Reuters World News - Moon landing, Nvidia frenzy, ‘The Trump whisperer’ at NATO and Alabama embryo ruling

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

The United States has achieved its first moon landing in half a century with a private spacecraft. AI mania has added a whopping $277 billion to Nvidia’s market value. Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, known as ‘The Trump whisperer’ for his skill in handling the then US president at a NATO summit in 2018, is in pole position to be the next head of the alliance. And in the wake of Alabama’s embryo ruling, a woman in that state tells us she wants to move her three frozen embryos out of the country.  Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, another historic moon landing for the United States, who are the big winners in the private space race. Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutter, known as the Trump Whisperer, is put forward as a candidate to lead NATO. Envidia breaks another Wall Street record. And an Alabama mother comes to terms with the state's controversial new ruling about her embryos. It's Friday, February 23rd. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything. need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vinald in London.

And I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. For the first time in 50 years, a US spacecraft has landed on the moon. We're checking our antenna reception. Checking antenna reception. The unmanned lander, named Odysseus, landed near the moon's South Pole, a little before midnight GMT. Our equipment is on the surface of the moon, and we are transmitting. So congratulations, I am team.

While it's carrying scientific instruments for NASA, this lander was built and flown by a Texas company called Intuitive Machines and was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida a week earlier. We grabbed our space reporter Joey Roulette after the landing. Joey, the landing was touch and go right up until the end. What happened? Yeah, so it was very, very suspenseful in the minutes leading up to the third. final point where it actually landed maybe about 10 minutes before they encountered an issue with the lasers that they were supposed to use to help it land. They stopped working. There was luckily a NASA instrument on board that had similar technology using LIDAR. Some engineers wrote a quick

software patch and they ended up using that untested system to help guide its landing. I'm sure it was very stressful for them. But it finally did land. And that's when they confirmed that it was alive, that they've actually achieved that soft landing on the moon. Now, a private company just landed on the moon. What does it tell us about the future of what we do in space? This is part of NASA's strategy to rely more on companies to go to the moon so that it can spur what it envisions as a commercial marketplace there, which will bring the costs down, which is something that NASA hopes.

And we're going to see a lot more companies going to the moon in the future. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos is SpaceX. company. They have plans to send humans there. China also is relying on a lot of private companies do that too. And India wants to kind of follow NASA's model as well. The United States and major European countries are backing outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Ruta to be the next head of NATO. That puts him in pole position to replace Yen Stoltenberg in October. So if he does get the gig, how will he navigate potentially a Donald Trump presidency? Rachel Armstrong is in London. Mark Ritter already has the moniker, the Trump whisperer, from how he dealt with Donald Trump

during a fairly acrimonious NATO summit in 2018. So no one knows quite what went on, but there was a point in the meeting when it was all looking pretty dicey and then people said that Rutter was the person who managed to reassure Trump about European government's commitment to defence spending and get the thing back on course. So Keflon Mark Rutter, as he is known for his ability to withstand all sorts of political crises, is seen as NATO's best chance of having someone who can talk eye to eye with someone like Donald Trump and keep the US commitment to the transatlantic military alliance. AI darling Nvidia is causing a frenzy among investors. It added a record $277 billion.

to its stock market value on Thursday, the largest one-day gain in Wall Street's history. So what should everyday investors who may be exposed to Nvidia and their 401Ks and other funds be aware of? I called up Chips reporter Stephen Nellis in San Francisco to find out. Well, I think the first thing to keep in mind

about those trillions of dollars of figures that you may have read in the press is that, you know, that's really more reflective of the potential impact of AI on the economy. In other words, could AI reorder or reorder at something like a quarter of the U.S. economy? Well, sure, sure, absolutely. There's huge swaths of the U.S. economy that are affected by technology. In terms of how this fits into your everyday life, I think it's really important to keep your eye on what does this stuff useful for? So the thing to

keep your eye on is, does this change my life? Does it change my life the way that a personal computer did in the 1980s or 1990s or the way that a smartphone did in the 2010s? And if the answer, is yes, then I think there'll be plenty of exposure to that all over your retirement accounts. It's interesting you compare this to other tech booms. Are there risks to be on the lookout for? There's absolutely a huge risk with this technology. And I think it's actually very similar to the risk that we saw with self-driving cars several years ago. So self-driving cars, there is a ton of excitement in Silicon Valley about that technology probably five or more years ago now. The joke with self-driving cars is they've been five years away for 25 years now.

