The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I`m Jim Lehrer.

On the NewsHour tonight: the news of this Tuesday; then, a look at why political progress has not followed military success in Iraq; the latest on another advance in stem cell research; some perspective on the search for smarter and easier to use cell phones; a Marcia Coyle rundown on the Supreme Court`s decision to hear a gun rights case; and a conversation about workplace hazards in China.

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JIM LEHRER: The U.N. today slashed the estimated number of AIDS cases worldwide. It cited new methods for counting and a sharp revision in infections in India. The new estimate is 33.2 million cases for 2007; it had been nearly 40 million in 2006, but the U.N. acknowledged the old counting method was flawed. U.N. officials said the AIDS pandemic has slowed, but they cautioned countries not to drop their guard.

Scientists reported a major step forward today in creating human stem cells without embryos. It involved a method shown to work in mice earlier this year. Two teams, one in Japan and one in Wisconsin, published findings in separate journals, Cell and Science. They added genes to reprogram skin cells into acting like embryonic stem cells. But unlike cloning, no embryos were ever used or destroyed. We`ll have more on this story later in the program tonight.

Iraq`s political divisions were drawn even more sharply today. Shiite Prime Minister al-Maliki charged Sunni Vice President al-Hashimi has blocked legislation and failed to represent Sunnis. The vice president has accused Maliki of favoring Shiites over Sunnis. We`ll have more on Iraq`s political problems right after this news summary.

Leading Democrats in the U.S. House charged today the Pentagon and President Bush are using scare tactics to win their way on war funding. Democrats have offered $50 billion, tied to troop withdrawals, but the president has rejected that condition.

On Friday, Defense Secretary Gates said the Army would divert other funds to the war and lay off thousands of civilian workers. Today, Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania condemned any such talk.

REP. JOHN MURTHA (D), Pennsylvania: This is a political document. They`re scaring people. They`re scaring the families of the troops with this document. That`s the thing that`s so despicable about what they`re doing.

We have provided the money for the troops. We`ve provided the money to transition out of Iraq. And it`s up to the president. They don`t need to do the things. You`re missing the point. Because the Pentagon says it, you believe it? You believe what the Pentagon says? Huh?

JIM LEHRER: Pentagon officials insisted today war funding will expire early next year, even after shuffling funds from other accounts. Spokesman Geoff Morrell urged Congress to act now.

GEOFF MORRELL, Pentagon Press Secretary: We`re not out to scare anybody. We`re not out to issue propaganda. We`re out to adequately fund our troops, who are in battle right now. And we`re only dealing with the facts here, and the facts are that we will run out of money for the Army in mid-February. And the facts are that we will run out of money for the Marine Corps in mid-March. We consider that a very dire situation.

JIM LEHRER: Congress is off until early December. But so far there`s no indication the war funding issue will come up again before next year.

Relief workers struggled today to deliver aid to survivors of the cyclone disaster in Bangladesh. The Indian Ocean hurricane swept through last Thursday, flooding villages. It killed more than 3,100 people and left many thousands more cut off. Relief teams and the military finally made it in to remote, outlying areas today after five days, but they reported severe shortages of food, clothing and shelter.

The government of Pakistan released nearly 3,000 members of the opposition today. More than 2,000 people remained imprisoned. They were jailed after President Musharraf declared emergency rule earlier this month.

Today, Musharraf arrived in Saudi Arabia for a one-day visit. The Saudi kingdom is one of Pakistan`s closest allies.

A U.N. tribunal in Cambodia held the first hearing today for a key figure in the Khmer Rouge. The communist group conducted a reign of terror in the late 1970s. It`s blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people.

The court was packed today for a bail hearing for the man who ran the most notorious torture center. He`s charged with crimes against humanity. In all, five top Khmer Rouge officials face trial next year.

The U.S. Supreme Court set the stage today for a major ruling on gun rights. The court agreed to decide if the District of Columbia may ban handguns. A lower court ruled the ban violates the Constitution`s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. We`ll have more on this story later in the program tonight.

The federal government sought to reassure parents today on toy safety ahead of the holiday season. The Consumer Product Safety Commission urged parents to be vigilant after recent recalls, but it said there are more inspections than ever. Still, the Public Interest Research Group and others said a number of risky toys are still on sale.

There was more turmoil in the housing sector today. Mortgage giant Freddie Mac posted a $2 billion loss in the third quarter, and the Commerce Department said construction of single-family homes last month was the slowest in 16 years.

Despite the housing news, Wall Street rallied today on higher oil prices. In New York trading, oil gained more than $3 to close back above $98 a barrel. That helped oil company stocks, and in turn the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 51 points to close at 13,010. The Nasdaq rose 3 points to close above 2,596.

And that`s it for the news summary tonight. Now: what`s not happening in Iraq; more stem cell developments; wireless combat; gun rights; and working in China.

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JIM LEHRER: Politics in Iraq, and to Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL: By nearly every measure, the level of violence in Iraq seems to be on the decline, for now. But what has become of the next hurdle, the plan to put a working government in place? For that, we turn to two experts who have been keeping track of what has turned into a long- running political stalemate in Baghdad.

