhaps the smallest jurisdiction in the world -- an airliner cockpit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People have to realize hijackers, they're professionals they've been through training also.

O'BRIEN: He is a captain for a major airline, and for security reasons, we agreed to leave it at that. We met at the federal law enforcement training center in remote Arteasia, New Mexico, a vertebral boot camp for federal agents of all stripes, including for the past two years federal flight deck officers, or Fidos.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you look at the personality of pilots, a lot of us have never been into a fight, some of us make in the second grade on the sandbox, but most of us are so naive in this area that we wouldn't have a clue what to do.

O'BRIEN: They are here on their own time, their own dime, to get a clue. You could call it hijack defense 101, a week long course in the basics. Hand-to-hand combat --

GEORGE BARRETT, TRAINER: We're fighting in a phone booth-type cockpit. Not a whole lot of room. Everything we do is designed for fighting in close quarters.

O'BRIEN: Marksmanship, and shoot/don't shoot scenarios.

BARRETT: You need to do it aggressively and someone acting as though a pack of hyenas do when they take the animals down in some of those African shows as they have their teeth sunk in and they're shaking their heads back and forth, delivering as much pain as they can.

JOHN WILEY, CNN AVIATION CONSULTANT: I've been through training all my lives for situations -- engine failures, hydraulic failures and stuff.

O'BRIEN: Retired U.S. Airways captain John Wiley carried a gun to work for the last seven months of his 25-year career.

WILEY: I have to prepare myself. Although engine failures are remote, the likelihood that I would incur an attack, that's remote too, but you prepare for the worst.

O'BRIEN: The TSA won't say just how many pilots have gone through this training program so far, security reasons for that, but this program is about deterrence as much as anything else. Simply the perception that a pilot might be armed forces a would-be hijacker to change tactics.

JOHN MORAN, TRANSPORTATION SAFETY ADMIN: Our idea is to have as many of those folks out there to represent the largest deterrence we can possibly put forth, as well as tactically respond should it be necessary.

O'BRIEN: John Moran is a former federal air marshal and the man in charge of the FIDO program. While he and the government are pushing the program now, the Bush administration initially fought the idea of this program. It happened only after the pilots unions and ultimately Congress forced the issue. Why the resistance?

MORAN: I think the perception was how would you have a pilot who is not a law enforcement person become a law enforcement person?

O'BRIEN: To allay that concern, pilots who hand here must first endure a raft of personal questions, a psychological screening and a thorough background check. If they pass the course, and the vast majority do, they must carry their gun in a locked case except when they're in the cockpit or at a shooting range.

WILEY: It's a bit burdensome, but again you find these guys who are willing to take on that additional responsibility for whatever reason, whatever their philosophy or whatever, they came to the point that they said I want to be involved in this program, I want to care a weapon, I want to be able to defend myself and the cockpit.

O'BRIEN: But not all pilots are on board. Many believe guns are a distraction from their primary task, flying the airplane.

ALAN PRICE, RETIRED DELTA CHIEF PILOT: When you get into armed resistance, I think you introduce a new element in the cockpit and all along that was the concern.

O'BRIEN: Alan Price is a recently retired chief pilot for Delta.

PRICE: Our primary focus needs to be on safe flying, not on worrying about constantly being alert to possibly an armed intervention.

O'BRIEN: To be sure, the cockpit is much more secure these days. The door more stout, the screening better, and passengers and flight attendants are poised to intervene, as they did when the so- called shoe bomber tried to down a plane over the Atlantic. This captain will soon join the ranks, but even midway through his course, he already sees the world a little differently.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now you're looking, you're seeing, and you're going to be a lot more aware. That's what flying is 90 percent about, being aware of what's going on around you. O'BRIEN: And for thousands of airline pilots, that now means learning how to fly and fight, and if needed, shoot to kill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: For more on CNN's continuing "Security Watch" coverage, you can check out our Web site at CNN.COM/next.net And be sure to stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Coming up, a new report says it's now or never when it comes to dealing with climate change.

