The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

PHIL PONCE: Good evening. I'm Phil Ponce. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour this Christmas night a premature landing in Hawaii for the around-the-world balloonists, holiday shopping on the Internet - Lee Hochberg reports from Oregon - Margaret Warner has the discussion; Rod Minott reports from Seattle on the problems of housing migrant workers; Elizabeth Farnsworth talks with Indira Lakshmanan, Asia Bureau chief for the Boston Globe, and we close with a seasonal poem read by poet laureate Robert Pinsky. It all follows our summary of the news this Christmas night.

NEWS SUMMARY

PHIL PONCE: A trio of balloonists abandoned their attempt today to fly nonstop around world. Weather defeated them over the Pacific Ocean. They were forced to splash down near Honolulu, Hawaii. The crew - Richard Branson, Steve Fossett, and Pere Lindstrand - were retrieved from the water by U.S. Coast Guard helicopters. The balloon got sucked into a low pressure system overnight, and the crew was not able to find a strong enough wind to carry them to the West Coast. We'll have more on the balloon adventure right after the news summary. Winter weather continued to disrupt the Christmas holiday. More than 600,000 people were without power in the South. Sleet and freezing rain toppled power lines and glazed roads. In North Carolina, emergency officials urged motorists to stay off the highways, as more freezing temperatures are expected. In New York City, it was the first white Christmas since 1976. Dozens of deaths have been blamed on the weather nationwide. In California, freezing temperatures have destroyed the state's entire lemon crop and much of his orange crop. The losses are estimated at about $600 million. Industry experts say citrus prices could triple in the supermarkets. We'll have a related story on the Western fruit crop later in the program. The world celebrated Christmas today. In the Holy Land thousands of Christian Pilgrims flocked to religious services in Jerusalem. They shared the city with Muslim worshippers observing the holy month of Ramadan. Elsewhere in the Middle East U.S. troops spent Christmas on high alert aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. Santa made a special visit on an F18 fighter plane. American troops in Kuwait celebrate Christmas with the special cake and baseball. In Rome, Pope John II delivered holiday messages in 58 languages at St. Peters Basilica. He also prayed for peace in the Middle East and called for worldwide abolition of the death penalty. And in Cuba the Communist government declared Christmas Day a permanent national holiday. It was abolished nearly three decades ago. The first family rang in Christmas early this morning at midnight Mass at the National Cathedral in Washington. The Clintons spent the rest of the holiday with relatives and friends at the White House; they exchanged gifts and feasted on traditional Christmas fare. On the impeachment story today New York Democratic Sen. Patrick Moynihan said he favors censuring President Clinton, not removing him from office. Moynihan's remarks were published in today's New York Times. He said he was increasingly confident there was support in both parties to cut short an impeachment trial in the Senate. He said removing Mr. Clinton could "destabilize the presidency." Moynihan is not seeking re-election in the year 2000. That's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to deflated balloonists, Internet holiday shopping, housing migrant workers, a foreign correspondence, and a Christmas poem.

FOCUS - DEFLATED MISSION

PHIL PONCE: The balloon story is first.

PHIL PONCE: It's the last of the great aviation challenges no one has met -- to circle the Globe by hot air balloon. Last Friday morning, three men boarded a 270-foot high balloon called "The ICO Global Challenge," named for a telecommunications company sponsoring the trip. At 924 a.m. local time they lifted off from Marrakech Morocco, beginning a journey they hoped to take them 24,000 miles around the world, landing in Western Europe shortly after the new year.

SPOKESMAN: I'm really enjoying this.

PHIL PONCE: Longtime rival Steve Fossett, a wealthy Chicago commodities broker, and British billionaire Richard Branson joined forces for their most recent attempt to circle the earth. Each had tried four times before. Pilot Per Lindstrand of Sweden was the third member of the team. Preparations for a joint flight began almost immediately after Fossett's last attempt failed in August. He was pulled out of the South Pacific after plunging 30,000 feet into the ocean. Still, his last flight established a world record by circling nearly half the globe. But there were problems for the new team from the start. First, Libya said the balloon couldn't enter its air space; it later relented. Then Mediterranean storms threatened to drive the balloon over Iraq during a recent air attacks by British and American forces. The balloonists' operations center in London dealt with that crisis, guiding the crew through a narrow corridor between buffers of restricted air space. They passed within 60 miles of Iraq. Then China initially refused permission for a fly over north of the 26th Parallel, another crisis for the operations center back in London.

SPOKESMAN: We've just got permission to do this - to go to China.

PHIL PONCE: By Wednesday, the balloon soared over the Himalayas and headed for the Korean Peninsula. Thursday it passed over Japan and set out for a dangerous Pacific Crossing.

SPOKESMAN: I have the balloon in sight; he's over the Sea of Japan. He's about 310 - and in about an 11 o'clock position - contact.

PHIL PONCE: But then controllers in London became concerned when the balloon seemed headed toward a low pressure area, something that had the potential to end the trip.

SPOKESMAN: We've known for a few days that there was a trough in the Mid Pacific and a trough of low pressure can actually suck you down to different latitudes, as I've explained many times, a bit like a bath plug being taken out and the water rushes down. We were racing to get ahead of that trough. I thought we stood a pretty good chance. In fact, we missed it just by one hour.

PHIL PONCE: At about 2:30 p.m. Eastern standard time the balloon came down at Sea 10 miles off the Hawaiian island of Oahu. It was to short of what was supposed to been the halfway point. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters rescued the crew from the water, and all three men were reported to be in good condition.

PHIL PONCE: Joining me now Tom Hamilton, editor of "Balloon Life Magazine."