Feisal Istrabadi served as Iraq`s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations until this fall. He`s now a visiting professor of law at Indiana University in Bloomington. And Juan Cole is a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Welcome to you both.

Mr. Istrabadi, so we have heard that the violence is down. The U.S. military says it`s down 55 percent since last June. What happened to the political piece?

FEISAL ISTRABADI, Indiana University, Bloomington: Well, the political piece is a very complicated part of this. There has been very little progress, I`m sorry to say, on some of the large political compromises.

Fundamentally, there are parties whose bases were sectarian and ethnic groupings, and rather than as sort of pan-Iraqi agenda. These were the parties that were elected into the parliament. These parties have found it very difficult to make compromises on fundamental issues, although I still am hopeful that the existence of this sort of space, which the surge seems to have managed very effectively to make, will allow for the kind of compromises that I think need to be made.

GWEN IFILL: Juan Cole, we heard today of this brewing feud which seems to have erupted between Prime Minister Maliki and Vice President Hashimi. Is that an example of what Feisal Istrabadi is talking about?

JUAN COLE, University of Michigan: It`s so discouraging that these high Iraqi officials who are presiding over a country that really is broken, which has millions of pressing problems, are behaving like kindergartners.

First, al-Maliki last spring wouldn`t meet with his vice president, who`s from the Sunni fundamentalist party, Tariq Al-Hashimi. They couldn`t find time for each other, and then al-Hashimi got in a snit about that and his party withdrew from the government, so it`s not a national unity government anymore.

And now Maliki is saying al-Hashimi is not -- as vice president, he has the responsibility of signing off on legislation, that there are 26 bills with him that he`s refusing to sign off on. So they`re blaming the stagnation on one another. They`re absolutely refusing to compromise with one other.

Al-Maliki, when the Sunni parties withdrew from his cabinet, instead of going to them and saying, "What do you want? How could I bring you back in? What compromises are necessary here?" Al-Maliki fired them, basically, said they were absentee cabinet members, because they had resigned and refused to come to their offices. And this denies them their pensions and other prerogatives. So the whole thing seems to be very petty.

GWEN IFILL: Is it pettiness, Mr. Istrabadi? Or is there something more fundamental at the root of this about the structure that was put in place or that people were trying to put in place for this new government?

FEISAL ISTRABADI: Well, I think there are structural problems. Fundamentally, as I said, you have parties that posited themselves, on all sides, either as ethic parties, which is what the Kurds did, or as confessional parties, sectarian parties, which is what the Arab Shia and Arab Sunni of Iraq did.

And these were the parties that unfortunately in the system that we inherited from the Bremer vice regency, these were the parties that were then elected.

And so, in a sense, they were -- each of these parties was elected based upon their differences. And so once they get to power, they find it very difficult to make the compromises necessary. And a lot of it is personal, and a lot of it is very petty, as Professor Cole has pointed out.

GWEN IFILL: Well, let me ask you, Mr. Istrabadi, continuing on this point, to just tick off a couple of the goals that people had set for this new government. One of them was the oil revenue sharing law. What became of that?

FEISAL ISTRABADI: Well, I have to say, I mean -- and this was, in fact, a point I wanted to make, but then you started to ask another question. There are some very important issues that face Iraq, and there are some less important issues. In my judgment, the oil revenue law as such is less important.

The fact of the matter is a modus vivendi has developed between the parties so that there`s actual sharing of oil revenues going on. There`s not a law, but more importantly than merely passing a law and ignoring it, which is part of the history of the region -- not just Iraq -- is that, in lieu of passing a law, there is actually a modus vivendi between the parties on this issue.

What`s more critical to me, however, is that issues of the structural defects that have arisen in Iraq in the last two or three years are not being addressed, not whether there`s a foreign investment law or an oil revenue sharing law, but structural defects which led, for instance, very nearly in the last few weeks to a Turkish invasion in the north, because the constitution created such a weak government in Baghdad that it is not an effective interlocutor, in my judgment, regionally on the international stage.

These are the structural issues that I think we should be looking at. And they`re far more important, in my judgment, than some of these other issues.

GWEN IFILL: Well, I wonder if Mr. Cole agrees with you. It seems that the United States was putting a lot of its eggs in the basket of getting these benchmarks met. Were they off on the wrong tangent, in your opinion?

JUAN COLE: Well, no, I think the benchmarks were worthy, and they were worked out, in fact, with the participation of the existing Iraqi government, and they were signed off on by Mr. al-Maliki. But there are structural problems here. The problem is that I don`t see how you will get past them, given the current configuration of things.

And so the Americans really have to play with the pieces that are on the chess board. You can`t invent new pieces. And the problem is that the actors we have on the political stage now don`t seem very interested in compromise.

GWEN IFILL: Pardon me. When you say the actors on the stage, are you talking about the prime minister, the vice president, the U.S.?