And the space station crew goes for a walk. We'll tell you what they found when NEXT@CNN returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: The two crew members on the International Space Station took a walk in space this week. Mission control described the results as "perfect." Leroy Challenge installed an experimental robotic arm during the 5 1/2 hour space walk on Wednesday. They also checked out some air vents on the outside of the station. Controllers suspected some blockage of the vents might be causing equipment breakdowns. Sure enough, the space walkers found patches of glop on them. They're scheduled to make another space walk in March and to head for home in April.

Back on Earth now an international report on climate change this week paints a rather grim picture. It says global warming is close to the point of no return. The task force included scientists and politicians from the U.S., Britain, Australia, and the U.N. Lawrence McGinty of Britain's ITV news has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAWRENCE MCGINTY, ITV CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Scientists say it's happening faster and faster, and unless politicians get their act together quickly, it will be too late to stop it. It's of course global warming. Cochairman of an international task force on climate change issued some of the starkest warnings yet.

STEPPHEN BYERS, TASK FORCE CO-CHAIR: Climate change is now a real threat to our planet. It's not 50 or 100 years off. In my lifetime, in the next 10 to 20 years, if we don't take steps now, the we will be paying a very high price. Our planet will not be able to sustain the severe weather conditions if they continue along their present path.

MCGINTY: Byers wants to knock heads together among the advanced countries of the g8. He wants them to switch to renewable energy, he wants them to set up a climate group, including China, which is rapidly industrializing and he wants a target to keep global warming under 2 degrees c.

JONATHON PORRITT, SISTANNABLE DEVELOPMENT COMM: Over two degrees cent grade, it's clear that a number of phenomena accelerate to such a point we will no longer be able to adapt to some of those consequences.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Byers co-chairs at the task force with U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine.

In California, scientists are trying to figure out why hundreds of giant squid are washing up on beaches there, that is far from the warmer South American waters where they're normally found. Miguel Marquez reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): They came from the deep. The question is why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're huge.

MARQUEZ: And they aren't even full-grown. Hundreds of jumbo or Humboldt squid recently beached on southern California shores. It's a mystery that's washed up eight or nine times since 1862.

ERIC HOCHBERG, ZOOLOGIST: This specimen is one of the ones from Alaska.

MARQUEZ: Doctor Eric Hochberg is curator at Santa Barbara's Museum of Natural History.

HOCHBERG: What you're looking at here is a male.

MARQUEZ: He says jumbo squid usually live in warmer water off the coast of South America, but now they've been found as far north as Alaska and that is only half the mystery. Also preserved in the alcohol vat, a giant octopus, usually a coldwater mollusk. It was found on a near by island.

HOCHBERG: For some reason we're getting records of these giant cold water octopuses down here, when we're getting records of warm tropical squid moving from Mexico to Alaska. So we're not quite sure what's going on.

LINDA BLANCHARD, NATURALIST, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA'S OCEAN INSTITUTE: They have a very big beak in here, right between all the tentacles.

MARQUEZ: Linda Blanchard is a naturalist with the Southern California's Ocean Institute. She's measuring, weighing and dissecting recently beached jumbo squid.

BLANCHARD: To make this lay down, I'll cut along here.

MARQUEZ: She's catalogs the squid's sex -- this one's a male.

BLANCHARD: All right, we're going to open the stomach.

MARQUEZ: And taking stock of whether the squid was starved or sick. The details could solve the mystery.

BLANCHARD: Right, in here there's a lot of fish scales, bones.

MARQUEZ: The squid isn't starved, which may eliminate the theory that they were chasing food into the shallow water. The squid also appears healthy.

BLANCHARD: Nothing looks discolored, there's no like oddball growth or anything on it.

