♪ geoff:ood evening. i'm geoff bennett. tonight on pbs news weekend, crypto crisis. a look at the turmoil grip during the cryptocurrency market and ideas for how to rein it in. ideas on the looming famine in somalia brought on by the worst drought in nearly 40 years. >> children are struggling to survive and doctors trying to get them enough calories to get them back to something above a starvation level. geoff: discrimination in medicine. a new report finds software used by hospitals contain racial biases that can lead to inequities in care. all that and the days headlines on tonight's pbs news weekend. ♪

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contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. geoff: good eving. it's good to be with you. we start tonight in ukraine where more russian missile strikes fell all across the city today targeting the nation's power grid and killing civilians. in central ukraine in the birthplace of president volodymyr zelenskyy, a one-year-old child was found in the rubble left by russian strike, bringing the number of dead to four. a barrage of nearly 100 rockets have fallen since yesterday. including one that knocked out a power station in the south. president zelenskyy says power has been restored to nearly 6 million people in just the last 24 hours but millions more remain in the dark without heat or running water amid freezing winter conditions. political unrest in peru following the arrest of the president has shut down a number of flights and railways and left many stranded tourists.

near the ancient city of machu picchu, the only way in and out is btrain. hundreds of travelers waited in long lines to try to evacuate by helicopter or contend with an hours long hike off the mountain. the state department advises u.s. travelers to reconsider travel to peru. the father of the accused mass ooter at a july 4 parade outside chicago earlier this year was released on bond this morning. robert crimo jr. turned himself into authorities. he was charged with seven felony counts for sponsoring his son's firearm application despite signs of mental distress. he killed seven people and wounded dozens of others in that a highland park shooting. elon musk reinstated the accounts of several high-profile journalists. less than 48 hours after suspending them. he accused the journalists who report for outlets including cnn

, the new york times and washington post of sharing data about the location of his private jet. advocacy groups called the suspensions a violation of press freedoms. croatia beat morocco today at the world cup. croatia has been prolific in recent world cup's, finishing as the runner-up in 2018. morocco has captured's place in history as the first african and first arab team to ever reach the semifinals. the world cup final between argentina and france is tomorrow morning. still to come, racial biases in medical data leading to inequities in care. and e designers take on creating toys for kids. >> this is pbs news weekend from w dta studios -- w eta studios in washington.

geoff: 2022 has been a brutal year for cryptocurrency after reaching a peak of $3 trillion in value in 2021, cryptocurrencies have spent the better part of this year in a tailspin field by financial losses, a public perception crisis and a fraud scandal. the founder of the crypto firm ftx sam bankman-fried was cited on a battery of fraud charges. he has denied knowingly defrauding investors. >> look, i screwed up. i was ceo. i was the ceo of ftx. that means i had a responsibility. we didn't. we messed up big. geoff: matthew homer joins us now. he's a former crypto regulator and now active investor and advisorn the crypto industry.

he has no direct relationship with any of the companies we are discussing today. ask for being with us. >> pleasure to be here. geoff: you could argue that the fall of ftx has more to do with greed and fraud than it has to do with crypto. from where you sit, what do you see as the takeaways? >> three big takeaways. the first is this is fraud. the risks and human foibles that exist in other parts of financial services exist here. in many ways what happened was't about crypto at all, it was about hubris and fraud. another big take away is the space clearly has a long way to go in its evolution and this will be an important one to help it mature, helpless reduce risk. and also push the bad actors out of the system. the third take away is it's very clear that the cryptocurrencies

offered by central intermediaries need to be regulated. there has been a lot of consensus that has emerged even within the crypto industry itself. >> what about the ripple effect? customers have pulled billions of dollars worth of assets from binance. what does the collapse of ftx mean for the larger sector moving forward? >> i expect we will continue to see those ripple effects play out over the next few months. risk is being pushed out of the system. i think the industry will recover. the biggest impact from all of this is the loss of trust with consumers, regulators, in washington. that's going to take a very long time to rebud. geoff: lawmakers and capitol hill are pushing legislation

right now to rein in the cryptocurrency market. can crypto work as designed if it's subjected figural -- the federal regulation -- to federal regulation? >> -- an organization that enables cuomers to buy or sell crypto assets on your platform, you should be regulated. there are templates for how to do that. some regulators are already doing that. most notably the new york state department of financial services has a comprehensive framework for regulating cryptocurrency. some states do not. the federal government does not. regulators need to be much more active in the space. ensuring consumer protection, looking at cybersecurity practices, compliance with anti-money laundering. cryptocurrency is not going away and regulators have a responsibility to the public to oversee the risks and create