JUAN COLE: All of them, yes, the vice president, and the prime minister, and even the regional government leaders, like Massoud Barzani. They`re all maximalists. They want it all.

And so Barzani has, in the Kurdistan Regional Government up north, has a big map in his mind of what Kurdistan will look like after everything is over, and it includes a lot of the rest of Iraq and maybe some other countries, too. And he`s coddling these PKK guerillas and baiting Turkey, which may well invade and destabilize things.

And then al-Maliki has not really reached out to the Sunni Arab community. He`s had some talks with members of these tribal awakening groups, but he seems to be more interested in playing the Sunni`s off against each other, really, than in making genuine compromises with them.

And then the Sunni Arabs, I think, still just don`t get it, that they`re 20 percent of the population and their former dominance of the country is over with, but that they can get rich, and be well off, and have productive lives, if only they find ways of compromising with the new situation.

You know, when we talk about the surge being successful, we should keep in mind that it`s only a relative success. There are nearly 400 attacks a month in Baghdad. There`s attacks, 100 a week, in al-Anbar province. A thousand people are dying a month.

I mean, in all of the North Ireland troubles over decades I think over 3,000 died, so that number is dying every three months here. So it`s not a calm situation. But the situation has improved to the point where you could imagine imaginative politicians, people who are willing to reach out, if you had a Nelson Mandela or even somebody who would trade horses, like a Lyndon Johnson, who would go out and take advantage of this thing to make a deal.

GWEN IFILL: Well, let me ask you both. Finally, Mr. Istrabadi, starting with you, does the U.S. have a constructive role that it can play to get this thing moved off the dime? And lacking a Nelson Mandela figure and having to deal with the hand you`re dealt in the person of Mr. Maliki, can the U.S. afford for him to fail at this?

FEISAL ISTRABADI: Well, a U.S. ambassador, Frank Richardoni (ph), once said, "If there ever was an Iraqi Mandela, he died under torture in a Baathist prison." We have the hand we`re dealt.

Professor Cole is right. We should play with all the pieces on the chessboard. I think that the United States doesn`t realize it has -- and I`m sorry, I`m not a chess player, I think there are 16 pieces on each side -- the United States needs to realize that there is a full panoply of pieces on the chessboard.

There are alternatives. And if one individual cannot get the job done, there are alternatives.

The United States has actually played a destructive role in failing to encourage movements within parliament through constitutional means of a realignment whereby centrists and moderates can emerge. The United States has put its eggs in a particular basket. And I think that it`s time, perhaps, to think about creating that sort of middle, which exists in parliament, but it simply has to be tapped into and encouraged.

GWEN IFILL: And Mr. Cole?

JUAN COLE: Well, you know, they really do need to revise their laws on excluding the ex-Baathists from public life. There are literally tens of thousands of capable Sunni Arabs that have been excluded by those laws.

And although the cabinet now has reported out a draft of such a revision, it`s meeting deep opposition in parliament. They really do need laws on petroleum investment and petroleum revenue sharing, because nobody is going to invest in Iraq without it. And without the revenue sharing being nailed down, everybody is going to remain suspicious of one another.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Juan Cole, Mr. Feisal Istrabadi, thank you both very much.

FEISAL ISTRABADI: Thank you. It`s a pleasure.

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JIM LEHRER: Now, the new stem cell story, and to Jeffrey Brown.

JEFFREY BROWN: The excitement today was over new studies that suggest a way around the ethical, practical and financial controversies that have characterized the stem cell debate for so long.

Two teams of scientists, from Japan and the University of Wisconsin, reported they were able to reprogram human skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells, without using embryos or women`s eggs. Robert Lanza, a leading researcher on embryonic cells, called it a "scientific milestone, the biological equivalent of the Wright brothers` first airplane."

On the other side, Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called it a "very significant breakthrough that would be readily acceptable to Catholics."

And James Battey of the National Institutes of Health said he saw "no reason on Earth why this would not be eligible for federal funding."

To help explain this, we turn to Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist and professor at Brown University. He also serves as an adviser to the NewsHour`s Science Unit.

Well, Ken, let`s start with the science here. What does it actually mean to reprogram cells?

KENNETH MILLER, Cell Biologist: Well, what it means to reprogram cells, builds upon essentially a trick. And it`s a trick that our own reproductive cells pull off when a sperm and egg unite to form an embryo.

The cells in an adult body -- skin cells, muscle cells, nerve cells -- are sort of at dead ends. In other words, that skin cell is going to remain a skin cell; that muscle cell is going to remain a muscle cell.

But our reproductive cells have the ability to go back to stage one, form a single-cell embryo, and then grow into every one of the tissues and cells in the body. That reprogramming is something that happens with us normally between each generation.

What developmental biologists have longed to understand is how that reprogramming takes place. And what this development means today is that we are a little bit closer to understanding how to switch on the reprogramming, take one of our adult cells, trick it into thinking it`s part of an embryo, and hopefully get that cell to develop into cells that we really need to repair or to heal the body.