MARQUEZ: Another theory for why squid and octopi are expanding their territory over fishing of their natural predators causing a population explosion. Proving that theory will take more dissections and more study of how squid and octopi live.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Next up, you think this is a lot of TV's try cramming 14 DVD screens in one car. We'll introduce you to a man who likes to watch and give you some dos and don't when it comes to customizing your ride.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Customizing your car is a great way to make it distinctively yours. It can also be a great way to get into trouble. Some changes can be dangerous and others are illegal. Julie Vallese reports in our "Getting There" segment.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): More and more as drivers turn on their cars, not only does the engine and radio come on, but a DVD player. In the backseat it may actually reduce in car distractions.

DR. JEFFREY RUNGE, NHTSA ADMINISTRATOR: Kids do pose their own distraction in the backseat of a vehicle and I presume that some form of entertainment would calm down that distraction.

VALLESE: But the customization of cars popularized on shows such as MTV's "pitch my ride" and TLC's "overhauling'" is raising concerns about safety in the front seat.

RUNGE: It is also hard to imagine that you have to education people to watch the road when they're driving, but I guess you do.

VALLESE: Take Tony he says he doesn't drive and watch, but his sports car has 14 DVD screens.

TONY KARIMI, CAR ENTHUSIAST: It's a hobby. It's another thing to do to make the car look prettier.

VALLESE: There are monitors in the visors, doors and the hatchback. Monitors basically encompass the car.

One place where there isn't a monitor is in the steering wheel, which is a good thing because to put one there would be removing the airbag and that's a federal offense.

So far, two companies have been fined for removing federally mandated equipment, the first of what the government expects to be many. Even if consumers don't know that's the law.

RUNGE: You have the responsibility to operate your vehicle in a safe manner, regardless of what electronics are in your vehicle.

VALLESE: And options such as a DVD player carries a price tag of about $1,500. Tony has spent about $29,000 on his additions. Safety experts say before buying consumers need to weigh not only the entertainment costs but the risks.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: More screens coming up on our next half hour, really big screens. They won't fit in a car, but they might be the ticket for Super Bowl weekend.

Also ahead a setback for efforts to save the sage grouse.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: Welcome back to NEXT@CNN. Last fall we told you how environmentalists and New Mexico's governor were fighting a federal government proposal to allow exploratory drilling in two million acres of desert know as the Otero Mesa. Well, this week the Bureau of Land Management decided to go ahead with the plan. The decision will protect 124,000 acres of the desert grassland, but will allow drilling in the rest. Governor Bill Richardson says he'll take his fight to court.

Another recent federal decision has ruffled the feathers of those who want to protect the Sage Grouse. Gary Strieker has the story in this week's look at "Our Planet."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Showmanship like this has made the Greater Sage Grouse an icon of the high desert. A century ago there were millions of these birds in the West, but there are now far fewer than that. Most experts believe something more than a few thousand are left in scattered populations. They find shelter and food in sagebrush grassland, habitat that still covers vast landscapes, but is not what it use to be.

MARK SALVO, SAGEBRUSH SEA CAMPAIGN: Livestock grazing, energy exploitation, off-road vehicles, pesticides, herbicides, roads, fences, and utility corridors have all fragmented and eliminated Sage Grouse habitat across its range.

STRIEKER: Sage Grouse are still found in 11 Western states, but the bird's shrinking habitat led some conservationists to petition the federal government to give it protection under the Endangered Species Act. That idea meets strong opposition.

JEFF BISENBERG, NAT'L CATTLEMAN'S BEEF ASSN.: The fact is, they're nowhere near going extinct.

STRIEKER: Listing the Sage Grouse as a threatened or endangered species would mean restrictions on using sagebrush habitat. More regulations, costs, and delays for cattle ranchers, and for the oil and gas industry. Sagebrush covers some of the nation's richest gas fields, and developing these resources is a high priority for the Bush administration. In fact, interior secretary Gale Norton said protecting the Sage Grouse would cause far more economic pain than the cost of protecting the spotted owl has to the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest. Eleven Western governors also asked federal authorities not to list the Sage Grouse.