Welcome, Mr. Hamilton.

TOM HAMILTON, Editor, Balloon Life Magazine: Good afternoon.

PHIL PONCE: Could be expand a little bit more on what happened, why the mission failed, so to speak?

TOM HAMILTON: Well, as they were going across the Pacific, the operations center there talked about the trough. Think of it as a long wall, a wall that probably stretched from the West Coast of the United States out past south of the Hawaiian islands. As they approached that wall, the winds basically stopped them, actually caused them to turn to their right to the direction traveled or down to the South. It may have been, I think, a few hundred miles farther North in the jet stream. I think they would have been able to fly around it, up towards the Gulf of Alaska, and then entered the United States and probably in the Northwest area.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Hamilton, how does one fly a balloon? How does it work? How do you steer one?

TOM HAMILTON: Well, you don't steer it precisely. You go with the wind. So if you're in a balloon, there is no wind because you're traveling with that. And by going up in elevation or down in elevation, you're able to seek winds in different directions, and that's how they avoided the Korean Peninsula, for instance. They were at about 31,000 feet; the meteorologists had them come down to about 27,000 feet, and they actually got a right turn, were able to miss North Korea, which, in part, probably hurt them in being able to keep the track that they would have liked to have get around this trough.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Hamilton, what makes it so tough to make it around the world?

TOM HAMILTON: Well, there are four main obstacles. The first one is weather. You've got to be able to put weather systems together, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, over a two-week period time and be able to predict that, and weather is, as we know, no matter where welive, can constantly be changing. Second, your equipment has to be able to hold up. There's - at 30,000 feet you're really stressing the equipment, much more so than you are at 3,000 feet. Third, the people physically and mentally who are doing it have to be up to the challenge. And fourth, the political environment - there were four countries denied them permission; China restricted it where they could go, they graciously allowed them to go through the middle of the country. And those are the four things that all the teams have to overcome.

PHIL PONCE: And, Mr. Hamilton, on that last point, why is it that countries are so sensitive about any encroachment on their space? What do you hear?

TOM HAMILTON: Well, in the case of China, it was actually an air traffic control problem. They gave permission for the very north of the country and the very south of the country, but it turns out in the middle of the country they still handle air traffic control just simply by voice communications. And it was going - it was really more a safety concern from the standpoint of the Chinese, and they were very gracious; they worked with them; they allowed the team to go through, although they have since the ICO Global went through, have asked the other teams in the other hemisphere not to launch until they've worked out the problems.

PHIL PONCE: And there are some other teams waiting, yes?

TOM HAMILTON: There are five other teams, for them in the Northern Hemisphere that will be using the same type of balloon as the ICO Global Challenger, which is actually a rosy air balloon. It's basically a gas balloon that uses hot air to keep the gas expanded, instead of dropping ballast in the - and the other team is Team Remax; they're using a pure gas balloon. They're going to be flying literally at the edge of space - between eighty and a hundred and thirty thousand feet - and they hope to launch next week from Australia.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Hamilton, some people have been saying that this flight - this attempt was supposed to have been like the best attempt, the best effort. Why were people saying that?

TOM HAMILTON: Well, his team had probably the most experienced people on it. Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand have done several long distance flights before together. Steve Fossett now has made three or four of the longest flights; he has a tremendous amount of experience; they have a tremendous support team working with them. They have a tremendous amount of financial backing, and they probably have about the most experience of everybody out there.

PHIL PONCE: You mentioned financial backing. How expensive is it to mount one of these?

TOM HAMILTON: Several million dollars.

PHIL PONCE: So, it's not a hobby just for the - for the casual hobbyist?

TOM HAMILTON: This one probably wouldn't be, no.

PHIL PONCE: We saw - I understand there was a lot of high-tech equipment on the balloon, computers and that sort of thing, and yet, there's still some very real - very real risks - some real dangers in this, yes?

TOM HAMILTON: Yes, there are, particularly, you know, in crossing the Pacific, or even when they were crossing the Himalayan Mountains. If the weather had turned bad on them and they had to try to land the aircraft or abandon the aircraft, in fact, when the consideration of the Chinese may have forced them to land at one point, it would have been, it would have taken a week to get a ground crew in to try to recover them out of the Tibetan Plateau. In the Pacific, they probably weren't going to be anywhere near the shipping lanes; it could take a long time to get somebody to them.

PHIL PONCE: And according to Mr. Fossett, in his last failed attempt in August, when he was flying solo, he was almost killed.

TOM HAMILTON: Yes. His balloon - Gas L - ruptured, and he was going down - his altimeter pegged out at 2500 feet a minute - he jettisoned some fuel tanks right at the very end. He thinks that helped to cushion the blow because he still had a canopy above him with some gas in it and acting sort of like a parachute, but he was plummeting down in the storm.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Hamilton, why do these people do it? What's the drive?

TOM HAMILTON: Well, it's a great challenge, you're actually going out and testing men and equipment here to see if something could be accomplished, and this is a flight that can be accomplished, but the - you're not just driving something around. It takes a tremendous amount of planning and calculating. And it's just simply a great challenge of men and equipment.

PHIL PONCE: A quest for glory, maybe, a quest to get your name in the record books?

TOM HAMILTON: Well, certainly. Only one team is going to be the first one around to accomplish it.

PHIL PONCE: You mentioned that there were several teams waiting. What's your opinion of the likelihood that somebody's going to be able to do it fairly soon?

TOM HAMILTON: It's eventually going to happen. It's difficult to say whether it will happen this year or not. Weather patterns are going to play a lot into it -- the other obstacles that we talked about. Whether it's done this year, next year, or in the near future, it will eventually be accomplished. Steve Fossett and some of the other teams have certainly demonstrated that this is possible to do.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Hamilton, thank you very much for joining us.