JEFFREY BROWN: And this work came out of studies that were done on mice, right? We talked about it on the program when that was done. So what`s the advance here?

KENNETH MILLER: Well, the advance here, on one hand, the advance isn`t much. In other words, you could minimize it. You could say, back in June, three laboratories reported that it was possible to pull this feat off, of taking an ordinary adult cell, sticking a few extra genes in it, and reprogramming it to become a embryonic stem cell, and that was done in one species, mice.

The development today is now it`s been done in another species. And you might say, "Big deal." But that other species happens to be human beings, human cells. And now it`s getting close to having direct application in hospitals and in laboratories.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, so let`s talk about the real reason, though, for the excitement is because, as I said in the intro, it allows the potential to side-step -- start with the ethical problems that have been there. How does this allow people to get around those?

KENNETH MILLER: Well, it may allow people to get around this. Let`s be very clear about that.

The big ethical dilemma that has faced everyone working with embryonic stem cells is, to get them, you`ve got to take them out of an embryo. And that usually means that embryo has to be destroyed in the process.

Now, if you`re working with human embryonic stem cells, it`s a human embryo you have to destroy. And for obvious reasons, that`s a problem, and it`s a problem more so for some people than others, but it is still a problem.

Now, the important thing to emphasize is that people doing this research have never wanted to destroy embryos. They just want cells that know the tricks that the embryo has mastered. And ultimately what one hopes to do is to understand specifically what genes are activated and how those tricks take place.

So the current technology seems to argue that what we are able to do at this point is to take cells from an ordinary adult, cells just under the skin -- in one case, in the Wisconsin studies, cells derived from the foreskin of a newborn baby -- take those cells, insert a little mixture of just four genes into those cells, activate those genes.

And those cells seem to become reprogrammed to such an extent that they act in the laboratory very much like embryonic stem cells react. And what this means, essentially, is that we may have been able in these two laboratories to produce cells that have all the capabilities and all the potentials of embryonic stem cells without ever producing or sacrificing an embryo.

And I think that`s good news, regardless of how one feels about the ethics of conventional embryonic stem cell research.

JEFFREY BROWN: The researchers were clear about the potential drawbacks here. Talk a little bit about that, including the potential of introduction of cancer?

KENNETH MILLER: Oh, absolutely. The trick in both laboratories -- one laboratory in Kyoto and San Francisco -- they were collaborating jointly -- and the other at the University of Wisconsin -- each laboratory used a slightly different trick.

But in both cases, they took four genes and inserted them into human cells by using a virus. Viruses are, in effect, little packages of protein and DNA that are specialized at getting genes into cells. So it`s a logical choice.

But the first problem is the virus itself goes in, and you don`t know where those genes, that DNA is going to insert. So that could cause unpredictable damage to the cell into which these genes are inserted.

The second problem is that one of the genes that was used by one of the groups is known as the Meconca gene (ph). And the Meconca (ph) gene is strongly associated with a variety of types of cancer.

And in an earlier study this year in mice, the Japanese group showed that mice regenerated by using this technique -- in other words, to prove that these things really had the capability of embryonic stem cells, that these mice actually had a much higher incidence of cancer than mice that were produced by other ordinary methods.

So this is a powerful technology, but all powerful technologies are dangerous. And both groups of researchers have expressed an eagerness in their respective publications to find a way to do the same genetic trick without involving viruses and without involving genes that have the potential to do harm. So this is a tricky technique.

JEFFREY BROWN: They did seem to suggest that they thought there was ways around this, that they would solve the problem. So where are we? Remind people of the promise here. And given this, how soon might that day come?

KENNETH MILLER: I`m not going to venture a guess on how soon the day will come. I`m going to talk about this from the point of view of basic biology.

What we have wanted to know about in cell biology are what the tricks are that are used to reprogram cells to bring them into an embryonic state where they`re capable of everything. So that, for example, if someone has a heart attack, and the cardiac muscle cells begin to die in the heart, or stroke and nervous tissue in the brain begins to die, we`d like to be able to take cells and give those cells an instruction, "Become heart muscle cells and fix the heart attack, or become brain neurons and fix the damage from a stroke."

Embryonic cells seem to be capable of doing that. What this research suggests is it might be possible to take cells from an adult human -- no destruction of an embryo -- insert in a relatively small number of genes, and then persuade those cells to, in fact, become nervous tissue cells or to become heart muscle cells.

And in the Japanese study, in fact, both of those cell types were produced in culture, which is very, very exciting. All the dangers that you mentioned are still there, but what it means for every laboratory in the world doing this research is that we are now a technical step closer to actually being able to try these techniques out and work out the kinks in them, so that they become safe and effective.

JEFFREY BROWN: You know, a scientist -- I know you know him -- Douglas Melton at Harvard, he had a great quote today that I want to read to you. He said, after he saw the results, he said, "Once it worked, I hit my forehead and said, `It`s so obvious, but it`s not obvious until it`s done.`" I thought that`s a great way of thinking about how science actually works in a case like this.