Early this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the bird will not be given federal protection, a decision, it says, is based on science, with no politics involved.

RALPH MOREGENWECK, USFWS: The area covered by the Sage Grouse range is still extremely large. While there have been impacts to the Sage Grouse over time, there is still a tremendous amount of habitat available out there.

STRIEKER: The decision is based, in part, on existing federal, state and local conservation efforts aimed at restoring and maintaining Sage Grouse habitat. Enough reasons, some say, to avoid resorting to the Endangered Species Act.

BISENBERG: We're pleased, because it introduces a new model for conservation of the species by relying on people on the ground to implement measures for conservation.

STRIEKER: But even the Fish and Wildlife Service admits most of those conservation measures are still in the planning stages or too new to be reliable.

MOREGENWECK: Obviously we are hopeful that they will conserve the Sage Grouse in the long term, but we simply don't know.

STRIEKER: That's too much uncertainly, say some conservationists.

SALVO: The Fish and Wildlife Service has based its decision on uncertain science, by its own admission, and conservation plans that are not proven to conserve the species.

STRIEKER: If the Sage Grouse continues to decline, watch for more petitions and probably lawsuits, again demanding federal protection for the bird.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: After the break, you'll meet the "Kingmaker," the tech columnist for the "Wall Street Journal," who is said can make or break a new gadget.

And later, a pacaderm who's potty trained.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIEBERG: In this high tech age there are thousands of new products out there. So many that trying to keep up with it all is, well, more than a little intimidating, but some consumers do manage to keep up with things, one column at a time from "Wall Street Journal's" Walt Mossberg.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER MOSSBERG, TECH COLUMNIST: You know, the first line of the first column was "Personal computers are just too hard to use, and it's not your fault."

SIEBERG (voice-over): Columnist Walt Mossberg's straight-ahead no-nonsense reviews of computers, software, gadgets, and the endless bits and bytes that occupy our minds have turned him into an influential voice in the tech industry.

MOSSBERG: These are boxes that have come in in the last few days. This is -- what else to we got there? A digital pedometer. Believe it or not, this is a cell phone for your house.

SIEBERG: Some of the items end up in his column.

MOSSBERG: This is a thing we wrote about this last week, it's a DVD recorder, where you talk year videotapes and put them in here and turn them into a DVD.

SIEBERG: Other, according to his assistant, Katie, are kicked to the curb.

KATIE BOBHRET, MOSSBERG'S ASSISTANT: We don't know how they're related to technology, but somebody thought we would enjoy seeing it. We get tons of things like that.

MOSSBERG: There's just not enough columns to review all these things and they're not necessarily all of interest, either.

SIEBERG (on camera): Walt's column first appeared in the "Wall Street Journal" in 1991. Since that time he says he's been on a mission to bridge the gap between the people who make the technology and people like us who have to use it. He says he's not writing for novices or for techies, but for the average persons who just wants their personal technology to work.

MOSSBERG: With computers, the industry had succeeded in creating this kind of class division, where there were the techies and the rest of the world. And one of the reasons I started the column was to fight that mentality, to fight the idea that you're a dummy, and to say maybe we should put the blame where it belongs, which is on the people that make and design and sell these things.

SIEBERG (voice-over): But Walt's not all about laying blame.

MOSSBERG: This is probably the coolest computer on the market today.

SIEBERG: Crowned "Kingmaker" and the "Most Powerful Columnist in Technology" by other publications, some analysts say his praise can boost tech stocks and product sales. So does Walt himself buy into the so-called Mossberg affect?

MOSSBERG: I don't track it, I don't pay any attention to it, I don't get paid based on it, I don't get read based on it. My job is to help consumers, readers, weave their way through this stuff. That's my job.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: By the way, we asked Walt to name a couple of the top gadgets that he likes on the market today, and he picked -- drum roll, please -- the Trio and the iPod. Maybe a couple of obvious choices, we'll see how their stock does and they do have a loyal following.

