JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, in London, European leaders promised Volodymyr Zelenskyy more military aid as they draft a peace plan to present to President Trump.

Then, with the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in lieu and Israel cutting off urgently needed aid to Gaza, we talked to former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki Al-Faisal.

And on Hollywood's biggest night, we explore how artificial intelligence helped to enhance some of this year's Oscar favorites.

WOMAN: So they're all kind of small, subtle things, the kind of visual effects tweaks that we have seen in movies for decades and decades.

And now that they're using artificial intelligence to do them, that's where some of the discomfort can come in.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

After his Oval Office dressing down on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy faced a much friendlier group today as he met with European leaders in London.

Zelenskyy said he's still ready to sign the minerals deal he was in Washington to sign on Friday and wants to repair his relationship with President Trump.

Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant in London has our report.

MALCOLM BRABANT (voice-over): What a difference a weekend makes after being humiliated in the Oval Office, President Zelenskyy was back in the warm embrace of fellow Europeans bearing gifts.

KEIR STARMER, British Prime Minister: Very, very welcome here in Downing Street.

MALCOLM BRABANT (voice-over): As peacemaker between Ukraine and the White House, Britain's Keir Starmer reported back to President Trump.

KEIR STARMER: The United Kingdom, along with France and possibly one or two others, will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting.

And then we'll discuss that plan with the United States.

MALCOLM BRABANT (voice-over): Then at a special security conference in London, Zelenskyy was promised more support from what Starmer calls a coalition of willing European partners.

KEIR STARMER: We are at a crossroads in history today.

This is not a moment for more talk.

It's time to act, time to step up and lead and to unite around a new plan for a just and enduring peace.

MALCOLM BRABANT (voice-over): As the summit got underway, Ukrainians and their supporters paraded their disgust at what they perceived as the Trump administration's appeasement of Russia.

Among those dismayed at the Oval Office scenes was Finland's President, Alexander Stubb.

ALEXANDER STUBB, Finnish President: Probably a wake up call and conversations I've had since in the past 72 hours are pretty much about let's move on, let's get back on track, let's see what diplomacy can do.

And I'm quite convinced that the meeting that we have here in London today is going to give us first baby steps back to the table.

MALCOLM BRABANT (voice-over): Britain promised Zelenskyy 5,000 air defense missiles costing some $2 billion.

And there was relief that the United States remains committed to the principle of defending all NATO allies in the event of an attack.

KEIR STARMER: Nobody wanted to see what happened last Friday.

But I do not accept that the U.S. is an unreliable ally.

The U.S. has been a reliable ally to the U.K. for many decades and continues to be.

MALCOLM BRABANT (voice-over): After the summit, a military helicopter transported President Zelenskyy for an audience with King Charles.

The meeting sent a clear message that Ukraine enjoys unreserved British support.

The government here has resisted pressure to withdraw the offer to President Trump of an unprecedented second state visit to Britain.

With all its royal finery, it wants to keep America on side.

For PBS News Weekend, I'm Malcolm Brabant in London.

JOHN YANG: The other big story we're following tonight is in the Middle East, where Israel is blocking humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza until Hamas agrees to temporarily extend phase one of the ceasefire, which expired yesterday.

Israel has embraced a U.S. plan to pause fighting through Ramadan and Passover, which ends April 20th.

Hamas would have to release half of the remaining hostages being held in Gaza on the first day of the extension.

Hamas immediately rejected the proposal.

Earlier, I spoke about all of this with Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom.

TURKI AL-FAISAL, Former Saudi Ambassador to U.S. and U.K.: We all thought that the two stages of the ceasefire would lead to a permanent ceasefire and that those issues were fully and thoroughly discussed when the previous administration was in power in America.

So all these new additions seem to be on the side of Mr. Netanyahu to get away from the commitments that he made in the previous agreement.

JOHN YANG: Talking about that, how would you rate President Trump's involvement in Gaza so far?

TURKI AL-FAISAL: Well, it's been very helpful from one aspect is that it has implemented the ceasefire, but on other things, like the promotion of the Riviera on the Mediterranean and driving out the Palestinians and actually pushing for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, that is wrong.

That is unacceptable, not just by us, but by the whole world.

And then for him to put up that silly, I would say, obscene concoction of him and Mr. Netanyahu drinking sodas in front of the beachfront in Gaza, it's just awful.