pathways so that founders can start businesses so people don't feel the need to work with offshore entities. geoff: less than a year ago we were seeing super bowl ads for ftx and other cryptocurrency exchanges. ftx nosedived from a 32 billion dollar valuation to a near zero valuation in a day. what's your response to people who say crypto is at worst a ponzi scheme and at best too good to be true? >> there are a lot of good actors in the space. if you think about the evolution of money coming faster, more efficient, more omnipresent in society. but it's very difficult to differentiate between the good actors and bad actors and that's why it's important to regulate the space because that's one way to enable consumers to know who is safe to engage with and who is not.

geoff: thanks for your insights and your time. somalia is experiencing its worst drought in nearly 40 years and now the country is facing another crisis, a looming famine that by next summer could leave more than 8 million people without enough food to eat. john yang has the latest. >> poor rain seasons and failed harvests are taking toll on families across the nation. millions of people have been driven from their homes by conflict or drought like this mother. >> this is the fourth year of drought. cows, goats and forms all perished. i left mhusband. three of my sons died on the way due to hunger and thirst as we walked. four of my children managed to reach him. we have nothing.

>> nearly half the country could be in a critical food crisis in the coming months. jason beaubien is in somalia. what's the food situation there now? >> it's really direct, particularly in some parts of the country. people are fleeing from the parched landscapes where their crops have failed, there goats, sheep, some of their cattle have died. they were moving into these camps in hopes of getting international food aid. when they are getting there, they are finding there isn't much international food aid. agencies are running up against a lot of problems due to security or other issues and so people are showing up and finding there isn't any food for their children. >> you visited a pediatric icu ward in mogadishu. what did you see?

>> it's really heartbreaking. there are these children who are half of the weight they should be. completely lost all of their muscle mass, have no fat left in their face, they can't even swallow. they are so bone thin. doctors are attempting to bring them back. mothers are waiting by the bedsides for these children and it's not just one or two. the icu was completely full on the day we were there. this is happening not just in mogadishu. pretty much the epicenter of the food crisis. you've got people flooding in from many other places. we are seeing similar situations in the hospitals with children who are really struggling to survive and doctors trying to get them enough calories to get

them to something above a starvation level. >> somalia has been in a civil war for a long time now. talk about t effect of that conflict on the hunger and food situation. >> al-shabaab has bound international relief agencies from delivering fd so right there you got this conflict where people need food, there isn't food being grown on the landscape because it's completely dried out because of this drought and yet al-shabaab is actively making things as difficult as they can. so al-shabaab is very much viewed as the problem here. they also control a lot of the rural territory. moving from mogadishu to a town further down on the coast might be 90 km. they were having to fly aid 90 km because roads were so insecure that aid agencies

aren't able to move on those roads. geoff: i the american security assistance as important as food assistance? >> i'm hearing from people here that it is. people were happy to see that the biden administration came back and brought back u.s. troops into somalia this year after the trump administration had pulled them out in the last days of the trump administration. they are working as advisors, they are working with special forces to try to strengthen the military so they can combat al-shabaab. u hear on a regular basis from people here that dealing with al-shabaab is part of not just dealing with the food crisis but many of the problems facing somalia at the moment. there's a lot of enthusiasm for having international assistance coming from the u.s. and other countries are selling -- sending

in military help. it's very welcome at the moment >> jason beaubien, thank you very much. geoff: technological innovations are reshaping the u.s. health care system, transforming medical science and treatment. a new report finds that a number of software programs used in hospitals across the country are powered by algorithms with racial biases which can cause physicians to misdiagnose medical conditions or delay critical treatment. joining us now is dr. jayne morgan, a cardiologist with the south eastern life sciences association. her work has posters- focused extensively on health equity issues. among the biased information these hospitals are using is a

kidney function calculation which presumes that lack patients have more muscle mass that can cause delays in care. there is a long health formula using 19th-century research suggesting black patients have a lower lung capacity. there's a scoring index determining if a person can have a virginal bth after a c-section that gives nonwhite patients a lower success rate. how do biased data points like these affect treatment? >> you hit the nail on the head. what you're talking about with the kidney function is something called estimated glomerular filtration rate. it's what we use to do an assessment of your kidney function and that's incredibly important because that number can determine whether or not you are eligible for a transplant. when you should be referred to specialty care. which meditations -- medications you should be on and when you

should start them. it can make your kidney function appear better than it really is and therefore delay needed and specialty care that you may need to have. we see that as well with lung capacity when we look at spirometry. a lot of those calculations are built into the software. physicians are even unaware that race calculation is being used in the software. when we look at lung capacity. and that is incredibly important as we are in the middle of this covid search. and people certainly can have pulmonary issues. we want to make certain that everybody gets the absole best care. geoff: help us understand where this information comes from. clinical trials have historically contributed to this problem because they don't tend to have enough people of color volved in them.

