The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Good evening and Merry Christmas! I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Jim Lehrer is off this week. On the NewsHour tonight a look back at the Internet's biggest year, Moscow's ambitious mayor, the different aspects of Jesus, and a second take on a funk-filled Broadway show. It all follows our summary of the news this Christmas night.NEWS SUMMARY

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Another hostage in Peru was freed today. He is Kenji Heradi, first secretary at Japan's embassy in Lima. The release occurred late this afternoon. Red Cross workers took him out of the Japanese ambassador's house in a wheelchair. They waited in the street for an ambulance to cross police lines and pick him up. One hundred and four men are now in their eighth day of captivity. They have been held since December 17th, when leftist guerrillas stormed a cocktail party hosted by Japan's ambassador in Lima. Christmas vigils were held today and last night outside the residence. Relatives and friends of the hostages sang carols and prayed for their freedom. Earlier, the Tupac Amaru rebels released Uruguay's ambassador to Peru after two rebels imprisoned in his country were freed. Peru condemned the action and recalled the chief of its diplomatic mission to Uruguay. Police allowed water to be restored to the residence, and the guerrillas permitted their hostages some holiday privileges. A Catholic bishop was allowed inside to conduct Christmas Mass, and the daughter of Peru's President Fujimori delivered 20 hot turkeys for the hostages. Russian President Yeltsin today called the hostage taking a challenge to the entire world community. In a letter to leaders of the major industrialized nations, he suggested they send anti- terrorist forces to Lima to free the captives. Yeltsin also made a radio address to the Russian people today. He promised to start compensating government workers who have gone without regular paychecks. He blamed the problem on bureaucrats for not collecting enough taxes to keep up with expenditures. There were two bombing incidents this Christmas holiday. In this country a ten-year-old girl was in stable condition after opening a package bomb at her home near Albany, New York. Police said the girl suffered severe cuts and burns, but her injuries were not life-threatening. Police said the parcel arrived by mail in a regular delivery yesterday. In Germany three people were killed in a suicide bombing last night in Frankfurt. We have more in this report from Neil Connery of Independent Television News.

NEIL CONNERY, ITN: Seventy worshipers had come to the small Lutheran church in Western Frankfurt for the Christmas Eve service. They were singing the first hymn when a woman sitting in a pew at the back of the church detonated two hand grenades strapped to her body. Three women, including the bomber, were killed in the explosion. Ambulance crews took the injured to a nearby hospital. Three of them, including a twelve-year-old girl, are in a critical condition. This woman's neighbors were killed in the explosion. "It's just too awful to believe," she said. "I haven't had time to take the tragedy in." Police believe the bombing wasn't politically motivated. The explosion has left Germany in a state of shock--a church service that was meant to be a celebration of Christmas devastated by a suicide bomber.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In Serbia today, thousands of anti- government marchers carried brooms and disinfectant in a symbolic cleaning of the streets of Belgrade. It was the 36th day of protest against President Milosevic. Dissident students sent Milosevic a letter blaming him for yesterday's violent clashes with pro- government supporters. More than 60 people were injured. Milosevic supporters claimed they had been attacked by hooligans. And in Eastern Slavonia, Serbs assaulted Croat refugees at a Christmas Eve Mass. Fifty Croats were trapped inside a church for three hours until military and civilian police rescued them. A United Nations worker was injured. Eastern Slavonia is an enclave of Croatia under Serb control. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met again today in Jerusalem to resolve the remaining disputes over the pullout of Israeli troops from the West Bank town of Hebron. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Leader Arafat met yesterday and are said to be close to a final agreement. In Hebron today Jewish settlers took over three empty houses and scuffled with police who evicted them. Seventeen settlers were detained. All but two were later released. Settlers claimed the empty houses belong to the Jewish community evacuated after Arab riots in 1927. And in Bethlehem, thousands celebrated the birth of Christ at the Church of the Nativity, the place where Christians believe Jesus was born. Pilgrims and tourists came to participate in a Christmas Day Mass. In Rome, Pope John Paul II welcomed pilgrims and worshipers at noon in St. Peter's Square. In his annual Christmas message he called for peace on earth and gave his greetings in 55 different languages. And in Calcutta, 86-year-old Mother Teresa led her followers in singing Happy Birthday to the Christ child. He attended Mass last night after a month-long recovery from heart surgery. And late today, a spokesman for the Mayo Clinic said former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker received a liver transplant. Tucker resigned the governorship after he was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in a Whitewater-related trial. He was not sentenced to prison because he had chronic liver disease and was on a waiting list for a transplant. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Internet's big year, Moscow's mayor on the move, rethinking Jesus, and funky Broadway. FOCUS - CYBERYEAR

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: We begin tonight with a year-end look at the world of the Internet. Economics Correspondent Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston recorded this report earlier this week.