JOHN YANG: I believe you're referring to a social media post that he didn't create, but he reposted, showing his vision of the Riviera.

TURKI AL-FAISAL: But he reposted it.

And by that, I think he was just being offensive to all of us and the rest of the world.

You know, that land is shed with blood, innocent children and women and so on.

And though to desecrate it in such a manner I think was inexcusable.

JOHN YANG: I know that there's a meeting of the Arab League coming up later this week.

Egyptian officials have told my colleague Nick Shifrin that they intend to propose replacing the government in Gaza with a body that's affiliated with neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.

What do you think of that idea?

TURKI AL-FAISAL: Well, I am not in government to know what the details are, but that might be the way to reach reasonable compromise on that issue on the part of the Arab countries.

JOHN YANG: As you say, you're no longer in government, but you were a Saudi ambassador to the United States.

You know the U.S. well, you went to college here.

What do you make of President Trump's America first approach to foreign policy?

How do you think that's going to affect things in the Middle East in general and in the Israeli Palestinian conflict?

TURKI AL-FAISAL: In particular, from my long time in America, all American presidents come with some form of America first attitude.

So from that aspect, Mr. Trump is not different from the predecessors, but the magnitude of what he's doing and the public display, it's a different style.

But, you know, he is the President of the United States.

He was given a mandate by the American people.

So the rest of us in the rest of the world, we have to deal with him.

JOHN YANG: You say you have to deal with it, but how do you deal with it?

He seems to want things in return if helps a foreign country.

TURKI AL-FAISAL: Well, you know, the kingdom has been very helpful to America, you know, not just during his first administration, when we purchased a lot of weapons systems.

Even before that, our relationship with America has been mutual benefit.

Over the last 30 years or so, we must have sent over half a million Saudi students to study in the United States.

So, yes, we can accept that.

It has to be mutually beneficial.

JOHN YANG: Another thing that Mr. Trump talks a lot about and the Israelis talk a lot about is normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Under what conditions do you see that happening and how likely do you see normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel?

TURKI AL-FAISAL: There is no mystery about where the Saudi position is.

From the very beginning, it was that there should be a Palestinian state, a viable Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.

I don't see any other way that normalization with Israel can come about other than to have that condition put in place concretely.

JOHN YANG: But with Mr. Trump running things now, do you see him committed as well to the idea of a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem?

TURKI AL-FAISAL: Well, I live in wishful thinking, I hope.

And he is surrounded by people that he has appointed who don't even believe that there is such a thing as a Palestinian people.

So that is a big hurdle to overcome to convince him that there must be a Palestinian state.

JOHN YANG: Your Royal Highness, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, thank you very much for your time.

TURKI AL-FAISAL: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: As humanitarian aid for Gaza is cut off, the Trump administration is sending Israel another round of military aid.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio used emergency authority to expedite delivery of about $4 billion of weapons and ammunition.

The order reverses a Biden administration embargo that blocked the transfer of those items.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has approved nearly $12 billion in major foreign military sales to Israel.

President Trump signed more executive orders overnight.

Two were aimed at revitalizing the U.S. lumber industry.

One expands U.S. timber production, which the president said federal policies had restricted.

And the second one calls for an investigation of lumber and paper products imports, which could lay the groundwork for new tariffs.

Both orders could strain economic relationships with allies, particularly Canada and Mexico, two of the largest sellers of lumber to the United States.

General tariffs on those two countries are set to take effect on Tuesday.

And for the first time, a private U.S. company has successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon.

The Blue Ghost lander touched down today, carrying 10 experiments for NASA.

Like any visitor to a new place, it snapped a few selfies and then took a picture of Earth.

The private company called Firefly Aerospace is the latest in a string of private entities competing to launch NASA payloads to the moon.

A rival lunar lander is expected touch down later this week.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, what cuts in U.S. foreign aid may mean for the suffering children of Haiti.

And on Oscar night, we explore the expanding role of AI in films.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: In Haiti, years of chaos and instability have brought the country to the brink of collapse.

More than a million people, that's nearly 10 percent of the population, have been displaced.

Now, as the Trump Administration eliminates most U.S. foreign aid contracts, access to life saving health services in Haiti are in jeopardy.

Ali Rogin spoke with James Elder of UNICEF who recently visited Haiti.

ALI ROGIN: Thank you so much for joining us.

James.

Can you tell us about what things are like on the ground in Haiti right now?