TOM HAMILTON: The pleasure's mine.

FOCUS - SHOPPING ON-LINE

PHIL PONCE: Next tonight, shopping on the Internet. Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting begins our report.

LEE HOCHBERG: It's a December unlike any other in the Portland warehouse of Camera World. A 20-year-old company, with just one store and a catalogue business, it began selling its cameras and electronics over the Internet nine months ago. CEO Alessandro Mina says the response has been overwhelming.

ALESSANDRO MINA, President, Camera World: Since this morning we've had 200 - just shy of 200 orders coming in right here, which is about 10 times what one of our salespeople would have taken on the phone.

LEE HOCHBERG: Ten times the number of orders you would have gotten before the web?

ALESSANDRO MINA: Right. Exactly.

LEE HOCHBERG: Camera World had taken 20 years to build its annual sales up to $80 million. In the one year since starting a web site it's added 20 million additional dollars in sales, solely off the web. That's a quarter of its total business.

ALESSANDRO MINA: It's a new phenomenon that we're having a hard time understanding, but it's just growing, almost beyond control.

LEE HOCHBERG: Nationwide, on-line commerce has exploded. Web sales are expected to top $5 billion the year. One in four Internet users makes purchases on-line from department store chains such as Macy's and Nordstrom, from book and music and specialty stores. Industry experts say holiday web purchases have doubled over last season -- millions of consumers, skipping traffic jams, to point, click, and be done with shopping. Concerns about security of payment are fading with 2,000 on-line sites now caring this Better Business Bureau seal of approval and so-called secure servers scrambling credit card information as it's sent over the web. Though a recent study from new media research firm Jupiter Communications found 42 percent of top web sites took six days or longer to respond to customer inquiries, last-minute shoppers are descending on the web, one site even counting down the seconds that remain until Christmas. For traditional businesses built of brick and mortar, on-line commerce has created problems. Powell's Book Store, a longstanding Portland business, has seen its new book sales drop precipitously as many shoppers turn to the web sites of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

KANTH GOLPALPUR, Powell's Books: And the convenience factor is incredible. They offer a lot more contact and ease of ordering and I think that's going to make it incredibly difficult for any independent bookstore to survive

LEE HOCHBERG: Powell's has stayed profitable by emphasizing its inventory of used books, even starting its own use book web site. But E. Commerce could be one more nail in the coffin of smaller bookstores, already struggling to compete with bookstore chains. Not everybody is jumping into the virtual marketplace. Some popular brands like Ralph Lauren and Burton Snow Boards have resisted it for fear of cheapening their brand imagery. Portland based Columbia sportswear says selling off the web would under

undercut its retail distributors and the costly.

DAN HANSON, Columbia Sportswear: It's very new. We're skeptical that it is going to continue to grow and become what you describe - the one-the end all/be all for retail.

LEE HOCHBERG: Marketing Director Dan Hanson says E. Commerce, while convenient, doesn't satisfy some consumer needs.

DAN HANSON: I think it's going to grow wildly, but there will always be a need for the retailer out there who can - who can service of person's needs and put a piece of outerwear on their back.

LEE HOCHBERG: And, yet, Internet geniuses have an answer to that too: New body scanners under development that will send the body measurements to a web site so computer users can virtually try clothes on. These advancements in technology and marketing have political leaders uneasy. In Vancouver, Washington, one of the country's fastest-growing towns, city fathers say virtual sites are replacing real stores.

MARK BROWN: It is driving business away from main streets in every city in this country and into these electronic commerce venues, and, again, it's just extremely unfair.

LEE HOCHBERG: City lobbyist Mark Brown says virtual stores have an unfair competitive advantage over traditional ones, which have to charge tax on every sale. Congress passed a three-year moratorium on sales tax for on-line businesses, a provision Brown says harm cities like Vancouver.

MARK BROWN: We have a lot of vacant retail businesses in our downtown core. The last thing we need is a significant additional unfair competitive advantage for those who will locate somewhere else in another state and perhaps even in another state across the country.

LEE HOCHBERG: Brown says Vancouver city government already is losing a million dollars year in tax revenues. Numbers like that could grow, though, as America embraces easy stay-at-home shopping.

PHIL PONCE: Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on Internet shopping this holiday season, I'm joined by Darryl Peck, CEO of Cyberian Outpost, a company that sells computers, printers, software, and computer games on-line; Maryfran Johnson, executive editor at Computerworld Magazine; and Andrew Whinston, a professor of computer science and information systems at the University of Texas at Austin. He's also author of several books on electronic commerce. Darryl Peck, put what we just saw in some perspective for us. What percentage - how big a bite of all holiday sales this year do you think is being taken by on-line shopping?

DARRYL PECK, CEO, Cyberian Outpost, Inc.: I think it's probably a pretty small bite, but it's a very rapidly growing bite. It certainly has grown an awful lot since last Christmas. I'm not sure what percentage of overall retail sales -- it's probably less than 1 percent, if even that. I don't really know the math on what retail sales are. It's in the trillions, I would imagine. But it's certainly a growing phenomenon that retailers and other direct marketers are having to face on a daily basis.

MARGARET WARNER: Maryfran Johnson, what's your sense of it, fast-growing area?

MARYFRAN JOHNSON, Executive Editor, Computerworld: Oh, it's definitely fast-growing area. It's just that the experience we've had covering the issue for Computerworld is that a lot of the shopping experience on-line still isn't very good. There's a lot of things that the web sites need to be doing that they just either don't have the technology yet for, or don't have the people to do.