These gadgets are little, but a lot of you may be out there shopping for something big, namely super-sized TVs, especially with the Super Bowl coming up next week. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, I got the lowdown on LCD and plasma screens from CNet's Brian Cooley for this week's "Techno File."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: Brian, these are everywhere you go.

BRIAN COOLEY, CNET: Yeah.

SIEBERG: Here on the show floor. There's even a 102-inch one, now, from Samsung. That just seems unbelievable.

COOLEY: It's not for real, you can't buy it, but I does work, it's a real TV, 102-inch. I did some math on it. It's like having a double bed with like a California king length. But, you could sleep on this.

SIEBERG: It's not very comfortable.

COOLEY: No, very hard and cold.

SIEBERG: Right. But, what's the whole technology behind these devices? Isn't plasma better than, say, an LCD or a read projection?

COOLEY: For the money, let's tell what you our editors have in their homes. I've been to their homes and labs in New York, they typically don't have flat-panels, mainly they've got CRT and they've got rear-projection. These are guys who know every TV out there, they can have what they want and they don't use flat-panels. Flat panels are great for style, they're great for a very constrained space, but if you live in a studio that small, I doubt you can afford a big plasma. It's kind of a weird mix. I'm kind of a heretic when I say flat-panels are not the way to go. Go for a big projection CRT, go for a big projection to go really large, go for a projector to go super-large. Now, these guys are like "B" list for me, but I know they're hot.

SIEBERG: All right, well you're actually been out on the show floor and you've come across a few. Tell me about the first one.

COOLEY: Well, the first one that I really love, it's a rear projection set. This one is the Sharp 56DR650. It looks like a flat- panel until you, literally, walk up and peek around the back side of it. This is, to me, the really smart way to go, because you get that great floating flat-panel look, but without spending the huge dollars. It's going to have the wow factor, and the picture is extraordinary. It's a DLP rear projector. I'm very hot on it.

SIEBERG: All right. Now the next one, is the next one a flat- panel display, as well?

COOLEY: There are two flat-panels that amaze me and they are world record setters. One is the largest LCD TV that you can actually buy, it's a Sharp Aquos. I've got a bunch of small Aquos in my house. They're good LCDs. this guy is 65 inches, that's a new record for LCD. Now, by the way, you can't really buy it, because they're all sold out. The guys who are out to buy, you know, Lamborghinis and Ferrara GTs, they've pre-bought them all.

SIEBERG: They got their orders in early and they've got the money to buy them.

COOLEY: We're talking 40, 50, $60,000 TVs. There's a huge delta on these, because they're a rare item, but they are real and they give us a signpost of where things are going, so look for a 50, 60-inch range of LCDs maybe at the end of this year and certainly early 2006.

SIEBERG: OK, and is there one more that you wanted to talk about?

COOLEY: Yeah. Imagine a 71-inch plasma that dwarfs this one who's behind us, here.

SIEBERG: Right, this is like 42 inches.

COOLEY: This is big. Imagine almost double than that.

SIEBERG: OK.

COOLEY: Seventy-one inch plasma, a real product, available from LG $75,000. So "available" is in quotes. This is, again, the idea of the major wow factor for the people that can afford it, but for so much less money I could do a projection television of about the same size and go buy a very nice luxury car for the money I save.

SIEBERG: Right. COOLEY: I mean, at CES we see a lot of wow products, but when I go home the stories I tell are about the things that are not necessarily the coolest, but the smartest.

SIEBERG: All right, well, from a smart guy, we're going to take your word at it. Brian Cooley from CNet, thanks so much for joining us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Coming up next, a historic (UNINTELLIGIBLE) rescue from a scrap heap and one man's struggle to restore it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VERONICA DE LA CRUZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Oranges may be known for their juice, but orange peels could someday be used to make the cup that holds that juice.

PROF. GEOFFREY COATES, CORNELL UNIV.: The liquid is -- this is limonene oxide and this is the compound based on the orange peel oil. In this glass, the white powder is the final form of the plastic which can then be melted into typical, you know, things that you make plastics out of, such as a cup.