JAMES ELDER, Spokesperson, UNICEF: There's not many historic examples, certainly present ones where you've got a capital city, Port-au-Prince, where 85 percent of that capital city is controlled by armed groups.

85 percent, and it changes even when I was there.

There areas that are deemed safe, where there are still incursions by these armed groups.

So what that means for everyday people is that huge numbers of them have been displaced.

So a lot of people have lost their homes, a lot of people have lost their livelihoods, a lot of children out of school, a lot of hospitals have closed.

And then there are those people who have not been able to flee those areas.

So they live in those areas.

And there is the constant threat of violence, the constant threat of sexual violence.

In a lot of ways it's almost lawless.

So it's a remarkably difficult place and it is not on the right trajectory for those everyday Haitians.

ALI ROGIN: You mentioned the children are out of school.

But let's talk a little bit more about how the children of Haiti are being affected by all of this unrest right now.

JAMES ELDER: Look, it's hard not to share indicators that speak to a downward spiral.

I could give also many examples of those Haitians who are on those front lines who are trying to look after those children, who are the teachers, the health workers, the social workers.

But yeah, the reality is you've got hundreds of thousands of children out of school.

We see sexual violence from 2023 to last year with a tenfold increase.

Tenfold.

That's 1000 percent.

That is mind boggling when the stories of what that sexual violence means against children.

I've met social workers who are extraordinary in the way that they will care for these children and look after these children.

And UNICEF has safe houses.

But again, the security forces are struggling to hold on to the limited areas of Port au Prince that they currently do.

So for children, it means that they're being pushed out of their homes.

And I think we constantly hear this whether we're talking about Haiti or Sudan or Gaza.

Ali, we hear this idea of being displaced.

And I think there's a worrying sense that people have -- a passive sense to that almost of this being moved from one place to another.

What it actually means is a violent upheaval.

So if I just take a single case of a mum and her children, this is a mother who had worked pretty much seven days a week for the last 10 years to buy small business, to own her own home, and then in the flash of one afternoon as the armed groups came through, she fled all of that.

She fled her business, she lost everything that she'd been saving for.

She left her home, she took her children, and they're in a camp.

They're in a camp for displaced people in the capital, where there are water shortages, where children don't have the same access to school, that sort of scenario of everyday people who've done everything right, if you will, everything they possibly can in terms of their work ethic, in terms of keeping their children in school.

But there are forces just way outside of their control, which is why there's that urgent need for international support, not to be leaving Haiti, but to be very much there at this absolute time of need.

ALI ROGIN: Right now in the United States, there is tremendous upheaval when it comes to foreign aid.

UNICEF, of course, is a global organization administered by the United Nations.

But how is UNICEF navigating these conversations and events that are taking place in Washington that seem to be potentially impacting the access to aid on the ground in places like Haiti, in the clearest.

JAMES ELDER: In a sense, you know, behind closed doors, you know, sitting with those leaders.

I have colleagues who, as I say, are on those front lines in the Gaza, if we talk about Sudan and Ukraine.

But we also have great context in the halls of power, and it's very important to sit with them.

And the United States has, of course, been a very generous donor to UNICEF, to the children of Haiti, for a long, long time.

Now, it's not entirely clear as we work through those executive orders, but I think what we do know is that any prolonged suspension on those activities is going to have a negative impact on those children, on those workers, on those people who stayed in Haiti, on the pediatrician I met who, you know, does 15 hours a day and who's added a malnutrition ward to her hospital and is now essentially running the largest functioning hospital in Haiti and is massively overcrowded, given the need, given the malnutrition or the childbirth or the vaccination or the gunshot wounds.

These are the people that require support.

People who are very much staying in Haiti and wanting to turn things around.

And when we talk of, you know, sort of education, it's one of those messages we share.

There's not a greater investment you can make in terms of development or in a war zone.

You educate a girl, you know, she has children later, she understands nutrition, she has a higher income.

There is such a clear argument in terms of a practical sense, not even principled, a practical sense in terms of some of these services.

So, you know, there's a lot to still unpack in terms of what these decisions will mean.

But we do know that if they are prolonged, we are going to see a negative impact.

So we just hope that level of generosity we've seen from such a big donor like the United States stays on those programs that have such a clear benefit for those people.

Bigger benefit, of course, for the security and stability of the region.

ALI ROGIN: James Elder, spokesman for UNICEF, thank you so much for your time.

JOHN YANG: The Oscars are tonight and as is often the case, there's a subplot of controversy this year.