PAUL SOLMAN: At the conclusion of the NewsHour every night we say, "We'll see you online." 1996, in other words, was the year "our" program made its first appearance in cyberspace. Now, that's not as fancy as it may sound. We simply have a computer on which the NewsHour posts scripts, pictures, discussion. Almost any of you can get to that information with a computer of your own by hooking up to an international system of cables known as the Internet. Was 1996 a breakthrough year for the Internet and cyberspace? Well, first some background from Betty Ann Bowser.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: It's been the busiest year ever in cyberspace. The Internet has become the place to find games, research, E-mail, and news. Eleven million households use the World Wide Web, the easily accessible part of the net. That's double what it was last year. Schools are coming online too, thanks to money set aside by the telecommunications act signed by President I in February. And more and more businesses have hooked into the web, even developed their own "intranets," their own internal versions of the Internet. But people are doing more than just accessing the Web. They're also appearing on it. A few years ago only a few thousand businesses and individuals had pages on the web, those familiar WWW. addresses at the ends of ads. Now there are 50 million web pages. Here, people can do everything from sell CD's, advertise needlepoint, or show of f their pet guinea pig. News agencies from Microsoft NBC to the Wall Street Journal are making use of the web to reach news junkies.

SPOKESMAN: NBC News and Microsoft will revolutionize the way you get news.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But the use of the Internet really took off last December, when Microsoft, which already dominated the software market, decided to throw much of its time and money into cyberspace. Microsoft's Brad Chase.

BRAD CHASE, Microsoft: A year ago we hardly had anybody working Internet-related technologies. Now, every product group in the company has a focus on Internet-related technologies.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Foremost among its new products was a better web browser, software that makes it easier to find one's way around the web. It's Explorer program was supposed to take direct aim at the popular browser Netscape. Robert Andrew, Netscape's web master, says right now his browser gets the most hits or visits of any site on the web.

ROBERT ANDREW, Netscape: When we started out we were doing 6 million hits a day, and we're over 120 million hits a day now. And that's just unbelievable growth.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: All year, Netscape, whose workers put in 20-hour days to remain competitive, and Microsoft jockeyed back and forth with charges, counter-charges, newer programs, newer ideas. Both companies forecast immense changes and immense growth on the Internet.

ROBERT ANDREW: The technologies that we're going to be feeding out over onto the Net are going to be completely different in a year from now. And we have to take a good gaze into the crystal ball to understand exactly what we're going to be trying to feed out, and what we're trying to showcase to technologies to people who are just getting onto the Net.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: There also was growth in the number of Internet providers, companies that provide a path to the Internet. Corporate giants like AT&T, Sprint, and MCI joined three thousand to four thousand other Internet service providers competing for customers. But as the number of customers grew, so did the problem. In August, both Netcom and American On Line crashed, leaving millions of people without service for 17 hours. And every day there are busy signals and slowdowns as the Internet tries to adjust to more people spending more time online. Some people, like Prof. Helene Radovsky just give up.

HELENE RADOVSKY: It is frustrating. I have a couple of times just turned off--well, logged out of the Internet--turned off the computer and done something else because I couldn't get anything that I wanted.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The Internet's popularity also caused some social problems as well. Politicians and parents became concerned about whether all the material on the Net was appropriate for children. Under the new telecommunications law it is now a felony to make indecent material available to children.

SEN. JAMES EXON, [D] Nebraska: It is not an exaggeration to say that the worst, most vile, most perverse pornography is only a few click-click-click away from any child on the Internet.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In June a three-judge federal court in Philadelphia blocked enforcement of the act, saying it was unconstitutionally vague and too broadly written. The Clinton administration appealed, and this December the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The decision from the court is expected to be a landmark ruling on free speech in cyberspace. But despite concerns about allowing easy access, the web gets more and more accessible daily. At the top of many wish lists this season, Web TV, bringing the World Wide Web into the living room.

PAUL SOLMAN: Now to our discussion. Esther Dyson is editor of the computer newsletter "Release 1.0," and chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which studies Internet issues such as free speech and commerce. Jeff Beesos is founder and CEO of Amazon.com, and online book-selling business. Clifford Stoll is an astronomer and the author of the book "Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Superhighway," and Steven Levy is a senior editor and technology columnist for "Newsweek" Magazine. Welcome to you all, and thanks for coming. First of all, Steven Levy, was 1996 a breakthrough year for cyberspace and the Internet?

STEVEN LEVY, Newsweek: [New York] Well, the last few years, every year has been a breakthrough year. And I think for the next few years every year will be a breakthrough year. The growth just keeps coming and coming, and as enabling technologies come online, it's going to get bigger and bigger. This year I think was the first year where pretty much anyone you meet in business was supposed to have an E-mail address. It asked them, what's your E- mail address, instead of asking, do you have an E-mail address?

PAUL SOLMAN: And E-mail is what for those of us who don't know, or those people who don't know?

STEVEN LEVY: It's simply an address in some sort of vaguely obscure computer code which enables you to accept and send out messages electronically. You know, it's actually a very effective and efficient way to communicate with each other. And next year I think the big enabling technology will be the ability to make transactions, you know, to send money online. And I think that will fuel the growth even more.

PAUL SOLMAN: Esther Dyson, 96, the year of the Internet for you?

ESTHER DYSON, Industry Analyst: [New York] Yes. It was--they're all breakthrough years, as Steven said. I think what really happened this year was the Internet became accepted. People understood--thought they understood what it was, even if they didn't use it. It was considered something normal. Now we need to go further and get people to understand what it actually does and what it does "not" do. For example, it doesn't send porn at children. It doesn't throw dirty pictures into your house. What it does do is enable you to "choose" what it is you want to watch. And that's why it's exciting.