MARGARET WARNER: Such as?

MARYFRAN JOHNSON: Such as customer service. It's actually very difficult. There was one survey by Forester Research in Boston the show that of 2/3 of the shopping carts that get started by people on various sites get abandoned before they get to check out.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, we should explain for people who've never shop on-line that a shopping cart if you pick out an item, you click on it with your mouse, you put it in the shopping cart.

MARYFRAN JOHNSON: Right. It puts it - it basically -

MARGARET WARNER: It's a virtual shopping cart.

MARYFRAN JOHNSON: It's the virtual -- it makes a list of your purchases. And then at the very end is when you would put in your name and address and credit card number and all those details.

MARGARET WARNER: And, Professor Whinston, what's your sense of how big a phenomenon this is and whether it's got huge potential?

ANDREW WHINSTON, University of Texas: I believe that it has tremendous potential and, in effect, will really transform the world economy. So you have not only the electronic shopping, especially the Christmas shopping, you have as well the electronic trading. More and more people are trading electronically through E Trade and other companies.

MARGARET WARNER: You're talking about brokerage trades now.

ANDREW WHINSTON: Brokerage trades. More and more people are buying on-line plane tickets, transportation services, which, of course, those of around the holiday times. So, I think you're seeing really a broadening of activity on the Internet as kids get hold of inexpensive web oriented computers to play games, as adults are playing their games with trading securities, so the world is really - especially the U.S. - but the rest of the world will follow - the world is really transforming itself and becoming more used to having interactions by the web.

MARGARET WARNER: Darryl Peck, let's go back to retail sales for now. And, if I were a consumer who didn't know even what a virtual shopping cart was, but I decided I wanted to buy something on-line for this holiday season, how would I know where to start? Let's say I wanted to buy - I don't know - a CD player or a blouse, how would I know where to go?

DARRYL PECK: Well, there are several different ways. Obviously, most of the premier on-line merchants, such as ourselves, right now are running aggressive television advertising campaigns and campaigns, so certainly if you watch television, you're probably going to see our ads. And you know if you're looking for a computer, you can go to Outpost.com. If you're looking for CD, I'm sure CD Now is doing television advertising at the same time. Also, all the search engines online have great listings of all the premier merchants on-line and some of the smaller merchants as well. While there are an enormous number from sites now, it's gotten easier to find them in many ways because of the - there are so many search engines and they do such a good job of bringing the cream to the top. And obviously, with all of the off-line marketing that most premier web sites are doing now, it's easier and easier to get ahold of the URL's or the addresses of these stores.

MARGARET WARNER: But how would I know if this was a legitimate vendor, a legitimate store?

DARRYL PECK: Well, I think that's where really the off-line advertising comes in a lot. Clearly, there are some people who are concerned about shopping on-line, whether they're dealing with a reputable merchant. But we have done a lot research at Outpost.com that shows that consumers have seen television advertising are far more likely to buy from the merchant on-line than if they've only seen advertising for the merchant online.

MARGARET WARNER: Ms. Johnson, there are advantages, are they're not, to shopping on-line? I mean, I'm just thinking, for instance, if I don't have time to go to the store when my stores in my town are open, because I'm at work, I can shop any time.

MARYFRAN JOHNSON: Oh, absolutely. Actually, one of the best ways to have a good experience shopping on-line - and I'm an on-line shopper myself on occasion -- is to know what you're looking for and where you want to go to get it. A lot of people buy their books right now from Amazon.com, but the important thing that seems to be emerging with Internet shopping are some of the things that are very traditional in the real world of retail - brand name, whether you get a good discount, how good the customer service is, if you have a problem on a site. I bought some pens on an Office Max site just last week and was having problems filling out one of the forms, and after about three tries, I got very frustrated, and I searched around on the site and I found the 800 number and I called and talked to customer service person. And they were smart about the way they handled me because she was willing to take my order over the phone and take my charge card. She didn't try to make me go to back to the site and deal with it more, because then I probably wouldn't have.

MARGARET WARNER: And, Professor Whinston, how do the prices compare on-line?

ANDREW WHINSTON: The prices actually are comparable with the prices in the physical stores. In some cases, they're less, especially, for example, if you want to buy a book. If you use one of these smart agents that will find you the best price, you can often find lower prices on some of the smaller on-line bookstores than if you were to go to the big brand names, such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble.com.

MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry. Explain that a little more; I didn't know about this. They're what, a site you can go to that will find you - shop for you?

ANDREW WHINSTON: Yes. That will actually find the best price, so you can indicate a particular book and it will give you the prices of places that are really more competitive than for that particular book than some of the well-known online bookstores. So you have choices, and, of course, you have to use the technology to help you find the right choice, which in the case of a book you want is really the lowest price.

MARGARET WARNER: Ms. Johnson, you were trying to get in here?

MARYFRAN JOHNSON: Yes. I was going to say, of course, you have to factor in things like the shipping in handling charge. And if you buy something like clothing on web, you have to factor in the fact that you may get it and not like it because of the quality or the fit, and then you need to pay the postal charges to send it back. I happen to think one of the biggest benefits of Internet shopping is once you know what you're looking for, of course, is to also be willing to deal with a certain amount inconvenience. And it's supposed to be very convenient at this point, but there was one study that we wrote about in Computerworld that showed that only about 5 percent of the sites out there now selling things actually offer what's considered a really compelling shopping experience, where it's very easy to find what you want, very easy to order it, and then it comes to you quickly in the mail.

MARGARET WARNER: Darryl Peck, as someone sells on-line, what is the key to being successful, to taking care of the problems that say Ms. Johnson just outlined?