DE LA CRUZ: Chemistry professor, Geoffrey Coates, and his team at Cornell create polymers, or plastics, from nature. They use cheap readily available items, like plant gasses, with the goal of replacing some of the petroleum now needed for thousands of products. Their latest discovers uses limonene from citrus peels, carbon dioxide from the air, and a catalyst made from a tiny amount of zinc. And the orange is not the only natural ingredient with appeal.

COATES: We're really excited about the possibility of not only using a byproduct from the orange juice industry, but possibly also from the paper industry. There are a lot of other bio-renewable resources; we're trying to find out whether we can combine carbon dioxide with compound based from simple vegetable oil.

DE LA CRUZ: It may be years before the new plastic turns into actual products, but for chemists like Coates, an exciting begining.

COATES: What we've done here is kind of the first step in a many step process to come up with a new commercial plastic.

DE LA CRUZ: I'm Veronica De La Cruz and that's "Cool Science."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: All to often, bit of history slip away when no one's looking, and that almost happened recently at a thriving industrial park in New York City, but luckily someone at the Brooklyn Navy Yard had a good eye and good heart. Kathleen Koch has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For years it sat unnoticed in the corner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, now a city industrial park, but just as the sailboat was about to be scrapped to make way for more development, Elliott Matz noticed under the rust and the peeling paint, unique lines, unique lines and the solid keel.

ELLIOT MATZ, COO BROOKLYN NAVY YARD: It's clear this was not just your average ordinary derelict boat; there was something historic about it.

KOCH: A paper on the hull said it was the Ethel Lewis, one of the country's few remaining skipjacks. A hundred years ago, more than 1,000 of the long flat-bottom boats dredge oysters in the shallow waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

MATZ: I didn't realize that there were maybe only 40 or 50 left. So, at that point I knew, you know, we could not just junk it.

FRANK YOUNG, EASTERN VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY: So, the old (UNINTELLIGIBLE) has lost it all and boards tend to drop off.

KOCH: After months of searching, Matz contacted Frank Young of the Eastern Virginia Historical Society. Young formed an ad hock committee of boat lovers who arranged for a barge delivering pilings to New York to bring the Ethel Lewis home to Virginia to become a floating museum exhibit.

YOUNG: And while she looks terrible to look at, a lot of these boards are so hard that you cannot drive a ice pick in there over 1/16 of an inch.

RICHARD SCHAEFFER, FORMER BOAT OWNER: Oh, this is terrible. God help us.

KOCH: Richard Schaeffer knows those boards well. He had rescued the Ethel Lewis himself in 1977 from a New York boat-yard.

SCHAEFFER: See, I wasn't a millionaire, and I couldn't buy a yacht.

KOCH: So he refurbished the sailboat and for 21 years he used it as a pleasure craft for his ten children.

SCHAEFFER: Just sailed. Just sailed. We sailed the Great South Bay up and down with friends, had a great time.

KOCH: But by 1998, the children had grown, and the boat and Schaeffer aged. He didn't know when he donated to a maritime workshop program, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that program would shut down in a few years. Young knows reviving the Ethel Lewis won't be easy. He designed a special cradle so the sailboat wouldn't crumble when lifted onto the barge.

YOUNG: When I look at it and anybody else looks at it, they think we're not in our right mind to even do this. We think we are.

KOCH: A long three-day journey and the Ethel Lewis arrives in Onancock, Virginia, just five miles from where it was built nearly 100 years ago. Residents gather for the homecoming.

MAPHIS OSWALD, ONANCOCK BUSINESS CIVIC ASSN: It's a historic event, it's an historic town. We're built on the water, our history is all about the water and bringing this home is just going to be fantastic.

CADA GROVE, CMTE. TO SAVE THE ETHEL LEWIS: Well, we didn't have a lot of money and so getting her here has been a real challenge.

