Reuters World News - Elon Musk’s brain chips, starvation in Somalia and Greek anguish

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

FDA blocks human trials for Neuralink brain implants. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing starvation. Finland walls off Russia. Anger in Greece over devastating rail crash. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we're in Kenya in one of the world's largest refugee camps, struggling to cope with thousands of people fleeing starvation in Somalia. And so that's why we're seeing malnourishment, even with people who've been at the camp for a while because they're having to share. And that's where we're also seeing a spike in cholera. And Elon Musk's attempt to test brain implants and humans hits a roadblock. Our reporter in Washington has the latest on the FDA's concerns with Neurilink trials. It's Thursday, March 2nd.

This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vinal in London. But first, the latest news around the world. The United States is sounding out its closest allies about imposing new sanctions on China if it provides military support to Russia in Ukraine. Government officials and other sources telling our White House correspondence that the US is especially trying to drum-up support from countries in the wealthy group of seven, or G7. The idea would be to coordinate sanctions if Beijing gives weapons to Moscow.

You can find more on this developing story at Reuters.com. The streets of Athens, as demonstrators expressed their anger at Tuesday's devastating rail crash, police fire tear gas and dodge rocks. Protesters believe the collision was an accident waiting to happen. At least 38 people died when a passenger service hit a freight train head on. As the demonstrations took place in cities across Greece, Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis made a national TV address,

saying the evidence points to human error. Reuters correspondent, L'Theras Papadimas, is in the city, near where the crash happened, and describes the anguish of relatives trying to find out if their loved ones are alive. I'm outside the general hospital of Larissa town about 25 kilometers from the coalition spot. There are hundreds of relatives, mothers, fathers, cousins, friends that they are waiting to hear something about their missing persons. Now they are asking them to do the DNA tests to try to identify their kids, fathers, relatives.

It's a very difficult situation. We see dramatic scenes outside the hospital. Fathers and mothers were screaming, you killed our children, murderers and stuff like that. I'm leftist Papadima in Larissa town. To a wild and cold part of Northern Europe and a loudspeaker announcement at a deserted border crossing between Finland and Russia.

Not so deserted soon when construction workers arrive to build a wall between the two countries. Finland's beginning construction of a fence bordering Russia near Imatra. Tensions between the two are sky high, as Finland's parliament overwhelmingly backs a move to join NATO. It wants to build more than 100 miles of fences, just a small portion of the 800-mile border, which is currently mainly marked with just signs and plastic lines.

Three, two, one. Space X launching its latest mission from Cape Canaveral, a four-man crew on the way to the International Space Station. The six-month science mission will see about 200 experiments in technology demonstrations take place. A Russian cosmonaut and United Arab Emirates astronaut have joined two NASA crewmates for the mission. Traders are now pricing in the possibility. The Fed will raise rates to around the 5.5% range by September.

and that's putting a dampener on markets. Elon Musk isn't giving investors much to chair about either. They want to hear about his plans for an affordable electric vehicle. But Musk kept them guessing during a presentation in Texas, and Tesla's shares were hammered in after-hours trading. Reuters' global auto correspondent, Joe White, watched it all unfold. Musk showed a slide with two hidden vehicles, basically a drawing of two hidden vehicles,

but he refused to elaborate on what the vehicles would be like. For Reuters in Detroit, I'm Joe White. Sticking with Elon Musk, I have a casual question for you. Would you hack your brain? Musk's company Neurrelink is developing human brain implants, which he says will change the course of humanity. Reuters is the first to report that the FDA rejected the company's application to conduct human trials over safety concerns. That's despite Musk promising at least four times, that those trials would start within a few months. Musk and Neurrelink did not respond to our reporter's questions about the device

or its dealings with the FDA. Rachel Levy and Washington is one of the reporters who broke the story. Rachel, just start by reminding us what Neurrelink does or plans to do. So Neurrelink is a startup, and they have been doing many animal tests with their brain implants. They haven't started human studies yet. has said that he would like this device to allow paralyzed people to walk again, blind people to see again. He said that it could cure obesity and schizophrenia. And for people who are disabled would allow you to essentially telepathically communicate just with your mind.

But the FDA rejected the application for human trials. What were the concerns? So the FDA had several safety concerns. Among them were whether the device could be safely removed after it's been implanted, whether the threads, these tiny wires that would be implanted, might migrate and damage the brain in other ways. But also about the battery. So NiroLink wants this device to be seamlessly charged. You should be, you know, in theory you would be implanted and no one would be able to know.

and so they need to be able to charge it in some way, sort of remotely. So what does the setback mean for when we might actually see Neurrelink on the market? So that's a hard question to answer because it just depends on a lot of things that we don't know yet. Starting clinical trials with just a handful of patients, which is what this would be doing, you know, this is the first step. It really is a first step in a very long regulatory process, just because you have implanted, say, 10 patients with a device, doesn't mean that next year, you know, all of us will be, will be able to access this through our doctors. So it's really a long process that I think is

likely, from what I've been told, several years down the line. Thank you so much, Rachel. In a medical clinic in Kenya, mother Dool Abdurham and Ismail cares for her malnourished baby. Like thousands of others, she fled drought in Somalia. But arrivals in Dadaab, one of the world's largest refugee camps are finding overcrowding and scant resources. Reuters Ayonat-Mursey told me Dool's story. She left her village in Somalia with her very, very sick baby, who was three months old at the time, and she has another kid that she left with her father.

Basically, she walked south in the hopes of finding help for her baby. And her baby was malnourished, and her baby also has hydrocephalusalus. which means there's liquid in her brain, which happens sometimes when baby is malnourish, especially in utero. And so she walked on foot for several days with this baby on her back in extreme heat. You know, it's around 40 degrees Celsius in the daytime here. So she walked by herself with this baby, made it here, and just had kind of hoped that

things would be a lot easier when she arrived, you know. She didn't really expect the drought to be as severe as it was here. didn't expect the hospitals and the clinics to be as under resources they were. She's at the Stabilization Ward in Dadaab Camp in the Hagadera section, which is where babies who are severely Malarish go for assistance. But they themselves, you know, they're stretched in, they're under-resourced. They have a huge spike in the number of Malamorish babies that are having to deal with and not necessarily getting more money and aid and resources to deal with it.

And even when people arrive at Dadaab, it's really no safe haven for them, right? Yeah, absolutely. Resources are really stretched thin. Agencies are overwhelmed with the new arrivals. And when they do arrive, they stay with extended family and friends who are having to share their already meager resources with these new arrivals. There's a greater number of people living in close quarters. And so we're seeing spread of communicable diseases like cholera. We've already had five failed rainy seasons. And so we're kind of getting implied that it's going to be a sixth one. And there's not really an end in sight. I'm Ayonat-Mirce in Nairobi. A formal declaration of famine by the United Nations in Somalia has been averted, at least for now. But as UN aid chief Martin Griffith says, people are dying before the numbers catch up. People are dying, have died in Somalia,

long before our technology catches up with the fact that whether you say family is there now or not, it's killing people. And that's good enough, I think, for us to take action on it. That's it for this edition of Reuters World News. We're back on Friday with more news from around the world. In the meantime, you can find more trusted news at Reuters.com.