DARRYL PECK: Well, she's absolutely right. And there are a lot of keys. Customer service has been our number one priority for the nearly four years we've been selling on the web. We respond to almost all the E-mails within 24 hours. And if we can't respond within 24 hours, we tell them why we can't. We have worked very hard to create good shopping experiences. As a matter of fact, right now a third party, called, Binary Compass, rates a shopping by experience by customers' evaluation - own evaluation at Outpost.com as number one for both computer hardware and computer software. So, we've worked real hard at creating a good shopping experience. If you order by midnight Eastern Time, we'll have it to you tomorrow morning, up to three pounds, the cost of that is only $6, so there is clearly a way to address all the things Ms. Johnson has found in her studies that create problems. We really believe you have to create a compelling shopping experience to get people off the phones or instead of walking down the street to the retail store to make them want to shop on-line. And we have been trying really hard to do that for nearly four years.

MARGARET WARNER: Go ahead.

MARYFRAN JOHNSON: I'm sorry. I was going to say it's also important to keep a perspective about what a very small percentage this still is. There was a study that Odyssey, a marketing research firm in San Francisco did, that showed that 88 percent of U.S. households were going to purchase absolutely nothing on the Internet this year. And of that, that other 12 percent of us that are on-line and going to buy something, most of us are going to only spend, on average, about $275 on-line. So the growth is interesting. It certainly is moving along at a pace, but I don't tend to believe the predictions that say this is going to transform the global economy in a number of years. I think we're looking at maybe a ten to twenty year period that it will take to actually be transforming business on a global scale.

MARGARET WARNER: Who was that who wanted to get back in here?

DARRYL PECK: That's Darryl. I think it's going to be much faster. I mean, it may only be 12 percent - and if that's correct, fine, but a year ago it was probably 1 percent. And that is dramatic growth, and it's growing exponentially. Next year, I imagine it will be considerably more than 12 percent; we're seeing new customers come on-line every day at a fantastic rate right now, and you know, I don't know, I've been to a couple of malls - not this Christmas - last Christmas - went to two malls - it took me an hour and a half to find a parking spot each time and then waited in line for 20 minutes at each store I went in to. And I can tell you that was not a very fun shopping experience. I did most of my shopping on-line this year. But I think that it is going to grow very rapidly and the other thing - keep in mind - is that it is global. The web represents the world's first and only global consumer marketplace, and that's where I think you're really going to see the scale develop as you go overseas.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Whinston, one of the issues that people cite as a reason for their resistance to buying on-line still is apparently the security of their private financial information. How valid a concern is that?

ANDREW WHINSTON: It's certainly a valid concern and companies, I think, are working to reduce that concern as was discussed in the introductory part. There's a lot of very strong cryptographic support to protect your -- the information that you're sending to the - to the company. So I think companies are concerned about that, and they're going to do their best to make consumers feel comfortable with the shopping experience and not fear that information they have will be - will be compromised or that their credit card will be, in effect, stolen from them.

MARGARET WARNER: Ms. Johnson, how do you see the financial - the privacy angle?

MARYFRAN JOHNSON: It's actually - it's a very important concern still to people when they are asked why they do or don't shop on-line. Most of the sites - you'll notice - when you go to them, if you go all the way through that virtual shopping cart, you'll find that you can also call an 800 number and read your credit card number to someone over the phone. Personally, I think that the secure server technology that's used on a lot of the sites is very valid; there haven't been any stories of any - yet anyway - of any big hacks of a database where numbers are stolen. I believe there inevitably will be a certain amount of crime on-line, like there is in the real world, but I don't think it's as much the concern as the fact that people sometimes feel like shopping the web is like wandering around in one of those giant shoe discount places. You don't really know exactly what you're wandering in to, and it takes a while to find it.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you all three very much.

PHIL PONCE: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, housing migrant workers, a foreign correspondence, and a Christmas poem.

FOCUS - HOUSING BLUES

PHIL PONCE: Recently, we reported on a proposal to bring in more foreign labor to help with agricultural harvests in the West and Northwest. Tonight, Rod Minott of KCTS-Seattle reports on the problems of housing migrant workers already in the U.S..

ROD MINOTT: This autumn brought a busy harvest across the orchards of the mid Columbia River Valley. Hundreds of workers arrived to pick what was expected to be a record crop of Washington State apples. Some of these pickers are legal residents, but many others are not. About half are illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America. At sundown near the orchards the Gomez family prepares dinner. The family of six has followed harvests from California to Washington State. Like many other workers, they've been unable to find housing here, so they pitched a tent on some public land just footsteps from the Columbia River. As Maria Gomez makes dinner, her four-month-old son lies nearby in a tent filled with flies. Gomez says homelessness has been especially harsh on the infant, who is ill with asthma.

MARIA GOMEZ: [speaking through interpreter] It's very, very difficult. The doctors have told me to keep him out of the dirt and the wind and the smoke, and it's impossible in this situation. He's very sick right now, but I'm stuck here. We don't have any money. We can't go back to California, and yet, here we can't find any housing, so we're stuck at this place.

ROD MINOTT: Thousands of farm workers like the Gomezes go without basic safe and sanitary housing when harvesting the state's lucrative fruit trees, an industry valued at about $2 billion a year.

LUPE GAMBOA, United Farm Workers Union: You know, the growers get a lot more production and a lot more money per acre.

ROD MINOTT: Lupe Gamboa is with the United Farm Workers Union.

LUPE GAMBOA: It's pretty bad. I mean, the estimates are that there is a shortage of 30,000/40,000 beds in the state, in - and it's especially severe in areas like here in the Columbia Basin where you have huge factory type orchards that have been planted recently, often a thousand acres at a time, you know, such as this one here, but no provision for housing.