PAUL SOLMAN: And so you mean that porn is out there, you can get it through the Internet, but it's not being pushed at you, is that- -

ESTHER DYSON: Yeah. It's in bookstores too, but that doesn't mean people are throwing it at children as they walk by the books.

PAUL SOLMAN: But children can be using this in an unsupervised way, and that's the problem.

ESTHER DYSON: Yeah. That is a danger, and it's something parents should be aware of, not the government.

PAUL SOLMAN: Clifford Stoll, you were on the show just a year ago expressing considerable skepticism about the Internet, specifically with regard to education, as I remember. Has 1996 converted you to the--to cyberspace?

CLIFFORD STOLL, Astronomer/Author: [San Francisco] I'm impressed with how few people have questioned the phenomenal hyperboleant, self-promotion of the Internet, how so rarely do I hear anyone give any skeptical comments about the Internet. It seems to be oh, if you're not online, then the train of progress is leaving the station, and you're sitting back at the platform. I can't figure out why this big bubble of hyperbole keeps growing and growing, but it still has. So this is the year of the Internet. It is also the year of Internet hyperbole as well.

PAUL SOLMAN: Not a big deal? You don't think the Internet is a big deal, and 1996 was a big deal with respect to it?

CLIFFORD STOLL: Well, how many people listen to AM radio? What, maybe a hundred million people do every week? Well, that's ten times the number of people who log into the World Wide Web every week. How come you don't hear people talking about wow, AM radio, lots of people listen to it?

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, it's not new. It's not news. I mean, right?

CLIFFORD STOLL: Well, of course, and this year, it's news if your business is actually making money on the Web. You can--there's probably several dozen, maybe even fifty or a hundred businesses that are making money from the World Wide Web, despite hundreds of thousands investing quite big sums of money in web page development. It strikes me as curious that few people ask obvious questions about, hey, why, why is so much ado about what seems to be not very profitable for a lot of people?

PAUL SOLMAN: Well, Mr. Beesos, you're profitable yet? This is Amazon, the bookseller. How do you size up 96, and is it--was it a good year for business on the Internet?

JEFF BEESOS, Amazon.com: [Seattle] It was a great year for business on the Internet. A lot of the transaction-based businesses on the Internet are just getting started. It's very early. It's day one. Somebody described this in a way that I think is just perfect, which is what's happened on the Internet so far is like the first ten seconds after the Big Bang. A lot has happened, but there's still a huge amount to come. There's no question but that while there has been a lot of hype about the Internet, there's also a lot of substance. It's not like some of the past technologies that have been over-hyped like artificial intelligence. The reason that this is different is because there are no technical breakthroughs that are necessary. So you don't have to look at the technical claims with the same sort of skepticism. The thing that's interesting about the Internet is that it's ubiquitous. The fact that there are so many people who can now use this technology that's been around for a very long time, and whenever networks start to get ubiquity, that's when they really take off and the growth is always exponential when that happens.

PAUL SOLMAN: I want to ask Esther Dyson, I want to ask you about the Communications Decency Act, which was the biggest legislative event of the year, with regard to the Internet. Could you explain that and where that stands now? Because you were talking about porn earlier.

ESTHER DYSON: Yeah. Very simply, it was an attempt by the Congress, some of it well meaning, some of it probably just politically cynical, to control the content on the Net by saying you can't make indecent stuff available to minors. It had the unfortunate side effect of any kind unavailable to anybody. And it set the principle that the government can control free speech.

PAUL SOLMAN: It also made some decent stuff unavailable to people, right?

ESTHER DYSON: Yes, things like various medical discussions. And, of course, we're afraid that it also means, well, now, if you have a medical treatment that's not sanctioned by the FDA, or so--this concept of government control, of content, is dangerous and scary, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a number of organizations, including the ACLU, challenged it in court. Now, you know, it's not that we're in favor of children seeing porn, or we like hate speech or dirty stuff. It is simply that we think this is the job of the individual and the parent to control, not the government. And there's a new technology out called the Platform for Internet Content Selection, which is called of like a smart and very flexible V-chip that allows people to specify exactly what they want their children to see or not to see, and then they can put it on their computer, and the parent gets to control what comes into the house.

PAUL SOLMAN: So where's the law now?

ESTHER DYSON: The law. Sorry about that.

PAUL SOLMAN: That's okay.

ESTHER DYSON: The law has been challenged in the court. It was overturned by a federal court but not by the Supreme Court. The government has appealed that. So now it's going to be heard in the Supreme Court sometime this spring or early summer. And any--any serious lawyer who looks at it agrees that it's unconstitutional. So we're fairly confident it's going to be overturned. A lot of-- we talked to some of the Senators. They said this thing is ridiculous but I can't vote against it because I'd upset my constituents. So it was a lot of political maneuvering that made it happen.

PAUL SOLMAN: Steven Levy, you agree with Esther Dyson, the law will be overturned, the Supreme Court will just throw it out?

STEVEN LEVY: I think so. I attended the closing arguments of the challenge to the law on Philadelphia. And, you know, the lawyers, you know, opposing it made such a good case that the three-judge panel accepted it pretty much wholesale. Really what it was is a talk against free speech itself. And it's not just important to the Internet because sooner or later I think we're going to get almost all our media from some sort of successor to the Internet. So it really is a question of what kind of free speech we're going to have into the next century. And the way the case was decided, the Supreme Court is actually going to have to rule on the basic facts agreed to, you know, by that three-judge panel. So there's really an excellent chance that that provision is going to be overturned.

