are managing a water crisis that's  worsening due to poor management,  

poor infrastructure and climate change. Then  while millions around the world struggle to  

find love, is artificial intelligence, a  sufficient substitute for the real thing?

WOMAN: These chat bots are formed to be  supportive to be a lot more agreeable,  

right and human relationships we know that  there's conflict. So, there's challenges  

in terms of how this is shaping maybe how people  think about real life, relationships with others.

JOHN YANG: And history making  performances and both college  

and professional basketball  from the sport's biggest stars.

(BREAK)

JOHN YANG: Good evening, I'm John Yang. Nikki  Haley, the last remaining rival to dominant front  

runner Donald Trump says she no longer feels bound  by the pledge the RNC required of candidates to  

back the party's eventual presidential nominee.  Haley was asked about it on NBC Meet the Press.

WOMAN: You did sign a pledge and  RNC pledge to support the eventual  

nominee. Do you still feel bound by that pledge?

NIKKI HALEY, Republican Presidential  Candidate: I have always said that. I  

have serious concerns about Donald Trump.  I have even more concerns about Joe Biden.

WOMAN: So is that a no. Are  you bound by the RNC wish?

NIKKI HALEY: The RNC is now  not the same RNC. Now it's --

WOMAN: So you're no longer bound by that pledge?

NIKKI HALEY: No, I think I'll make what decision  

I want to make. But that's not  something I'm thinking about.

JOHN YANG: Haley said both Trump who's 77  and President Biden who's 81 are too old.  

A new New York Times Siena College poll out this  weekend found that 73 percent of the registered  

voters questions said Mr. Biden was too old  to be an effective president, 42 percent said  

the same thing about Trump. The two would be  the oldest presidential nominees in history.

House and Senate leaders reached a bipartisan  deal on six spending bills that need to be  

passed by Friday to avoid a partial government  shutdown. They'd fund the Department of Justice,  

agriculture, transportation, housing, commerce,  

interior and Veterans Affairs for the rest  of the fiscal year that ends September 30.  

The threat of another partial shutdown  looms March 22, unless there's a deal by  

then on funding the rest of the government,  including the State Department and Pentagon.

The Israeli military says a preliminary review  of that chaotic aid delivery last week that  

ended with more than 100 Palestinians  dead as found that most of the deaths  

were caused by people being trampled. But  Gaza health officials said those taken to  

hospitals had been hit with a large caliber  ammunition. Israel had previously said its  

soldiers that opened fire when they  felt threatened by the surging crowds.

In Haiti, hundreds of inmates fled the country's  main prison after armed gangs stormed the facility  

overnight. It's the latest escalation of violence  between gangs and Haiti's outgun police. Last  

week, gangs carried out coordinated attacks on  the International Airport and two police stations.

Civilians fled their homes for police officers  were killed. Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry  

recently went to Kenya to try to get support  for United Nations back security force in Haiti,  

and Pakistan's newly formed parliament elected  Shehbaz Sharif as Prime Minister then ends a  

month of political turmoil and allegations  of vote rigging and the general election.

As Sharif accepted the post allies  of imprisoned former Prime Minister  

Imran Khan shouted calls of thief.  Sharif second time as Prime Minister  

begins with the country in a deep economic  crisis and mired in political distrust.

Khan's allies say they'll keep protesting and  pushing for an investigation into the election.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, why people  are seeking wife partners using artificial  

intelligence and history making performances  and both men's and women's basketball.

(BREAK)

JOHN YANG: Mexico City, one of the world's  most populous cities could be just months  

away from running out of water. It's been  brought on by a combination of geography,  

mushrooming growth, and leaky infrastructure  all compounded by the effects of climate change.

Emily Green is a journalist based in Mexico  City who's covered the story for NPR. Emily,  

what's the situation there now? What's  daily life like now? For just for you,  

you live there in Mexico City? Are  there restrictions on water use?

EMILY GREEN, Journalist: There are restrictions  on water use. I think it very much depends where  

you live in the city. And that is maybe like the  entire world, you know, if you have more money,  

and you're going to feel the impact  of the water shortage, much less.