ROD MINOTT: Four decades ago, the landmark documentary, "Harvest of Shame," publicized the squalor of migrant farm workers.

SPOKESMAN: We live anywhere, in a tent, under a shade tree, under a river bridge. We drink water out of a creek or anywhere we can get it. We are to blame. We tolerate that stuff. If we stick together and say we won't do it, won't pick your cherries until you give us some rest rooms in the fields for the ladies, some for the men, and some water fit to drink, we won't pick them, we'd get them.

ROD MINOTT: Since this documentary aired, government officials and farm worker advocates say little has changed for migrant workers. According to a rural housing organization, today in America 800,000 farm workers lack adequate shelter. In Eastern Washington State the farming town of Mattawa provides a dramatic example. A decade ago the community had 200 people. Today, 2,000 residents live here year-round. During harvest season, from April to November, the town's population swells to more than 5,000. As a result, many people end up in overcrowded trailer parks. It's not unusual to find ten to twenty people living in a trailer. Farm worker Vicente Naguerra lives in a trailer with five other men.

VICENTE NAGUERRA: [speaking through interpreter] It's not very comfortable here. There's no air conditioning. It gets very hot in here. And in the winter I'm afraid the heating isn't going to work. We also don't have any beds, no beds to speak of. We have to lie on the floor and you really can't get a good night's rest on the floor, but that's all there is; there's nothing else.

ROD MINOTT: Rent is typically 350 to 500 dollars a month, plus a 50 dollar additional charge per person. It's estimated that about half the state's 150,000 farm workers are here illegally.

SPOKESPERSON: How many are in the trailer park right now, Randy?

RANDY: Probably a thousand.

SPOKESPERSON: About a thousand.

ROD MINOTT: Mattawa's mayor, Judy Esser points out that small towns like hers have simply been overwhelmed of the job of providing services for farm workers.

MAYOR JUDY ESSER, Mattawa, Washington: Presently, the town of Mattawa - it's less than 35,000 dollars in real property taxes. So, as far as the town, the overcrowding has cost us a tremendous amount of money. You know, our infrastructure has been just nothing; it was basically designed for less than 500 people.

ROD MINOTT: The town is just now building a sewer system. Until it's finished, septic tanks at trailer parks continue to spill raw sewage into streets and yards. County health inspector Charlotte Blanchard says she's alarmed by the lack of sanitation. With little housing in Mattawa, many farm workers camp outside of town by the banks of the Colombia River.

CHARLOTTE BLANCHARD, Health Inspector: This is a camp site that's going to be used.

ROD MINOTT: This camp site houses about 500 migrant workers. Health inspector Blanchard says many migrants use the river for bathing and washing.

CHARLOTTE BLANCHARD: Because the people don't have any other places to go or the facilities. They come down to wash their dishes in the water, and also they wash their clothes, and you've got your bleach and your soaps, and there's clean clothes hanging in the trees to dry.

ROD MINOTT: Even though portable toilets have been set up, many workers continue to use surrounding bushes.

CHARLOTTE BLANCHARD: Rod, if you'll look back in through here, people are not using the porta potties. This is probably 20 feet from the open water at the Columbia River.

ROD MINOTT: Inspector Blanchard calls the situation a severe public health menace.

CHARLOTTE BLANCHARD: I can tell them to use the porta potty, but I'm not here 24 hours a day.

ROD MINOTT: Already, she sees diseases one would expect to find in third world countries. Even so, Blanchard says she's reluctant to evict workers from sites like this.

CHARLOTTE BLANCHARD: Well, there just really isn't a place to go. Do workers have to be here to do the work? Our economy in Grant County is an agricultural base. If we can't get the fruit in, then the whole county suffers economically.

ROD MINOTT: But with the average farm worker earning about $6700 annually, Gamboa says growers should pay higher salaries so workers can afford better shelter.

LUPE GAMBOA: Up until the 60's employers should provide housing in order to attract workers, and then you started getting huge waves of immigrant workers coming in from Mexico. As employers, they didn't have to provide housing anymore, so they got out of the housing business.

ROD MINOTT: No law requires growers to provide housing for their workers, and, in fact, most growers do not. Only about 200 farms provide camps licensed by the state.

LON INABA, Vegetable Farmer: Here's a typical unit. We've got four units just like this.

ROD MINOTT: One such farm is owned by Lon Inaba, a third generation vegetable grower in the Yakima Valley. In 1989, using a low-interest federal loan, he built housing that can accommodate up to 48 workers.

LON INABA: Well, I think it's worth it. It's just - you're taking care of the people who are taking care of you, and that's kind of our philosophy out here.

ROD MINOTT: It also makes good business sense. By providing housing, Inaba can attract a steady and loyal work force for his crops. He now grows a wide variety of vegetables that require work year-round. Others, like cherry grower Nick Fox say government regulations make housing unaffordable. Fox's orchard has been in his family for three generations. For years, he maintained a camp site on the property for his pickers. But Fox closed the camp this year. He says it would have cost him $3/4 million to comply with new state housing standards. They would have forced him to replace tents with barracks for his workers.

NICK FOX, Cherry Grower: You know, I look at it the same way. I mean, you know, you guys have jobs and your employer doesn't provide you with a place to live; you go find one, and this is the same thing. I mean, this is a business; this isn't - this isn't a humanitarian system up here - it's a business. It does what it needs to, to survive, and it has to maintain costs like any other business.