PAUL SOLMAN: What do you mean, a successor to the Internet? Most people are having trouble with even figuring out what the Internet is.

STEVEN LEVY: Well, you might wind up just calling it the Internet. But I think it's basically a system which is going to evolve as more and more people use it, and, you know, the things we use on it, there's not much video on the Internet now, but I think that's going to come, as it becomes more and more, it'll replace itself, just like the cells in your body replace themselves every seven years or so, I think the pipes of the Internet are going to get bigger and bigger and replace themselves. So--

PAUL SOLMAN: Cables, you mean, the way this information is currently sent?

STEVEN LEVY: That's right. The big problem on the Internet now is that, you know, there's not a big enough set of pipes to send enough information to make it run as fast as people would like.

PAUL SOLMAN: By pipes you mean cable--

STEVEN LEVY: Exactly.

PAUL SOLMAN: --that's laid under the ground.

STEVEN LEVY: Exactly.

PAUL SOLMAN: Like phone cable, except it's--

STEVEN LEVY: Exactly. And it's not just the cables. It's the devices people have within their homes or even their offices that allow the information to move fast enough. It's a big problem, but despite the problem, people, you know, love to use the Internet, and they're finding like a lot of real use to the Internet, and it's really not fair to criticize it, as Cliff does, to say, well, a hundred million people aren't using it now. When radio first came online, there were very few people using it. It turned out to be a significant medium, the same with television, and the same with the telephone. So, you know, this is something which I think has caught on actually quicker than those technologies, and the potential is really, you know, as significant.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Stoll--

ESTHER DYSON: May I--

PAUL SOLMAN: I wanted to get Mr. Stoll to respond since he was just mentioned, that's Cliff. So, Mr. Stoll, any response to that?

CLIFFORD STOLL: Hey. I've been online. I've been on the Internet since 1973, 74. This is the 51st birthday of the invention of the digital computer. Computers have been around longer than color television, and boy, computing is famous as the land of the vaporware, it's land where everything is promised, just wait, real soon now all this wonderful stuff will happen. Well, it's always in the next release. Just wait, around the corner all this great stuff is going to happen. I have no doubts that one day there will be wide pipelines and fast cables going into everybody's home, but I doubt that I'm going to live to see that day. I doubt that many viewers of this station right now will live to see that day. It's always sometime in the future. As an astronomer when I hear people talk about the first 10 seconds after the Big Bang, I think, hey, you know, we're on the order of billions of years, ten or twenty billion years, since the Big Bang. Well, it may be that lots of businesses become profitable on the Internet, but it might take a long time, and that long time might be measured not in years or months but in decades.

PAUL SOLMAN: But I actually, trying to prepare for this, tried to buy a book on the Internet actually from Mr. Beesos's system there and was able to buy a book that I had been looking for for a very long time, just this afternoon, before coming and starting to do this. It seems to me there are a lot of uses to which this stuff has been put. Mr. Beesos, are you making money now on the Internet?

JEFF BEESOS: Well, we're actually--

PAUL SOLMAN: I don't count my recent transaction, please, but I mean-- JEFF BEESOS: Now we are. Thank you. We're actually investing in marketing and staffing, and other things at a rate that isn't commensurate with our size because we're such big believers in the Internet, and that costs us not to be profitable. But we're--our revenue growth and all the things that make sense for us to do strategically, all the indicators are that this is going to be a huge success. And we're not the only example of transaction-based businesses online that are going to be successful.

PAUL SOLMAN: So even you are not making money yet?

JEFF BEESOS: No. That's right.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ms. Dyson, what are people using this for that you might be able to convince Mr. Stoll makes it a good thing now as opposed to millions of light years, or millions of years from now?

ESTHER DYSON: Well, I don't want to be a missionary. I don't think you're a failure if you're not on the Internet, but it is a very powerful tool, both for good and for evil. The in terms of business thing, I think it's much more valuable not simply to do business on the Internet and create new businesses but as a means of making existing businesses more efficient. My favorite example is something real and simple. It's the Federal Express web-site. People think of the Net as a medium for advertising, but it's really a medium for customer support. It's closer to an 800 number. So if you want to know where your package is, you really don't care about Federal Express's brand image, you don't care about its beautiful airplanes, you don't care about its advertising, you care about personal information that's important to you. And what makes it so valuable is that it's a one-to-one medium, so you go to their web-site and find out where "your" package is. And so Federal Express is not considered an Internet company but it is vastly improving the business it delivers by using the Net.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mr. Stoll, you've talk about the Internet as "a guide of how to be anti-social in that it undercuts our schools, our neighborhoods, and our communities." What do you mean?

CLIFFORD STOLL: The Internet is a terrific way to waste time that would otherwise be difficult to waste. It's a great way to waste time at work, at home, and, as such, the cost of the Internet, the Internet promises omniscience. You can get any information anywhere promises a sort of omnipotence. You can do anything, but there's a very deep price, almost a Faustian price. What it takes from us is our time. Hours, days of our life go floating out our modem not to be returned. The cost of heavy Internet use is, oh, it takes my useful time away from me, time that I could be spending studying, doing research, chatting with friends, interacting with my neighbors, be with my family.