KENNETH MILLER: I think it`s absolutely true. And all of this goes back to work that was done in Shinya Yamanaka`s lab at the University of Kyoto almost a year-and-a-half ago. And what his laboratory did was to take embryonic stem cells and very carefully analyze which genes were expressed at higher levels in those cells than you might expect.

He got about 24 candidate genes. And then, one at a time, very systematically, his lab knocked them out until they found four genes that were absolutely essential, couldn`t get rid of them, to maintain the stem cell state. Now, that was a stunning finding. And everybody who read it, myself included, thought, "It can`t be that simple."

But a year later, three laboratories, the one in Kyoto, one in California, and one in Massachusetts, did the logical experiment, which is to take mouse cells, throw in those four genes, activate them, and see if they act like embryonic stem cells. Lo and behold, they did. Hence Dr. Melton`s surprise. Now we know that that very same trick works in human cells, as well, which is truly an exciting development.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Ken Miller, thanks a lot.

KENNETH MILLER: My pleasure.

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JIM LEHRER: Now, the smart phone wars. NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels has our Science Unit report.

SPENCER MICHELS, NewsHour Correspondent: Benjamin Bethurum is a composer. What he sets to music are original ringtones for cell phones, one tactic his employer, Microsoft, is using to try to appeal to the billions of cell phone users in the world.

BENJAMIN BETHURUM, Microsoft: When you`re in a meeting, you`re not embarrassed by your cheesy, you know, synthetic ringtone.

SPENCER MICHELS: Eighty percent of Americans own cell phones. And worldwide, three billion phones exist, a huge market that keeps growing and changing as new phones become more like computers.

Microsoft is one of many companies hoping to cash in on the cell phone phenomenon. Bethurum`s specialty: making sounds that will allow phone buyers, especially younger people, to differentiate themselves from the crowd.

BENJAMIN BETHURUM: It shows who you are. It says, "Hey, I like hip- hop," or, "Hey, you know what, I like classical music, and I`m going to show it off."

SPENCER MICHELS: While the hits just keep on coming, a variety of companies involved in the cell phone industry are innovating on other fronts, as well. And Microsoft and its competitors, including just recently Google, are in the chase.

What they are chasing is Apple`s iPhone, a device sometimes called a smart phone that Steve Jobs introduced in January.

STEVE JOBS, CEO, Apple: What we want to do is make a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been and super-easy to use.

SPENCER MICHELS: The iPhone, with a colorful touch screen display, allows users on the go to connect to the Internet, get e-mail, listen to music, play games, take and store photos, get directions, and make phone calls and send text messages. It sold 1.4 million units in its first 90 days amid intense publicity and advertising.

KEVEN GUILLORY, Radio Producer: It`s not a picture, dude. That`s a movie.

SPENCER MICHELS: Oh, that`s the movie?

San Francisco radio producer Keven Guillory, and apple enthusiast, was among the early iPhone buyers.

KEVEN GUILLORY: Idiots can do it. I can do it. I mean, seriously, my 6-year-old kid picked it up and started playing with it, and it`s incredible what she did. And she`s not a geek.

SPENCER MICHELS: Guillory says the iPhone, which Apple originally priced at $600, but then reduced to $400, can do nearly everything his computer can do.

KEVEN GUILLORY: It`s faster and better. The only downside is the screen is not as big as my laptop.

SPENCER MICHELS: The quick success of the iPhone was contagious. One hundred and forty cell phone models run Microsoft`s Windows Mobile, and Steve Ballmer, the CEO, says he`s happy to take advantage of Apple`s assist.

STEVE BALLMER, CEO, Microsoft: That stimulated interest, whether it comes from us and from competition, it`s really helping us drive sales.

SPENCER MICHELS: There`s no agreement in the industry on what actually constitutes a smart phone. Even that term isn`t used by everybody. But unlike my regular cell phone, most so-called smart phones, like this Samsung BlackJack II, have a computer-like operating system -- in this case, Microsoft`s Mobile 6 -- which can accommodate a lot of programs or applications made by a variety of companies.

The software that makes cell phone screens look like computer screens also allows advertisers to put Internet ads directly in front of the user. Microsoft wants in on that action and is today heavily promoting new features, including real-time traffic reports, to lure buyers.

CONVENTION HOST: Please welcome the CEO of Microsoft Corporation, Steve Ballmer.

SPENCER MICHELS: Ballmer recently spoke at a wireless communications meeting, where he hailed smart phones as the most popular device around.

STEVE BALLMER: Consumers will want phones that span all of their life personas, my work life, my personal life.

SPENCER MICHELS: Ballmer`s vision makes sense to Andrew Seybold, an industry analyst and educator.

ANDREW SEYBOLD, Wireless Industry Analyst: I get a chance to see a lot of things in backrooms that I can`t really talk about, but there are a huge number of things coming that are going to make life easier for everybody with our wireless phone.

CELL PHONE DEVELOPER: We have some prototype software that is not yet released.