ROD MINOTT: Fox also points out that unlike other fruit crops, a cherry harvest season lasts only several weeks. He says it's unfair to require him to build expensive barracks that would stand empty for 11 months of the year. Opposing sides in the debate over farm worker housing remain at an impasse, so the state has stepped in to help.

SPOKESPERSON: The windows, as you can see, they're broken, they're covered, and they don't repair them.

ROD MINOTT: Governor Gary Locke recently toured Mattawa and said he plans to make farm worker housing a top legislative priority. Already, the state has allocated about $4 million to build new housing. That will help shelter about 450 people in the Mattawa area, but farm worker advocates say the price tag to solve the housing crisis in Washington State could top $300 million. And with little public clamoring to help farm workers, many fear scenes of homelessness like this along the banks of the Columbia River will only grow worse.

CONVERSATION - FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE

PHIL PONCE: Next, foreign correspondence, our occasional series of conversations with reporters posted overseas with American news organizations. Elizabeth Farnsworth has this one.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And tonight our correspondent is Indira Lakshamanan, Asia bureau chief for the Boston Globe. Thanks for being with us.

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN, Boston Globe: Thank you for having me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What has changed in Hong Kong because of the tremendous economic difficulties this past year?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Well, there's been a lot of change. I mean, interestingly, a year and a half ago when Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty, the big issue was politics, and everyone was talking about what's going to happen to Hong Kong post '97, and interestingly enough, very little has happened politically. We've seen a retention of most of the freedoms that Hong Kong had before, and the big changes have been economic ones. I mean, Hong Kong is a small economy, and it's really been buffeted by, you know, the winds of the Asian crisis, and this year they registered their first recession in a couple of decades and the worst unemployment in many, many years, so the government even has officially said that unemployment is 5 percent. Labor groups put it at over 10 or 11 percent. So we're seeing a real shocking turnaround from what was such a strong economy at the time of the hand-over, is now really struggling with the crisis.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you see personally? I mean, you lived there before this happened, and you've lived there through it. What do you see in everyday life, what changes do you see?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: It's really incredible how the mood has changed in Hong Kong. I mean, in the months leading up to the hand-over and immediately after you saw, I mean, really Hong Kong at its wealthy, ritzy best. You know, Hong Kong is famous for having the most Rolls Royces in the world and the highest per capita number of Mercedes Benzes, and you really felt like people were flaunting their wealth. The property market was at an all-time high, the stock market was at a record high at the time of the hand-over. Now, when you've seen everything really go through the floor and the stock market cut in half, in terms ofthe index number, you see people economize, even the very rich are sort of downsizing in terms of designer dresses. There was, you know, an interesting piece in the local media about Tie-tie's who are the wives of Tai-pans, you know, buying only one designer dress this season and trying to accessorize it, rather than, you know, really going out in a profligate way, the way they did in the past. So you see that among the rich. Among regular people you see a lot of bitterness and a lot of anger at the government. They blame the government for not handling the crisis quickly enough, and taking strong enough actions. You see small protests on the streets in terms of housing and unemployment, and every day in the papers there's more and more news about layoffs and wage cuts. I mean, you know, the sort of classic foreign correspondent index is talking to taxi drivers - the big joke is, you know, every time you get in to a tax driver you ask them what they think, and it's amazing really how bitter people are, so the sense there is really quite different than it was even just a year ago.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you see any real privation, people sleeping on the streets, that kind of thing?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: You really don't in Hong Kong. I mean, it's not like Indonesia, where I've spent a lot of time this year, where the economy really went through the floor, and you saw people, you know, hungry and destitute, and that kind of privation fortunately you have not seen in Hong Kong. So it's not that kind of extreme. It's more like the middle class and the lower middle class getting squeezed and losing their jobs, and, you know, taking up sort of - you know - make work odd jobs, selling things on the street - you know - driving taxis, doing things they didn't do before - but you - you really don't see people sleeping on the streets - that hasn't happened yet.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Indira, do you get a sense in Hong Kong or in the other places you go that there's any consensus yet on what caused all of this? I love the way you put it - you said - what is the root of this woe.

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: I mean, I think that's really the most interesting and central question that's come out of this crisis. I mean, we're now a year and a half into the Asian crisis and I think that nobody has really established what the cause of it is. I mean, you have some people saying oh, it's because of hedge funds who attacked Asian currencies and speculators, and, you know, so you have some people saying it's because our markets were too open. You see other people saying it's because our markets were too closed, cronyism and capitalism, that sort of nexus of politics and economics. What's so interesting to me about that is because there's no consensus on what caused the crisis there's no consensus on how to get out of the crisis, so you see different Asian governments sort of freelancing it, you know, each one going their own way and what one economist said to me that I thought was really wise is when there's no consensus you have volatility. You know, when there's consensus there's stability, so the fact is you know we've still got a long way to go in terms of coming out of this crisis because no one's figured out yet how to solve it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, let's take Malaysia - as an example where you've been spending a lot of time, that's one case where the leader has made a decision about what he thinks caused it and then taken action based on it. Tell us about that and what the effects of all that have been from Malaysia.

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: That's right. I mean, Malaysia's a very interesting case. They have a very strong - some people would say paternalistic prime minister, Mahatir Mohammed, who, you know, took a stand saying we think this is because of speculators and hedge funds and you know, we look at the other countries and what they've done, we don't think it's going to work. I mean, he sort of looks down on so-called IMF 3, which is Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea, who were the worst-hit countries who were forced to take International Monetary Fund rescue bailouts, and he was very proud that Malaysia didn't have to do that, but his answer has been rather than reforming and opening up the economy, basically shouting it down by putting on capital controls and currency controls, and this has really upset international investors, fund managers, who say, you know, I don't want to invest in Malaysia if I'm not going to be able to take my money out, so in the short run he has actually stabilized the situation by fixing the currency at 3.8 to 1 U.S. dollar. You know, he has stabilized, their markets are stabilized, their economy is okay right now. The question is in the long run what is that going to do - I mean, has he scared off legitimate long-term investors, in addition to scaring off speculators? So I think the jury is very much out on whether that solution works or not.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And there is new political and at least some political uncertainty and a major trial in Malaysia partly because of the economic difficulties, right? Tell us about that.