Well, as we said, when she arrived, it was good news and bad news. The good news is she's here, and the bad news is she's here, now we have to work on her.

KOCH (on camera): So, nothing come off, nothing shook loose, nothing broke, nothing (UNINTELLIGIBLE) apart?

STEVE WALTON, CMTE. TO SAVE THE ETHEL LEWIS: We did a good job. You can see that she has a lot of wear and tear.

KOCH (voice-over): Committee member, Steve Walton, says even parts of the boat that are not salvageable will serve a purpose.

WALTON: The characteristics of each of those pieces will be recorded and documented, used as templates for restoration.

YOUNG: The only thing tricky about these pieces are the angle which they're set, but they're essentially a square piece of wood, about two inch by ten inches, we have a stack of it and someone shouts out some dimensions and we, you know, we put them up on a saw and cut it and set it.

KOCH (on camera): Once a shelter is build to protect the boats from the elements, the newest challenge begins, raising the money to restore the Ethel Lewis.

(voice-over): Estimates range from $30,000 to half a million dollars.

WALTON: I've seen larger pipe dreams come to be. There's a lot of people that would love to see her restored, but whether this Ethel Lewis sails again or not, I think she'll be well-served.

YOUNG: Once you lose it, you can't restore it, you can't get it back and this was a piece of history we didn't want to lose.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Still to come, it may not be a match made in heaven, but zookeepers hope it's enough to help save black rhinos from extinction. That story when NEXT@CNN continues. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: You probably already know that elephants are pretty smart, but did you know they can use a toilet? Yes, at this elephant sanctuary in Thailand, they do. The trainers potty trained the elephants so they could put on a good show for tourists. The elephants even pull a chain to flush the toilet. They've also learned to dance, if you can call it that, and give back massages, but I don't think I'll be volunteering for that any time soon.

Rhinos aren't as smart as elephants, but hey, they have feelings, too. And Zookeepers are hoping a couple of rhinos they've brought together will develop romantic feelings. Denise Belgrave reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DENISE BELGRAVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two-thousand pound Rosie made a weighty first impression on her blind date, arriving by forklift at Miami's Metro Zoo. From her home at Zoo Atlanta, she went south to rendezvous with a male black rhino named Toshi. Ron Miguel is chaperoning their courtship.

RON MIGUEL, Miami METRO ZOO: She's on loan for not other reason but to be bred. There's a strong possibility they might not like each other and there'd be no breeding taking place at all.

BELGRAVE: Black rhinos are a highly endangered species, the International Rhino Foundation says there are only about 3,600 left in their native Africa. That makes Rosie's list of eligible bachelors a short one.

Rosie and Toshi will sniff out each other from separate corrals.

MIGUEL: So, it's a long process of having them side by side, now. He'll get to smell her and see her, and vice versa.

BELGRAVE: Short-sighted rhinos have a nasty habit at charging at unfamiliar obstacles, including one another. Flirting turned to fighting can make breeding a very tricky proposition.

MIGUEL: Rhino, lovemaking, so to speak, involves usually some rough foreplay generally speaking, anyway, but we have to be able to distinguish between either foreplay or they just don't like each other.

BELGRAVE: But Miguel and his team are optimistic that these solitary creatures will connect. One good sign, since Rosie's arrived, they say, Toshi's been showing off for her by rolling in the mud.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIEBERG: You know, I tried that once and it didn't work. I don't understand. Well, maybe if he improves his technique a little, who knows.

All right. That's all the time we have for now. But, before we go, here's a peek at what we'll have next week:

If you think there's nothing good you can say about a hurricane, wait until you see what hurricanes Jeanne and Frances did for the coral reefs off the Florida.

That's coming up on NEXT. Until then, let's hear from you. You can send us an e-mail at NEXT@CNN.com. And don't forget to check out our website, that's at cnn.com/next.

Thanks so much for joining us, for all of us, I'm Daniel Sieberg, we'll see you next time.

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