correspondent ali rogin has our report. [gunfire] ali: in ukraine's eastern donbas region, russian forces are taking control, one town at a time. ukrainian forces fight back at close range. soldier: we can see the enemy from here. ali: it's part of russia's new campaign focusing on the two easternmost regions. on saturday, they said they took the city of lyman in donetsk. and fierce fighting continues in sever-donetsk, the last ukrainian-held city in luhansk. [banging on door] in a nearby village, ukrainian soldiers urged elderly residents to leave before the russians arrived. katarina: i don't want anyone to go through this. it's terrifying. oh my god, it's just terrifying. ali: but ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy said those cities will not remain in russian hands. pres. zelenskyy: if the occupiers think that lyman and sievierodonetsk will be theirs, they are wrong. the donbas will be ukrainian because it's us, it's our sence. ali: meanwhile, the pos in besieged mariupol are reopening der the russian naval flag. th

for "pbs news weekend," i'm ali rogin. ♪ geoff: in today's headlines... a 22-year-old marineorps veteran, willy joseph cancel, who traveled from the u.s. to join the war in ukraine was killed in the fighting there this week. members of his family confirmed his death to multiple news outlets. cancel is believed to be the first american fighter killed in the war. the u.s. military does not have troops on the ground in ukraine, but cancel was working for a private military contractor. he leaves behind his widow, brittany, and a 7-month-old son. the biden administration is considering canceling at least $10,000 in student loans per borrower through executive action, according to multiple people familiar with the internal discussions. the white house has not yet finalized the proposal but is planning for the relief to target lower and middle-income americans. on thursday, president biden said that he is not considering $50,000 in forginess per borrower, as some democrats have suggted. biden already canceled more student loan debt than any other president by ma

ali: absolutely. judy: ali rogin, thank you very much. ali: thank you. judy: at the united nations security council today, the u.s. accused russia of using food as a weapon in its war against ukraine, and, in turn, creating a global food security crisis. ukraine grows enough food to feed 400 million people. and ukraine and russia together account for one-third of the world's wheat exports. but russia's invasion and its blockade of ukrainian ports are preventing ukraine from exporting its grain and steel, as nick schifrin recently witnessed in southern ukraine. nick: ukraine's largest steel plant still faces the threat of russian airstrikes. in march, the war forced arcelormittal kryvyi rih to close for the first time since world war ii. but now workers are back. and blast furnace number six is firing. the plant offers every step of a process that can produce six million tons of steel a year. n bknla iheasow t found furnace that is 4000 degrees. that creates what's known as pig iron, a crude iron, and that becomes steel. before the war, the plant was one

ali rogin has more. ali: to learn more about this sweeping investition, i'm joined by catherine porter. she's the toronto bureau chief of "the new york times," and she's been covering haiti since its devastating 2010 earthquake and led the team that pored over centuries old documents and archives for this story. catherine, thank you so much for joining us. how did your team come up with this idea? catherine: well, as you ntioned, i had been in haiti since 2010, and i think i've been back more than 30 times, and any journalist who spends any time in haiti asks the question, like, why is it like this? why is the poverty so bad? why is infrastructure so bad? and why is it so so much worse than other countries around it? and the obvious answer is often given as corruption, which is true. but reading a book on one of my trips there, it mentioned this thing called the independence debt that haiti had paid to france. after winng its independence, it had then been forced to pay in cash. and it just stirred my...

correspondent ali rogin explores what's changed and why. ali: in just the last three years, abortion rights activists in latin america have celebrated some major victories. their movement is called the "marea verde," the green wave, for the green scarves first worn by activists in argentina. that country legalized abortion until 14 weeks of pregnancy. it was previously treated as a crime, except in cases of rape and to protect the life of the mother. in mexico, some abortion rights demonstrations grew violent. last year, the supreme court ruled that state laws criminalizing abortions were unconstitutional. now, 7 of mexico's 32 states allow them. in february of this year, colombia's constitutional court legalized abortion up to 24 weeks. there had been a total ban until 2006, when some exceptions were added. but other countries in latin america and the carribean still have some of the most severe abortion laws. the procedure is still completely illegal, with no exceptions, in six countries. for more, i'm joined by alicia yamin, the senior f

correspondent ali rogin sat down with french philosopher, journalist and author bernard henry-levi to discuss his film. ali: bernard-henri levy, thank you so much for joining us. this film and the book that accompanies it are based on your travels in late 2019, well into 2020, to some of the most dangerous places around the world. why did you take this on? bernard: because i wanted to meet ladies and gentlemen who fight putin, erdogan, iran, china and the islamic caliphate. this is a topic of this movie. those who fight these five authoritarian regimes, all groups threatening democracy all over the world. i felt that my duty, my task as a public intellectual was to go there to bear testimony on what is happening there, the carnage and the resistance, which is confronting the carnage and the massacres. ali: and, of course, each of these countries is unique. they have their own characteristics. but what is your sense of what the people there want outside observers to understand about the conditions in which they are living? bernard: the people i met can be in bangladesh, in kurdistan, i

correspondent ali rogin sat down with an expert who shared advice on how to have those difficult conversations. ali: joining me now is lisa damour. she's a clinical psychologist and the author of "under pressure: confronting the epidemic of stress and anxiety in girls." lisa, thank you so much for joining us. what are some of the concerns th you've heard parents talk about when it comes to talking with their kids about traumatic events like the one in texas? lisa: i think parents really struggle to know what to say, what to ask their children, whether or n they should even bring it up, how to answer the very hard questions that children often ask at times like this. i think that it makes it extraordinarily hard when events like what happened in texas occur and parents want to be supportive of their children, and yet they often don't know what to say. ali: and what's some of the language that you would suggest a parent use with a very young child, like five or six years old, versus that of a teenager? lisa: so if a child is very young and not going to school, i think that parents should do what