So I think that's the risk. I think the risk is that some of these problems we see with chatbots making things up never really get fully solved. And so we only use them in places where there's not a whole lot of risk. But it does mean that high trust applications like maybe being something that you talk to before you talk to a real doctor or a nurse in a medical chat program, maybe that never happens. So that's probably the biggest risk here is that some of these. what look like small problems that everybody are hoping to solve

never really get solved and it overall limits the usefulness and impact of the technology over time. An Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are children is raising questions about the future of reproductive medicine in the state. Some IVF providers in Alabama have already halted procedures and owners of frozen embryos have been left in limbo. I spoke to one woman in just that situation. Christiania Rombly. Hi, Christia. Hi, Kim. Thank you so much for talking to me today. So first off,

just tell me a bit about you and your family. My name is Christia. I live in the Birmingham, Alabama area, and I work in design and customization. We have four little boys. Three are from IVF. One is not. And we currently have a foreign exchange student in our house also. So you've got a very full house. We do, yes. So after your three youngest boys, you had three embryos left, and you froze them at the same clinic you were treated in in Alabama. With this court ruling, what's your plan? We're hoping to be able to move them outside the country, because I'm afraid that if this does go to the Supreme Court, it could become a national thing eventually.

Wow, that's a big decision. It's huge, and it's especially considering the time limitations on getting them moved. If we were flying them somewhere, for instance, and there was an unexpected. lay over, you're in trouble. If I had a million dollars, I would have them, but we just, we can't have more children. And though I do not believe that they should have the same rights as children, I do not believe that they're alive. When you have such an emotional attachment to them, which you do, even though they're not alive, they're a hope. They're a potential future sibling. They are a potential future child. You care about them, and it's an emotional decision to make.

What are your concerns about keeping your embryos stored in Alabama with this new ruling? Honestly, it's just wild to imagine what it can mean. And if you'd have asked me a few years ago, I would have laughed and said they're fine. But with the way things have been going and with this kind of ruling saying that they have the same rights as a born child, technically that would mean that the government could step in at any point and take them from you. Just like they could your child if they felt like you weren't treating them well. if you were abusing them or neglecting them. Who's to say they won't say, well, they've been frozen for eight years.

That's neglect. And then they could take them. And there is a practice of donating embryos for adoption. So that does happen frequently, actually. I don't know that it would ever go that far. But I also never thought they would overturn Roeview-Wade, and I never thought that they would come down and say that masses of cells and petri dishes are live children. What are your concerns about this ruling more broadly?

I just feel like it's a slippery slope. It's setting the precedent for other states to follow suit. So even if we move them to another state, how do I know it won't become national? And each time they take a right away and are successful with it, that empowers them to continue taking more rights away. Now quickly to the headlines making news ahead of the weekend. The United States is imposing fresh sanctions on Russia today. The action comes as Washington seeks to hold Russia to account of the war in Ukraine

and the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. His mother, Luyodmila Navalnya, says she's under pressure from Russian investigators to have her son buried in secret. Russian investigators have not responded to the allegations. The head of Doctors Without Borders says children in Gaza as young as five are telling his teams they would prefer. to die. Medical teams have added a new acronym to their vocabulary, W-C-N-S-F. Wounded child, no surviving family.

Speaking to the United Nations Security Council, Christopher Lockyer also slammed the US for repeatedly vetoing the demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. We'll be back tomorrow with a special episode on the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. You can catch our daily show back on Monday. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast player or download the Reuters app.