SPENCER MICHELS: But some people have trouble operating a multifunction phone. Microsoft has set up this lab, where subjects try to use new smart phones, and company researchers observe them and then try to make the phones easier to use.

CELL PHONE DEVELOPER: OK, I`m going to give you a little hint.

CELL PHONE TESTER: OK.

CELL PHONE DEVELOPER: Now that you`re there, you see the button where it says "All Programs"?

CELL PHONE TESTER: Ah, yes.

CELL PHONE DEVELOPER: Go ahead and hit that.

CELL PHONE TESTER: OK. There`s "Contacts."

SPENCER MICHELS: Smart phones today comprise 10 percent of all cell phone sales in the U.S. They`ve been largely targeted toward business users, but the numbers keep increasing. And companies, including Microsoft, are now going after the consumer market.

STEVE BALLMER: If somebody wants to, you know, tell me, "Hey, look, the Rockies just won the World Series here," take a look at the clip from the eighth inning when they scored the go-ahead run, boom, I`ll be...

SPENCER MICHELS: Is that why you went into business? Is that why you went to college, to help people get the Rockies score?

STEVE BALLMER: I went to try to enable people to do things that they want to do, to make them more productive, make their lives more fun, more connected.

SPENCER MICHELS: Connecting people was what was Martin Cooper had in mind when he invented the cell phone 34 years ago at Motorola.

MARTIN COOPER, Cell Phone Inventor: This phone had a battery life of 20 minutes and, of course, you couldn`t hold it up for much longer than that.

SPENCER MICHELS: It took 15 years for Motorola to finally market the cell phone, and Cooper says it`s still incomplete.

MARTIN COOPER: It`s incomplete because cellular is not as reliable as it ought to be, because I`m sure you`ve had a dropped call. Somehow the phones are getting more and more complicated. There are more and more stuff being plowed into them. But don`t you remember the whole idea was to let you make a phone call with freedom, the freedom to be anywhere?

SPENCER MICHELS: While there are some phones that still just make phone calls, the emphasis today is on how much the phones can do.

Enter Google. Rumors that it was working on cell phones proved to be true. The Silicon Valley company, with a stellar reputation for search and advertising, rolled out a software operating system for smart mobile phones that its CEO, Eric Schmidt, and its mobile platform director, Andy Rubin, say will make it much easier for cell phone users to surf the Internet.

ERIC SCHMIDT, CEO, Google: We think that the problem with most people`s mobile phones is they`re not powerful enough. You can`t get all the rich aspects of the Web on your phone. And so we built, with Andy`s help, an operating system that runs inside your phone, that makes it do everything a personal computer can do on your phone.

SPENCER MICHELS: The company has been working on its mobile system in secret for two years. It`s formed alliances with 34 companies that will allow software developers to add any application they want -- say, a map service or a game -- to cell phones using the system.

And Google announced $10 million in prizes for those who build great applications. All that`s a big change since, until now, says Schmidt, phone carriers like Verizon, Sprint and AT&T have tightly controlled what goes on cell phones.

ERIC SCHMIDT: We have been concerned for some time with the concentration in the wireless space around a small number of carriers who don`t give people enough choices. What we want to make sure is that you can go to a store, and take any phone, and connect it to any wireless network.

SPENCER MICHELS: Google`s Andy Rubin give us a preview look at the Android platform on a not-yet-released phone, first with live traffic information.

ANDY RUBIN, Google Mobile: As you see, I`m sliding my finger over this, and I`m getting real-time updates to traffic information as I go down 101. You can get information like you`ve never gotten before.

SPENCER MICHELS: And high-resolution pictures of city intersections.

ANDY RUBIN: This has never been done on a cell phone before.

SPENCER MICHELS: Google expects to have this technology on phones in late 2008. Rubin explained that faster, more powerful chips running computers make the smart phones possible.

ANDY RUBIN: The cost of processing technology has gone down and down over time, so today our cell phones are about as powerful as your personal computer was six years ago, but you`re carrying them around with you every day, you spend eight to ten hours with them, run on batteries, and, of course, they`re connected to the broadband network.

SPENCER MICHELS: But Andrew Seybold thinks there`s a flaw in Google`s approach.

ANDREW SEYBOLD: As much as I respect Google, the wireless industry can`t be an extension of the Internet because wireless bandwidth is finite. It`s a fixed resource, and it is shared bandwidth. The more people who use it in a given area, the less data speed they have.

ERIC SCHMIDT: I completely disagree with the characterization that somehow the wireless network is going to be any different than the wired network. There`s enormous spectrum becoming available through licensing programs, better radio design, faster computers, and so forth.

SPENCER MICHELS: The battle over cell phones, now intensified by Google`s entry, is a familiar battle to PC magazine writer Sascha Segan.

SASCHA SEGAN, PC Magazine: You`re seeing some of the wars in the PC world now starting to be played out in the cell phone world, with Apple joining the game. Nobody is winning. It`s still very much in play.