It's over the use of artificial intelligence in the production of a number of nominated films, some of them in the best picture category.

Katey Rich is the awards editor at The Ankler, which covers the entertainment industry.

She's also the host of the podcast Prestige Junkie.

So, Katie, what are we talking about here?

What sorts of things are in nominated films that used AI?

KATEY RICH, Editor, The Ankler: We're talking about so many different things, which is what makes it such a complicated issue in the case of some of this year's Oscar nominees, you've got two films, the "Brutalist" and "Emilia Perez," which used a technology called respond feature to alter the way that the actors voices sounded with the actor's permission.

You've also got in the "Complete Unknown," they use a different AI tool to make a stunt double's face look more like the star, Timothee Chalamet.

So they're all kind of small, subtle things, the kind of visual effects tweaks that we've seen in movies for decades and decades.

And now that they're using artificial intelligence to do them, that's where some of the discomfort can come in and make it really hard to understand exactly how these tools are being used.

JOHN YANG: You mentioned the "Brutalist."

The editor said he used this technique to improve the Hungarian accents of some of the characters.

This is a movie about a man who immigrates from Hungary to the United States.

He says that nothing, as you said, nothing was done that hasn't been done for years.

It's only faster and cheaper this way.

So what's the argument here?

KATEY RICH: I mean, I think it's that people feel this inherent distrust of AI and saying, oh, it's helping, you know, enhance a performance in a way an actor couldn't do.

A dialogue replacement technology has been used for decades just in a slightly different way.

And it's faster and cheaper now, as you said.

And I think we're used to things like generative AI which are much more dodgy in terms of replacing creative work.

So there's a tendency to conflate use of that kind of AI in a really precise tool for the kind of generative AI that could replace jobs in Hollywood that people do have real fears about.

It's really about telling the difference between the two.

And that's where these things get kind of muddy.

JOHN YANG: As you said, the AI was a big issue in the actors strike last year.

Are there discussions now about this now that this has arisen?

KATEY RICH: Well, I think the important thing about "The Brutalist" is that the actors Adrian Brody and Felicity Jones, whose voices were used for that, it was done with their permission.

They own the models of their voices.

So it's not like by having done this that they are voiced voices can be replaced by a computer version of them, which was one of the big sticking points in the strikes last year with the actors of saying they don't want a computer to just replace them without their actual permission.

And I think there is discussion now inside the academy about the ways that these productions can disclose whether or not they used AI.

There's been no official ruling on that.

And I think as this technology evolves, it will maybe be harder to tell what's AI and what's not or how useful a disclosure in.

If this is a technology that's growing so quickly, it's going to have to change every year and assess what's people's comfort levels are.

I think it's going to evolve a lot in the coming years.

JOHN YANG: When you say it makes things faster and cheaper, is there concern among the unions in the craft part of the industry who worry about losing jobs over this?

KATEY RICH: Certainly.

And I think that's where the nuances in it come in.

There are so many different uses of AI for technology.

So there's jobs in computer animation, say where someone might have to sit at a computer for hours and hours to hand do something.

Now I can step in and do that.

Or can you save time for somebody so that they can free it up to do something else to do a more creative aspects of their job?

It can cut both ways.

And that's where the unions will step.

And I think some of these studios and production companies can find ways to use it responsibly and not really stifle or eliminate the creative people out of the process.

I think there are enough people who devoted to doing it that way that it could work successfully in the future.

JOHN YANG: You say there's discussions about new rules for the Academy for nominated films.

Do you expect to have new rules by the next season?

KATEY RICH: They do tend to update their rules every year.

The board of governors of the Academy meets after the Oscars, so kind of talk about what went well and what didn't and tweak their process.

I think for people in the visual effects community or in the sound branch of the academy, that's somewhere where AI tools are really starting to play a major role.

And I think they could have options for changing the rules there.

There are way more rules at the Oscars than you could possibly imagine.

They are very complex and not everybody understands them.

But I think the bigger question is, even if they do have rules about it, about disclosure, I don't think they're ever going to ban people from using AI.

And if everyone is going to start using it, if these tools keep adapting and getting cheaper and easier to use, will it really make a difference if everybody is using them?

JOHN YANG: Katey Rich, thank you very much.

KATEY RICH: Thank you so much.

JOHN YANG: And that is PBS News Weekend for this Sunday.

I'm John Yang.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

Have a good week.