PAUL SOLMAN: I wanted to ask Mr. Beesos, aren't people better off browsing in a bookstore than doing what I did today in buying this book sight unseen as it were?

JEFF BEESOS: Well, it depends on what your objectives are. You know, Amazon.com carries 1.1 million titles, which is between thirty and forty times as many titles as you'd find in a mall bookstore and six times as new titles as you'd find in the world's largest physical superstore. So many of our customers just wouldn't be able to find the books they're looking for, other than Amazon.com. The other thing is that in terms of time, you know, as Clifford is talking about, shopping at Amazon.com saves you a huge amount of time because the book, it's sent straight to your office or desk, to your office desk or home. So it's a big deal in terms of time savings. And like the Federal Express web-site too, that saves a lot of time.

PAUL SOLMAN: I wanted to ask about privacy. Mr. Levy, I found out today that I could for $20 in one day get my--somebody, anybody could get my Social Security number. And there are two different vendors on the web for that. Doesn't something like that scare you, or--I mean, it certainly made--it gave me pause.

STEVEN LEVY: Yeah. It's terrifying, and I think privacy is really one of the issues that we're going to have to nail down as we become more connected, as the Internet becomes more popular. One aid we can use is the adoption of strong encryption, which is the kind of technology which scrambles things so eavesdroppers can't get hold of it. But the problem with that is government, our government in particular, sees a big problem in allowing this technology to, you know, be widely adopted, because they feel that they want to maintain their ability to conduct surveillance on criminals. So they've managed to hold back the, you know, widespread adoption of this. And it's a very big issue in Washington.

PAUL SOLMAN: Do you have more of a sense of community--this will be my last question--or less using the Internet, Mr. Levy? I'm getting back to Mr. Stoll's last point. More of a sense of community, do you feel more connected to the world, or less?

STEVEN LEVY: I think it's actually way--you know, it can cut both ways, but I think overall, you have to say it strengthens communities, maybe not your geographic community, though I think, as it becomes more widespread and everyone in the community gets online, you'll be able to strengthen your immediate physical community, but I think it starts a different kind of community. If you're isolated and you're not able to get out to a coffee shop and, you know, can meet a lot of different people, you're in an urban area, you have a way to get in touch with people in say a breast cancer support group, or, you know, your friends who support the Cleveland Indians, no matter where you are. You could be at a totally isolated rural area and be in touch with a community of people who think like you. So I think in that sense it actually can strengthen communities.

PAUL SOLMAN: All right. Well, thank you all very much.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Moscow's mayor on the move, rethinking Jesus, and funky Broadway. FOCUS - AMBITIOUS MAYOR

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Next, a look at the powerful mayor of Moscow, one of Russia's rising politicians. Lawrence McDonnell of Independent Television News reports.

LAWRENCE McDONNELL, ITN: Just a few hundred yards from the Kremlin, the Moscow skyline is being restored to its former glory. For two years now, building work has continued around the clock to complete the Church of Christ, the Savior, in time for next year's 850th anniversary of the founding of the Russian capital. The original church was destroyed at Stalin's orders in the 1930's. The atheists of the new Soviet state had no room for this temple to Russian orthodoxy. Rebuilding the cathedral is the vision of one man, the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Lyuzhkov. Here, presenting his work to President Yeltsin, the church's consecration. [singing in background] Today's Russian leaders are keen to show off their newfound faith by courting the orthodox church and Mayor Lyuzhkov has taken the fashion to its logical extreme by tying himself so closely to the church's resurrection and to the rebuilding of Moscow, itself. Yuri Lyuzhkov is a master of the photo opportunity, here baring himself for the cameras in the middle of the Russian winter--a striker on the football pitch and public patron of culture and art, the most dynamic politician in Russia today. With regular walk-abouts around the capital, he's succeeded in presenting himself as the man who gets things done. In recent elections for city mayor he was easily returned to office with almost 90 percent of the vote. Those elections ran alongside elections for the Russian presidency, and campaign posters showed Lyuzhkov and Yeltsin each supporting the other's candidacy. Lyuzhkov has always stood behind Boris Yeltsin. The mayor's biggest project is the 300 million dollar Manezh shopping complex which actually runs alongside the walls of the Kremlin. The Manezh Plaza runs three floors underground. Another Moscow anniversary project, soon this will be prime retail space. Like a proud neighbor, Yuri Lyuzhkov keeps the president up to date on each stage of the project and keeps a tight control on building work, instilling a mixture of loyalty and respect in anyone who deals with him. With projects like Manezh, Yuri Lyuzhkov has made Moscow is own fiefdom. But he is a product of the Russian capital, a city which enjoys more foreign investment than the rest of the country put together, a fact resented by many outside the capital where "he" has no political base. The huge public building projects that have changed the face of the Russian capital are the trademark of Mayor Lyuzhkov. He's taken personal control of the city to create his vision of a new Russia. But Moscow is not Russia, and Yuri Lyuzhkov still has a long way to go if he plans to extend his vision and his powers across the country. Gavrill Popov used to be Moscow mayor, with Yuri Lyuzhkov as his deputy. Even then, Mr. Lyuzhkov was more comfortable in front of the cameras. Mr. Popov told me the man he watched appointed above him still has much to learn.