That said, I think what's unique  right now is that it is being felt  

city wide. And I'll just use myself  as an example. I live in one of the  

more upscale neighborhoods in Mexico  City. And while reporting the story,  

the water stopped flowing from the top, I'm going  to had a sink full of dishes, zero water coming.

For me, it was a little shocking. I  haven't had that happen in a while.  

But that is actually a daily reality  for many people in Mexico City.

JOHN YANG: What are the factors  that brought us to this point?

EMILY GREEN: I would say that there is  two major factors. One is extremely old  

infrastructure in terms of the water pipes. So  the city loses around 40 percent of the water  

recedes because of leaks in the pipes.  And that's been a long standing problem.

But on top of that compounding that is  climate change. And that is really what's  

happening right here, you have this very  volatile combination of old infrastructure,  

combined with climate change, which  means there have been years of much less  

rainfall than normal. This is the level of the  reservoir that provide the water to Mexico City,  

the very low. And so that's what's happening  now this kind of volatile combination.

JOHN YANG: And you say that leakage  has been a problem for a long time.  

Has anyone tried to do anything about it?

EMILY GREEN: Oh, yeah, I remember I  was here in 2018. And they the city  

shut off the water supply in order to  try and address these leaks. And that  

was one of the first water stories I did in  Mexico City was at that time, but of course,  

we're still having the same issues. So it  doesn't seem that made a huge difference.

JOHN YANG: You said earlier that people who are  better off feel it less than people who may be in  

need is that because of the resources they have?  Or is it the parts of the city that are affected?

EMILY GREEN: Both. I visited one  area, it's called (inaudible),  

it is in the Greater Metropolitan  Mexico City. And in this neighborhood,  

they haven't had running water for two years  now. And the running water that they do have,  

it comes out and it looks dark  brown, and it smelled like sewage.

So that is a bug where they're living in the city  has a major impact. But I think on top of that,  

what's happening is that if the water is not  coming from the tap, people are buying it from  

private water tanks. They're having it trucked  in on private water tanks. And it's just a fact  

that that $7 that one spent is going to impact you  more or less depending on how much money you have.

So it's a combination of where you live, and also  how much money you can afford to spend on trucks,  

private trucks, bringing in  water and paying for that.

JOHN YANG: What are the potential  effects on schools, hospitals,  

homes, what are the people worrying about?

EMILY GREEN: You know, if you don't  have water, you can't flush the toilet,  

you can't do the dishes, you can't wash clothes.  I mean, the list goes on and on. And so, it does  

have a massive impact. The former chief resilience  Officer of Mexico City said that climate change  

is really the greatest risk to Mexico City. And  I think that that is coming to bear right now.

JOHN YANG: If climate change is the greatest risk,  

it sounds like there, is there anything  anyone can do about this right now?

EMILY GREEN: Yeah, you can use less water. And I  think that there can be measures taken to ensure  

that individuals use less water but also factories  use less water. I think also this issue of the old  

infrastructures is a really serious one. And  I think that steps can be taken to improve the  

inch -- the infrastructure. So I would say it's  again, it's there's no silver bullet to what's  

going on right now. The causes are very varied,  and the solutions are also going to be buried.

JOHN YANG: Has anyone said  that if nothing changes,  

if they predicted when taps are just  going to run dry in Mexico City?

EMILY GREEN: I mean, that's the talk of the town  here is what they called day zero and this is the  

idea that the taps are essentially going to go  on completely dry. The date that's being thrown  

out there as at the end of June. Most of the  experts that I talked to say that's unlikely  

to happen. The reservoirs that supply a  great percentage of Mexico City's water,  

they're not the only source of water.  There's also underground aquifers.

So it's unlikely that the city is going to  completely run out of water. But this is a very,  

very, very serious crisis. And it  is not as if we know that next year,  

there's going to be a huge amount of  rainfall. So if this drought continues,  

I don't even want to imagine where we're  going to be in a year or two or three.