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Well, that's a very interesting question. I mean, what is behind the trial is what everybody wants to know, and there's a huge discrepancy between the Western media and the Malaysia media over what's behind the trial. The trial we're talking about, of course, is the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, who was the heir apparent to Mahatir and who Mahatir often referred to as his son, you know, someone who he really had been grooming to take over power -- a lot of people thought that might happen as early as next year or the year 2000. Instead, what we've seen is that Mahatir and Anwar clashed earlier this year in June at a party Congress and immediately after that an investigation into allegations of sexual misdeeds by Anwar was reopened. All these allegations had been out a year and a half ago, but Mahatir had said I don't believe so, that's not true, and he closed the investigation. He reopened it this year after the two of them clashed over economic policy and investigation of cronyism and corruption. And Anwar was ousted from his job in September right at the same time that Mahatir imposed capital controls, which Anwar disagreed with, so you see this sort of - again, this coming together of a fight between the two men - you know, the older generation and the younger generation over economics and politics and at the same time, you know, Mahatir or his allies possibly exploiting the situation, although there's no proof, by then putting Anwar on trial. So that's - it's a very controversial case.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What's the political consequence of this trial? What's it's like to be there during it?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: It's very strange, because immediately before the arrest - I mean, we're talking in September - Anwar basically was trying to whip up reformist sentiment once he was ousted from the party, ousted from his position, and at the maximum, he led 30,000 supporters one day in the streets calling for reformaci, or reform. It was the same rallying cry used in Indonesia that ultimately ousted former President Suharto there. So it looked like he was gaining some steam, and right after that, he was arrested, and jailed, and now is on trial. So you still see these rallies every week by supporters of reformaci, but they're down now to 500 people, or a thousand people and they seem quite paltry compared to anything that we saw this year in Indonesia.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But there is the freedom to do that sort of thing?

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: I mean, that's again questionable. Yes, the freedom is there, but the police trucks drive up at the end of the night - and sort of menace over them and threaten them with water cannons and order them dispersed - to disperse, and then people disperse, and that's the end of it. I mean, you don't see the same kind of fervor that you saw in Indonesia. And, you know, Anwar is being held up - I mean, let's say he's like a lightning rod for all of these feelings, so you know, it's hard to say from the outside - is he guilty or is he innocent of these charges of sodomy and corruption - of course, I don't know whether he's guilty or innocent, but more importantly, he's become a lightning rod for a lot of discontent. You know, at the same time, it's hard to say, you know, what will happen to the cause at this point. Their situation has gotten a bit ridiculous. They've compared it to the Clinton/Monica Lewinsky case. I mean, just last week they dragged in some stained mattresses into the courtroom and, you know, so it's actually degenerated into something quite embarrassing for the nation.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Indira Lakshmanan, thanks very much for being with us.

INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Thank you very much for having me.

RECAP

PHIL PONCE: Again, the major stories of this Friday, three balloonists abandoned their attempt to fly nonstop around the world; weather defeated them over the Pacific and they were forced to splash down near Honolulu, Hawaii. Coast Guard helicopters rescued them; all three were in good condition. Team member Richard Branson had this to say after the rescue.

RICHARD BRANSON: I'm happy to be alive -- obviously, marginally disappointed that we didn't make it the whole way. We really thought we had it in our grasp, and then we hit this - this wall of bad weather, and we just couldn't get the balloon through it. But you know, here we are in Hawaii, and looking forward again to going back and seeing our families since it's Christmas Day.

PHIL PONCE: Winter weather continued to disrupt the Christmas Holiday. More than 600,000 people were without power in the South. Sleet and freezing rain toppled power lines and glazed roads. And agricultural experts said freezing temperatures had destroyed California's entire lemon crop and much of its orange crop. Before we go tonight, a poem for the season from NewsHour contributor Robert Pinsky, poet laureate of the United States.

ROBERT PINSKY: Just in time for Christmas, this winter, tepid until now, brings back, along with inconvenience, the shining, splendid fierceness of late December. One emotion I associate with this time of year is a sense of the overwhelming beauty of the season, its imagery, its music, its white or crystal landscape, its associations, and the way that same beauty can be frustrating or painful, maybe because the seemingly perfect beauty of some old childhood vision of it is hard to live up to, or maybe because one feels a little excluded from the community that shares the seasonal joy. I think nearly everyone has felt that seasonal beauty and the harsh other side of it as well. I tried to salute both in my poem "Icicles." "Icicles." "A brilliant beard of ice as harsh and heavy as glass hangs from the edge of the roof. The spikes a child breaks off taste of wool and the sun. In the house some straw for a bed, circled by a little train, is the time image of God. The sky is a fiery blue and a fiery morning light burns on the perfect snow - not one track in the street. Just as the carols tell, all is calm, all is bright, the town lying still, frozen, silver, and white. Is only one child awake to splinter the shining stems, knocking them down with a stick, breaking the crystal chimes?"

PHIL PONCE: We'll see you on-line and again here Monday evening. Have a nice Holiday weekend. I'm Phil Ponce. Thank you and Merry Christmas!