GAVRILL POPOV, Former Mayor of Moscow: Knowledge of other part of Russia is the first problem. The second problem is the knowledge of the political history, political thinking, in another map, and so different is the style of his personal administration. He tried to put himself in each question. That was a problem. Of course, in Moscow, it's possible. We have here a half hour from a problem, but in country, it is impossible, nationally. [MAN SINGING IN RUSSIAN]

LAWRENCE McDONNELL: Yosef Kobzon is Russia's popular crooner, with alleged links to the mafia. The United States refused him a visa on the suspicion he planned to engage in criminal activity. Kobzon makes no secret of his friendship with Yeponchik, a gangster of controlling the Russian mafia in the states and jailed on extortion charges, and a big friend and fan of Yosef Kobzon is Mayor Yuri Lyuzhkov. It's rumored that Mr. Lyuzhkov's position in the capital would be untenable without the support of the Moscow mafia. Stanislav Terekhov ran against Mr. Lyuzhkov in the elections for city mayor and claims Moscow's top official has built himself a financial empire on the strength of his position.

STANISLAV TEREKHOV, Chairman, Officers' Union: [speaking through interpreter] He occupies a political position but is involved in all sorts of commercial operations. Lyuzhkov is in total control of any Western investments in the city, either directly or through his deputies. Every investment has to go through his officials.

LAWRENCE McDONNELL: Every week, Yuri Lyuzhkov talks to his Moscow fans and critics on his favorite television program. The presenter, Boris Notkin, another fan, says nowadays Muscovites couldn't care less if the city's mayor is corrupt or not, as long as they benefit.

BORIS NOTKIN, Television Show Host: Since the whole country has beaten all records in corruption, people no longer are sensitive to the very fact of corruption. What they're interested in, what part of incomes goes to them, to the people. He gives pensions on time. He pays the teachers and doctors more than on the national level. All theaters prefer to be under the municipal jurisdiction and not the federal government because they know that from Mayor Lyuzhkov they will get three or four times more than from the Russian federal government. So what people remember is how much Lyuzhkov gives them in comparison with other political or economic leaders. The rest is unimportant.

LAWRENCE McDONNELL: With Moscow behind him, Yuri Lyuzhkov is already one of the most powerful men in Russia. And by aligning himself so closely to Boris Yeltsin he's groomed himself as heir apparent. For the moment he seems content to wait in the wings, but how long before the ambitious king maker wants to be king? FOCUS - BIBLE STORIES

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now a Christmas Day look at the search for the historical Jesus. Richard Ostling of "Time" Magazine has our report.

RICHARD OSTLING, Time Magazine: New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz and a lively town night and day. But a few weeks ago there was a different sort of excitement when thousands of religion scholars held their annual meeting.

SPOKESMAN: The crowd loves this stuff and clamors formore. We can do without the low blows. We can learn to be more courteous and collegial, but basically, this is good, clean fun. [laughter among audience]

RICHARD OSTLING: The fight and the fun concern one of the hottest topics among religion experts: What do we know about the Jesus of history? It's no ordinary academic dispute because the words and deeds of Jesus are the basis of the Christian faith. Since the 19th century various scholars have raised questions about the historical accuracy of accounts in the four New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but the debate has lately become a public spectacle, due mostly to a group called the Jesus Seminar.

SPOKESMAN: I've been looking for kinds of things that seem to me to be characteristic of parables, aphorisms, and dialogues.

RICHARD OSTLING: This group of several dozen scholars is gathered twice a year to vote on the validity of each incident in the gospels, choosing colored beads to represent different levels of authenticity. For example, in the Lord's Prayer they think "Our Father" were the only words Jesus clearly spoke Himself. The rest is judged probable, unlikely, or totally ruled out. The seminar claims that at least 60 percent of the recorded words of Jesus were not His own but were created later on to express the faith of the Christian Church. Next year, the seminar will issue another report, contending that many of the events of Jesus' life were not actual history either. The pronouncements are shocking to many grassroots Christians, and they've provoked a media onslaught. The Jesus Seminar is not just trying to persuade other scholars. Members are also taking their message to the people. Last month, Professor Marcus Borg preached and taught at Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Tucson. Borg, an Episcopalian, married to a member of the clergy, is deluged with such invitations.

MARCUS BORG, Oregon State University: How we think of Jesus very much affects what we think the Christian life is most centrally about.

RICHARD OSTLING: Borg says his childhood image of Jesus as what he calls a divine super hero has been replaced by a different Jesus and the new image of Christianity.

MARCUS BORG: I have learned that the message of Jesus was not about requirements, not about here's what you must do or believe in order to go to heaven, but it was about entering into a relationship with God now in the present.

MARCUS BORG: I see him as a Jewish mystic, a wisdom teacher, and a social prophet. And for me as a Christian what Jesus was like as a figure of history is a powerful testimony to the reality of the sacred, or the reality of God.

RICHARD OSTLING: He insists the stories and the gospels can be profoundly true as symbols or metaphors, even though they're not historical.

MARCUS BORG: Being a Christian doesn't mean that one has to believe that Jesus really walked on the water, or really multiplied loaves and so forth. And I think that a literalistic approach to Scripture has in the minds of many Christians become a major obstacle. I think I would be willing to say that the teaching of Jesus makes profound religious sense to me whether Jesus said it or not.