>> certainly there is some historical context to that. we know things that were done in the name of research and i say that in quotation marks, from 50-150 years ago often began with false premises and then that was carried on. if we look at lung capacity, one of the justifications that was used is that body proportions are different in the black race in the white race. and therefore they put this race factor in that decreases your lung capacity automatically for a specific race. while we recognize the individual proportions may be different, things also can be related to occupational and social determinants of health and all proportions are not certainly race-based. if those calculations are going to be done, they need to be done on an individual basis, not using race as a proxy in these

formulations and this software. geoff: the bias can extend beyond treatment into medical devices. >> pulse oximeters are put on your finger to give hospitals and physicians an indication of what the percent of oxygen is in your body. b■ut often times can be used t triage you with regard to whether or not you need to be seen immediately or transferred to the icu, whether you should be given supplemental oxygen or even intubated. what we know is that the greater the amount of melanin in your skin, it artificially impairs the reading of the pulse oximeters. so you can appear if you have darker skin or more melanin to have a higher oxygen level then you really do and therefore you are triaged to lower levels of

care when in fact your medical condition may be moretical than that pulse oximeters indicates. the reason we have that problem is pulse oximeters were created in the early 70's and in those clinical trials, they were not inclusive of people of color. we see that as well with the infrared thermometers we see. certainly during covid people were using them during screening. you place them in front of someone's forehead to get a measure of what is there temperature. and again, we can see that different amounts of melanin in the skin can certainly impair what the thermometer actually reads. so we've got to begin to make certain that we not only use these clinical tools as physicians, but demand and request that these tools be validated on all peoples of color. because therefore when

physicians are using them, they can inadvertently make decisions and errors based on readings from software and clinical trials that were not inclusive. geoff: dr. jayne morgan, thanks for your time and insights. >> thank you. geoff: finally tonight, many holidays -- families will be scrambling to get last-minute gifts, including toys for the kids. khipra nichols was o of the people who helped make those holiday wishes come true. tonight rhode island pbs weekly producer isabella brings us his take on toy making. >> people have asked me, which totally of all the ones you made is your favorite. i have to say it's this one, the snoopy copter.

my name is khipra nichols and this is my brief but spectacular take on toys. i'm an industrial design and i'm also a professor at rhode island school of design. i designed toys at hasbro for many years and two months. i think the most recognizable toy that i worked on is my little pony. i came up with the idea of having a baby dragon. and so spike became the baby dragon friend of majesty who is the pony that comes in the my little pony dream castle. one of the fun aspects of the future for spike is that he gets to ride up and down in this little basket. i have to admit the information

-- inspiration from this feature came from watching the movie, rear window. another really fun toy to work on was mr. and mrs. potato head. before thisharacter that we worked on, mr. and mrs. potato head were very plain and plastic like this. they had very little personality. we had the job of bringing freshness and more life and animation into the characters. it was my idea to have this little hatch and it was inspired by the dr. denton onesies but toddlers where that have a little flap in the back when they are learning how to potty train. so this opens up anit's plenty of room to put the parts in and we made sure the parts were flexible enough and soft enough that they could bend and flex and this could change.

toys are important because this is how children start to understand the world that they are in. imagine a toddler sitting in a waiting pool and you give them a block. they are splashing in the water and it floats to the top and they get very excited about that. when you hand them something that doesn't float, they do the same thing and it doesn't come up to the top. so what looks like clay is also discovery. one day i had a prototype for a toy and i had the opportunity to sit next to an 8-month-old who was going to teach me did i get the shapes right. is it going to be fun for the child. i took the toy out of the box and the child got very excited about the box. the box was more interesting than the toy because the box was something the child could put on their head and they could dump

something out of the box. sometimes the box is even more engaging than what's in the box. geoff: online, our preview of how to watch and what to expect from the january 6 committee's final public hearing. all that and more is on our website, pbs.org/newshour. that's our program for tonight. i'm geoff bennett. thanks for spending part of your saturday with us. >> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. this program was made possible

by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers likeou. thank you. ♪

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