SPENCER MICHELS: And as usual, the stakes are high. Estimates are that smart phones will comprise 35 percent to 45 percent of the cell phone market by 2015, a market that continues to grow, along with the potential uses of these powerful, high-tech devices.

JIM LEHRER: You can read more from Spencer`s interviews with Google and Microsoft executives on our Web site at PBS.org.

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JIM LEHRER: And now, the guns case at the U.S. Supreme Court, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: Today`s announcement that the justices will examine the constitutionality of the District of Columbia`s handgun ban sets up the first showdown over gun rights at the Supreme Court in decades.

For a look at what`s at stake, we turn to NewsHour regular Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal.

And, Marcia, what`s the case? And who`s asking the Supreme Court for review?

MARCIA COYLE, National Law Journal: OK, here`s what happened, Ray. Dick Heller is a resident of the District of Columbia, and he wanted to have a handgun in his possession at home for personal safety reasons.

He went to register that handgun and came up against the District of Columbia`s law that forbids the registration of handguns. In effect, it forbids the possession of handguns. The law also has other provisions that say, other than handguns, if you have a firearm in the home, it must be unloaded, disassembled, or under a secure lock.

He challenged this law, along with some others, claiming that the law violated his rights under the Second Amendment to bear arms. Eventually, it got to the top federal court for the District of Columbia, and that court ruled 2-1 that the district`s law did, indeed, violate an individual`s right to bear arms, to have firearms under the Second Amendment.

Mr. Heller filed -- I`m sorry, the District of Columbia then filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, and today we heard that the court will hear that case.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, Heller, in his original case, and the District of Columbia, in its defense, made a lot of points at the various appellate levels. Does the U.S. Supreme Court get to pick, in effect, which part of the case it`s going to rule on?

MARCIA COYLE: Yes, it does. In this case, the district did try to narrow the issue somewhat to focus only on the ban on handguns, but the court rewrote the question that the district presented to it, and really is going to the heart of the issue that we`ve heard debated for years. It asks whether an individual has a right, under the Second Amendment, to have firearms in his personal possession.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, let`s remind people what the exact wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution is. It says, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." When was the last time the court was asked to rule on whether people can own guns?

MARCIA COYLE: It`s hard to believe, but it was in 1939, and the case involved two bootleggers who wanted to transport a sawed-off shotgun across state lines. They were charged with violating a federal gun registration law.

The court there unanimously said that the Second Amendment was not meant to protect those two bootleggers, but the court didn`t say much more, or didn`t say much with clarity about what the Second Amendment really does mean.

And so we`ve had this intense debate ever since as to whether it protects the individual right or whether it only protects individuals who are part of a militia or perhaps, as we would call it today, a National Guard.

RAY SUAREZ: So this has the potential, if I understand the way you`ve mentioned the court rewrote the question, to make law nationwide with wide applicability for states that have gun laws on their books?

MARCIA COYLE: This is potentially a landmark case; there`s no question about that. But this case also has an important wrinkle in it.

The Supreme Court has never expressly said that the Second Amendment applies to the states. There are some rights in the Bill of Rights that the court has not, as they said, incorporated to apply to the states. They protect only against federal interference.

The lower court applied the Second Amendment to the District of Columbia because it sees the district as a federal enclave. Now, a Supreme Court decision may not have a direct impact on the states, but the states are watching it very closely because whatever the court decides will be extremely influential in how state courts view provisions in their constitutions or local gun laws and how they interpret those, in terms of whether it protects an individual right.

RAY SUAREZ: Because there are places elsewhere in the country where the right to own a handgun and have it in your home is not absolutely untrammeled. It`s confined; it`s regulated. There`s registration requirements, stuff like that?

MARCIA COYLE: That`s true. In fact, I was surprised that I think it`s 43 of 50 states have state constitutional provisions that protect the individual right to possess firearms. The Supreme Court can rule somewhat narrowly, if it chooses. It could say there is an individual right, but perhaps it may also say that right can be reasonably regulated. None of our rights are absolute.

RAY SUAREZ: Let`s talk about timeline. When the Supreme Court grants a petition in the fall, right after a new term begins, what are we looking at plausibly as when this case might be argued and ruled on?

MARCIA COYLE: Well, based on the number of cases they`ve already decided to hear oral arguments in, it looks like this case will be argued some time in March. And given how controversial and possibly complicated it is, we probably won`t see a decision until late June.

It`s also possible that the Supreme Court will ask the Bush administration, the solicitor general of the United States, to weigh in with its views on the issue. When the Justice Department was under John Ashcroft, the Bush administration did take a position in a federal court case that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, aside from a militia right.

RAY SUAREZ: Marcia Coyle, thanks a lot.

MARCIA COYLE: My pleasure.

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JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the dangers Chinese workers face making products that are exported to the United States. Judy Woodruff has the story.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Contaminated pet food, tainted seafood, and toxic toys, all part of a huge recall on Chinese imports in recent months, valued at billions of dollars.

AMERICAN CONSUMER: Now I will be looking at the labels to see if it`s from China.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The recalls are raising concerns among U.S. consumers and in Congress and U.S. government regulatory agencies. They also have prompted crackdowns in China.