RICHARD OSTLING: John Bret-Harte, a newspaper man and member of Grace St. Paul's, says he was once troubled by historical contradictions in the gospels. He no longer lies on the literal truth of the accounts but his spiritual experience.

JOHN BRET-HARTE: Faith doesn't need documents because you don't know your faith in your head. You know your faith in your heart. And my heart is simply dissatisfied. It's difficult to explain because we always think of real things, "real things," as being things you can get hit against, things you can walk on, a floor or a window you can look out of. I don't that's quantifiable. And this is not a quantifiable experience. But it's nonetheless real.

RICHARD OSTLING: But the new thinking is troubling to some parishioners Borg meets. SPOKESPERSON: It remains important to me, again, and I believe that Jesus was the Son of God. I believe in the corporal resurrection. What does your work have to say to someone like me, and furthermore, when I come away from talking to someone who finds her work helpful and interesting, and more important, I find it helpful and interesting, but perhaps not important as they do, I come away feeling small.

MARCUS BORG: I'll simply say that I think, give my understanding of Christianity, there's all the room in the world for disagreement about whether or not the resurrection of Jesus involved something happening to his corpse and things like that. I grew up in a tradition which stressed correct belief, and I now see it's not about correct belief at all. It's about, you know, being in relationship to that which all this stuff points.

N.T. WRIGHT, Dean, Lichfield Cathedral: When God became human, He really became human, and if He became human, that means he belongs in history.

RICHARD OSTLING: N.T. Wright, like Borg, belongs to the Anglican branch of Christian. A cathedral dean in England, he comes to the U.S. to defend the traditional view, running all-day seminars across the country.

SPOKESPERSON: If they don't believe in a Christ who really did come in, you know, human form and die for their sins and rise for their dead and offer salvation, what are they basing as their hope?

N.T. WRIGHT: That would be very difficult to say because a lot of those scholars keep their own personal cards quite close to their chest.

RICHARD OSTLING: Unlike Borg, Wright believes the Jesus of history was, indeed, the Messiah.

N.T. WRIGHT: When I look at Jesus, I'm looking at the living God, the Creator of the universe. That is, of course, a huge idea. But in the New Testament, what we see is not a high and mighty God striding through the world this way and that but a young Jewish prophet riding into Jerusalem on a donkey in tears, announcing God's judgment on the city, having a last meal with His friends, going off to give His life for the life of the world, and believing that in so doing He is embodying the living and loving God. And it's as I look at that face that I believe that I am looking at the human face of God.

RICHARD OSTLING: Wright contends that the Jesus Seminar artificially strips Jesus's sayings away from the context of His life, thus, distorting both what He said and who He was.

N.T. WRIGHT: It is an anti-apocalyptic Jew, a character who sits in the marketplace, swapping aphorisms, teasing people into thinking differently about their lives, a Jesus who doesn't think anything dramatic is going to happen or is going to occur.

RICHARD OSTLING: One Episcopalian at Wright's class, retired Wyoming high schoolteacher Norma Christiansen, worries that the Jesus Seminar waters down the Bible and has a negative impact.

NORMA CHRISTIANSEN: The Bible is real. The things did happen. And I think that you're--you're removing the lynchpin, if you will, if you take that away. And it's going to destroy people's faith. They're going to say, well, why am I believing this, there is nothing, you know, and then they'll just leave altogether.

RICHARD OSTLING: Wright and Borg are friends but disagree even on something as basic as the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Borg sees it as symbolic of a spiritual experience of the early Church. Wright thinks it literally occurred. They also differ on the Christmas story.

MARCUS BORG: I don't think it happened in Bethlehem. I think it happened in Nazareth. I don't think there were wise men. I don't think there was a star. I don't think there were shepherds, but that immediately I want to add the positive affirmation that I think the stories as symbolic narratives are profoundly true, and they make use of some of the most ancient and powerful religious symbolism. The birth of Jesus is the story of light coming into the darkness. It's the story of the beginning of the return from exile.

N.T. WRIGHT: The Nativity stories, themselves, are such strange stories in Matthew, the end of Matthew I, and the beginning of Luke II, that I ask myself as a historian why would somebody like Matthew, whoever he was, and somebody like Luke, whoever he was, want to tell stories like that which were open to such potentially damaging pagan interpretation, for instance, unless they had a sort of sense of obligation that something had to be said about this, and this was the story they'd received, so, though, again, I can't as a historian put it into the test tube and say QED, I find myself saying, well, something like this may well have happened. I don't think this is just a pious fiction later on.

[PEOPLE SINGING HYMN]

RICHARD OSTLING: Despite their profound disagreements, Borg and Wright both believe Jesus is a living presence in history and today, and that it's remarkable any person is being talked about with such urgency 2,000 years after He lived. SECOND LOOK - BRINGING IN DA FUNK

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Finally tonight, a second look at a Charlayne Hunter-Gault report first aired last May on a hit that continues to move Broadway audiences.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In the beginning there was the beat.

SAVION GLOVER, Dancer/Choreographer: The beat is basically what takes you through life, you know, whether we have an up tempo beat or a slow beat. It's just a beat. There will always be the beat, you know, and there's rhythm in everything.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And then choreographer Savion Glover adds what he calls "da noise."