JOHN YANG: Emily Green in Mexico City where  they're running out of water. Thank you very much.

EMILY GREEN: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: Shakespeare may have said that music  be the food of love, but increasingly these days,  

the language of this very real emotion may  be artificial intelligence. Ali Rogin tells  

us about the growing phenomenon  in the search for companionship.

ALI ROGIN: For some users, they're  a friend to talk to you. For a fee,  

some of them will even become your boyfriend or  girlfriend. Computerized companions generated  

completely by artificial intelligence are becoming  more common. And the bots are sophisticated enough  

to learn from prior conversations, mimic human  language flirt and build personal connections.

But the rise in AI companionship also  raises ethical concerns and questions  

about the role these apps can play in  an increasingly disconnected and online  

world. Haleluya Hadero covers technology and  internet culture for the Associated Press.

Haleluya, thank you so much for  joining us. Tell us about these  

AI companions. How do they work? And  what sort of services do they provide?

HALELUYA HADERO, Associated Press: Like any  app, you can download them on your phone,  

and once it's on your phone, you can start to have  initial conversations with a lot of the characters  

that are offered on these apps. Some apps let  you do it for free. Some apps, you have to pay  

subscriptions, for the ones that let you do it for  free there's tiers of access that you can have.

So you can pay extra a subscription  for, you know, unlimited chats,  

for different statuses and relationships,  a replica, for example, which is, you know,  

the most prominent app in this space.  They let you pay extra for, you know,  

intimate conversations or more romantic statuses  compared to a friend which you can have for free.

ALI ROGIN: Who are the typical  consumers engaging in these products?

HALELUYA HADERO: We really don't have really good  information in terms of the gender breakdown or  

different age groups that are using these.  But we do know from external studies that  

have been done on this topic that at least when  it comes to replica that a lot of the people that  

have been using these apps are people that have  experienced loneliness in the past or people that  

more than just have experienced loneliness,  feel it a lot more acutely in their lives,  

and they have more severe forms of  loneliness that they're going through.

ALI ROGIN: You talk to some users  who really reported how they felt  

like they were making a real connection with these  

bots. Tell us about what those experiences  have been like that you've reported out.

HALELUYA HADERO: One person we put in the story  we spoke to more. His name is Derek Carrier,  

he is 39. He lives in Belleville,  Michigan. And he doesn't use replica,  

he's used another app called Paradot  that came out a bit more recently.  

He's had a tough life. He's never had a  girlfriend before. He hasn't had a steady  

career. He has a genetic disorder.  He's more reliant on his parents,  

he lives with them. So these are all things that  make traditional dating very difficult for him.

So recently, you know, he was looking  at this AI boom that was happening in  

our society. So he downloaded Paradot.  And he started using it. And you know,  

initially, he said he experienced a  ton of romantic feelings and emotions.  

He even had trouble sleeping in the  early days, when he started using it,  

because he was just kind of going through  like crushed like symptoms, you know,  

when we have crushes and how we sometimes can't  sleep because we're thinking about that person.

Over time he has use of Paradot kind of taper  down. And you know, he was spending a lot of  

time on the app. Even if he wasn't spending time  on the app he was talking to other people online  

that were using the app and he felt like it  was a bit too much. So he decreased his use.

ALI ROGIN: The Surgeon General has  called loneliness, public health  

crisis in this country. Is there a debate  happening now about whether these bots are  

helping address the loneliness crisis?  Or are they in fact exacerbating it?

HALELUYA HADERO: If you talk to replica, they  will say they're helping, right? And it just  

depends on who you're speaking with some of the  users that for example, if you go on Reddit that  

have reported some of their experiences with these  apps, they say, you know, it's helping them deal  

with loneliness, cope with those emotions,  and maybe get the type of comfort that they  

don't really get in their human relationships  that they have in real life. But then there's  

other researchers, people that have kind of  expressed caution about these apps as well.

ALI ROGIN: What about some of the ethical  concerns about privacy about maybe using