Last month, Chinese authorities announced the arrest of almost 800 people involved in the sale or production of tainted food, drugs, and agricultural products. In July, China executed the country`s chief of the food and drug administration, after he was found guilty of taking bribes and failing to supervise production properly.

And now questions have been raised about working conditions in manufacturing facilities and the dangers to Chinese workers themselves. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Loretta Tofani wrote a series of articles that appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune chronicling the human cost of poor working conditions in the factories, ranging from airborne poisons inhaled by workers to primitive machines that sever limbs.

And with me now is freelance journalist Loretta Tofani. She spent more than a year working on her series "American Imports, Chinese Deaths." Earlier in her career, she reported for the Washington Post and was based in Beijing for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Loretta Tofani, it`s good to have you with us. I want to set up a little background here. You have been a reporter for 25 years. You moved to Salt Lake City, decided to open an imported furniture store, started traveling to China. And what did you find?

LORETTA TOFANI, Journalist: I found that there were carcinogens being used by people, by the workers, in a really extravagant manner. People were spraying benzenes. There were people who had silicosis from making our metal goods.

And it would seem like it was in every industry. It was furniture. It was shoes, clothes, marble tiles, granite countertops. Virtually every industry went through this system, where workers were living and breathing in carcinogens or using machines that were unguarded and resulted in amputations.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So you started out as a business person. You were traveling to China as an importer. At some point, you shut down the business, but continued your reporting. How did you get access to these places?

LORETTA TOFANI: I continued getting access to these places while I was still on a business visa, but then I went back as a reporter with a grant, with a travel grant, and I got my way into hospitals, and I met workers who were dying of diseases resulting from making, from using carcinogens while they were making products for America.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let`s talk about some of these pictures. We`re going to show our audience some pictures. I think you took some of these pictures. But one is a picture of what you call a plainer. Tell us the significance of that.

LORETTA TOFANI: That machine amputated the fingers of at least two men. I talked to both of them. Both of those men were making furniture -- couches, to be exact -- for export to Omaha, Nebraska, New York, and California, according to the import documents.

I spoke to the factory owner, and he blamed it on the worker, but the reality is that that machine does not have any guards on it, so that it`s very easy to lose a finger, a hand, even an arm while you`re sawing. And those guards are required under ILO conventions and also under Chinese law.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There`s another picture of a man using a spray painter. Tell us about that.

LORETTA TOFANI: Yes, that man has no mask, and he is spraying oil- based paint containing lead. There was no ventilation in that factory, as would be required in, say, an American factory and is required, actually, under Chinese law, as well. And there`s no spray booth, a booth that would control the fumes, so that other workers are also breathing in those fumes.

So many workers have come down with various forms of cancer as a result of spraying this paint with lead. So while we`re worried about the lead on our toys, actually, workers are bathing in lead while they`re making our products, not just toys.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There`s a picture of a man sitting on what looks like a hospital bed with an oxygen tank over to the side.

LORETTA TOFANI: He`s dying. He made charbroil stoves for export to the United States. His job was to place the outside of the stove into a machine that sanded the steel, and so tiny fragments of the metal would be in the air, and he breathed in the fragments. He had a mask, but it was not good enough.

And also, again, there was not ventilation, and there was a very high level of silica dust in the air, according to the inspection report that I obtained. He was just exhausted, and had trouble breathing, and went to the hospital, and was diagnosed with this fatal lung disease, silicosis.

And it`s not just, you know, the manufacturer of the stove. It`s many, many industries and many, many goods that we get across a wide variety of industries end up causing silicosis in Chinese workers, you know, from jewelry to car parts, virtually anything, metal, ceramics. There is a long, long list.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Loretta, you`ve talked to people at a number of U.S. businesses that buy products made by workers like these. What are these U.S. businesspeople telling you?

LORETTA TOFANI: There is a range. The smaller businesses sometimes have never seen the factories. Some of them even just order by the Internet.

But larger businesses, generally the businessmen will go to the factories. Sometimes they seem aware of these conditions. But they say, "OK, China is maybe 40, 50 years behind where we are, and so of course their machines are not up to date. Of course they don`t have the protective equipment we have. Yes, they don`t have the ventilation. And, yes, when costs go up and they get all that stuff, then maybe it`s time for Micronesia."

Meaning it`s time to import, to change countries, and go to another country where the cost of labor is cheap, because they don`t have to provide -- they don`t have to provide all this safety equipment for workers.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Loretta Tofani, freelance journalist who worked on this series on Chinese workers, we thank you very much for talking with us.

LORETTA TOFANI: Thank you.

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JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day.

The U.N. slashed the estimated number of AIDS cases worldwide. Officials acknowledged the old counting method was flawed.

Scientists reported a major step forward in creating human stem cells without using embryos.

And Democrats in the U.S. House charged the Pentagon and President Bush are using scare tactics to win their way on Iraq war funding.

We`ll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I`m Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.