SAVION GLOVER: My noise is not like how loud it is, or, you know, saying how loud I talk or how loud I dance or whatever, my noise is how it comes across through my work.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And then comes that intense but indefinable musical essence, the funk. And it's all that in "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk," the exuberant musical that is one of the hottest tickets on Broadway. There's a featured singer, an actor, and a couple of drummers, but holding center stage for over an hour and a half are five black male dancers whose tapping feet chronicle the history of African-Americans from the days of the slave ships--right on up to the 1990's and the frustration of a black man trying to get a cap. Critics have lavished praise on this production which recently moved to Broadway, following a successful run off Broadway at the Public Theater. George Wolfe, the Public Theater's producer, created and directs "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk."

GEORGE WOLFE, Director: I have this whole theory that particularly black Americans, that we've lost our original languages, so our languages live in different places in our bodies, and it comes out in all sorts of different kinds of rhythms, of the way we talk, speak, or move, so I think that tap is one of those manifestations of expressing a lost language in the body.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And yet tap is not uniquely black.

GEORGE WOLFE: No, because I think it's intrinsically American, but I think that what, what the African-American artists have done with it is a very specific and very unique and wonderful thing, particularly this sort of, uh, what I like to call a more rugged hoofer style which, of course, I learned from Savion, is just really--fascinated me because it is, it isn't just rhythm. It really feels--not just rhythm but very specifically the drum.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Wolfe directed the 1992 Broadway hit "Jelly's Last Jam," which featured an 18 year old Savion Glover playing the young Jelly Roll Morton. Wolfe says watching Glover dance inspired him to explore African-American history through what he called this powerful folk tradition.

GEORGE WOLFE: Savion was like this living repository of rhythm. He inspired some sort of little abstract intellectual concept of exploring the relationship between history and rhythm and, and seeing how history defines the rhythm and how, and how rhythm is reflective of history, need it be slavery--or the turn of the century or the migration of the South to the North or whatever-- you had these artists, Savion, as well as the entire company, making it personal and making it into--

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The First Act history lesson ends with the 1920's. After intermission, the play explores the images of tap made famous in Hollywood films of the 1930's.

[PEOPLE SINGING AND TAPPING]

GEORGE WOLFE: It's sort of like a film noire tap satire of the coopting of tap by Hollywood, but also dealing with the personas that various black performers had to take on in order to express their art. Uncle Huckabuck.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Uncle Huckabuck.

GEORGE WOLFE: And Little Darlin'.

MAN SINGING: Don't worry about me. I'm the shiftless fellah. I got lots of money and a fine High Yella--

GIRL SINGING: Wheee. Tell me Uncle Huckabuck, what's a High Yella?

MAN SINGING: Why darlin', that's the name of my horse.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: At least one critic has found this portrayal of Bill Robinson, the legendary Mr. Bojangles featured in countless Shirley Temple films, excessively harsh. Wolfe said that was not his intent.

GEORGE WOLFE: We're not telling the story of Bill Bojangles Robins, which I think is a very complicated, wonderful, and amazing story. What we're examining are very--is--which is true of any form--what prototype or stereotype an artist very often in this country to this day has to embody in order to do their work. I mean, it goes from everything from being, you know, the shiftless coon to the dumb blond. If you want to find passageway into mass media exposure, more often than not, particularly if you're an actor, singer, dancer, you have to, you have to embody a dynamic or stereotype that allows for easy access for everyone to get it. So that's what we're exploring.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: For his part, Savion Glover is quick to pay tribute to the tap dancers that have gone before him, especially Jimmy Slide whom he calls the best. But Glover, a 14 year old prodigy when this film was made, did more than look. He took the steps of the masters and made them his own, syncopating the shuffle--and the old buck and wing. For anyone who has followed 22 year old Savion Glover's career, this hit comes as no surprise. While pays tribute to Jimmy Slide as the best, others, like Gregory Hines, call Glover the greatest tap dancer who ever lived.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Do you have a sense of mission about what you're doing?

SAVION GLOVER: yeah. My mission is just to, you know, put like, I guess, da funk in like, like--just to funktify everybody, like just to let everybody know that tap isn't like, you know, this corny, washed up art form. You know, I'm saying, it's new, and it's, you know, it's raw. You know what I mean? It's today.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And you're from another generation. [laughing] So what do you think? How do you see it?

GEORGE WOLFE: Well, I think the fact that noise funk is up town does so much for sending a healthy, healthy signal to the people who think that theater and particularly Broadway have absolutely nothing to do with it. You can see--they could go there and see something, and that would not be just a bad British import or a revival, that their face, their energy, and I'm just talking about black artists, I'm talking about young white kids, young black and Asian kids are finding themselves in this show, and I think that's, that's very, very, very, very healthy and very, very, very, very, very important, you know, because for--you always have to introduce whatever you care about to the next generation so they will honor it and protect it. They care for it. And I think this show has contributed to that dynamic.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Savion Glover and George Wolfe each won a Tony Award for "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk," Glover for choreography, Wolfe for direction. RECAP

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Again, the major story of this Christmas Day was the hostage crisis at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru. Another hostage was released by the leftist guerrillas late this afternoon. He is the first secretary of Japan's embassy. Vigils were held outside the residence today for the 104 remaining captives, and a Christmas meal was sent in to the residents. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you, and have a very Merry Christmas!