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Biden slams “Russia’s brutality” in Ukraine as videos appear to show missile strike on Kyiv children’s hospital
The United Nations on Tuesday said there was a “high likelihood” a children’s hospital in Kyiv suffered “a direct hit” from a Russian missile Monday. Ukrainian officials accused Russia of hitting the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital with a cruise missile — part of a wave of daytime strikes that killed at least 40 people across the country on Monday.
President Biden also put the blame squarely on Russia for the strike on the hospital, which Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said killed two people, including a 30-year-old doctor, and wounded 32 others, including eight children.
Mr. Biden called the Russian strikes “a horrific reminder of Russia’s brutality” and said it was “critical that the world continues to stand with Ukraine at this important moment and that we not ignore Russian aggression.”
The U.S. leader said he and Ukraine‘s other Western partners would — at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., this week that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is attending — “be announcing new measures to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses to help protect their cities and civilians from Russian strikes.”
Gleb Garanich/REUTERS
Russia has denied responsibility for the hospital strike, claiming without evidence that all the damage in Kyiv was caused by Ukraine’s own air defense interceptor missiles.
Ukraine’s military said it shot down the majority of the roughly 40 missiles fired by Russia on Monday, but video clips shared widely on social media and analyzed by CBS News appear to show a direct strike on the hospital in Kyiv – not with an air defense missile, but with a Russian cruise missile.
A maternity hospital in the Ukrainian capital was also damaged Monday. Seven people were killed there, according to the country’s military, which said the casualties were “a result of the Russian attack.”
There was no claim of a direct missile strike on the maternity facility, and a message posted by Ukraine’s emergency services suggested the damage was likely caused by debris falling from a missile interception.
Pavlo Bahmut/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty
Danielle Bell, head of the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, called Monday’s Russian missile salvo “one of the most egregious attacks that we’ve seen since the onset of the full-scale invasion” in February 2022.
Bell, speaking about the attack on the children’s hospital, told reporters in Geneva that multiple videos showed “the weapon directly impacting the hospital.”
“Analysis of the video footage and assessment made at the incident site indicates a high likelihood that the children’s hospital suffered a direct hit, rather than receiving damages due to an intercepted weapons system,” said Bell.
“This must be investigated,” said Bell. She said her team and military experts had observed the damage at the hospital and spoken to staff, patients’ parents and local residents.
Bell said Russia had likely fired from an aircraft a Kh-101 air-to-surface cruise missile armed with about 500 pounds of explosives.
“The factors suggesting that it was a direct hit are based on video footage which shows the technical specification of the type of weapon that was used; it shows the weapon directly impacting the hospital, rather than being intercepted in the air,” said Bell.
CBS News’ own analysis of the widely circulated videos also suggest it was a Kh-101 missile that hit the hospital on Monday. While the impact is obscured by another building in the clips, the missile can be clearly seen flying toward the ground, followed by a flash. CBS News has geolocated the video to confirm it shows the strike on the hospital.
Bell said that at the time of the attack, 670 child patients and more than a thousand medical staff were at the Okhmatdyt paediatric hospital, a specialist facility where families from across the country bring their children for treatment of serious medical conditions including cancer and kidney disease.
President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that he will nominate former White House aide Brooke Rollins to be his agriculture secretary, the last of his picks to lead executive agencies and another choice from within his established circle of advisers and allies.
The nomination must be confirmed by the Senate, which will be controlled by Republicans when Trump takes office Jan. 20, 2025. Rollins would succeed Tom Vilsack, President Biden’s agriculture secretary who oversees the sprawling agency that controls policies, regulations and aid programs related to farming, forestry, ranching, food quality and nutrition.
Rollins, who graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural development, is a longtime Trump associate who served as his former domestic policy chief. She is president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group helping to lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration.
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Rollins, 52, previously served as an aide to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and ran a think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Rollins’ pick completes Trump’s selection of the heads of executive branch departments, just two and a half weeks after the former president won the White House once again. Several other picks that are traditionally Cabinet-level remain, including U.S. Trade Representative and head of the Small Business Administration.
Trump didn’t offer many specifics about his agriculture policies during the campaign, but farmers could be affected if he carries out his pledge to impose widespread tariffs. During the first Trump administration, countries like China responded to Trump’s tariffs by imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports like the corn and soybeans routinely sold overseas. Trump countered by offering massive multibillion-dollar aid to farmers to help them weather the trade war.
President Abraham Lincoln founded the USDA in 1862, when about half of all Americans lived on farms. The USDA oversees multiple support programs for farmers; animal and plant health; and the safety of meat, poultry and eggs that anchor the nation’s food supply. Its federal nutrition programs provide food to low-income people, pregnant women and young children. And the agency sets standards for school meals.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has vowed to strip ultraprocessed foods from school lunches and to stop allowing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program beneficiaries from using food stamps to buy soda, candy or other so-called junk foods. But it would be the USDA, not HHS, that would be responsible for enacting those changes.
In addition, HHS and USDA will work together to finalize the 2025-2030 edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. They are due late next year, with guidance for healthy diets and standards for federal nutrition programs.
A coalition of conservation groups and Native American tribal citizens on Friday called on President Joe Biden to designate nearly 140,000 acres of rugged, scenic Badlands as North Dakota’s first national monument, a proposal several tribal nations say would preserve the area’s indigenous and cultural heritage.
The proposed Maah Daah Hey National Monument would encompass 11 noncontiguous, newly designated units totaling 139,729 acres in the Little Missouri National Grassland. The proposed units would hug the popular recreation trail of the same name and neighbor Theodore Roosevelt National Park, named for the 26th president who ranched and roamed in the Badlands as a young man in the 1880s.
“When you tell the story of landscape, you have to tell the story of people,” said Michael Barthelemy, an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation and director of Native American studies at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College. “You have to tell the story of the people that first inhabited those places and the symbiotic relationship between the people and the landscape, how the people worked to shape the land and how the land worked to shape the people.”
The U.S. Forest Service would manage the proposed monument. The National Park Service oversees many national monuments, which are similar to national parks and usually designated by the president to protect the landscape’s features.
Supporters have traveled twice to Washington to meet with White House, Interior Department, Forest Service and Department of Agriculture officials. But the effort faces an uphill battle with less than two months remaining in Biden’s term and potential headwinds in President-elect Trump’s incoming administration.
If unsuccessful, the group would turn to the Trump administration “because we believe this is a good idea regardless of who’s president,” Dakota Resource Council Executive Director Scott Skokos said.
Dozens if not hundreds of oil and natural gas wells dot the landscape where the proposed monument would span, according to the supporters’ map. But the proposed units have no oil and gas leases, private inholdings or surface occupancy, and no grazing leases would be removed, said North Dakota Wildlife Federation Executive Director John Bradley.
The proposal is supported by the MHA Nation, the Spirit Lake Tribe and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe through council resolutions.
If created, the monument would help tribal citizens stay connected to their identity, said Democratic state Rep. Lisa Finley-DeVille, an MHA Nation enrolled member.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service. In a written statement, Burgum said: “North Dakota is proof that we can protect our precious parks, cultural heritage and natural resources AND responsibly develop our vast energy resources.”
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven’s office said Friday was the first they had heard of the proposal, “but any effort that would make it harder for ranchers to operate and that could restrict multiple use, including energy development, is going to raise concerns with Senator Hoeven.”
A city in New Mexico has reached a $20 million settlement with the family of a woman who was shot and killed by a police officer now charged with second-degree murder.
Teresa Gomez, 45, was fatally shot in October 2023 shortly after a Las Cruces police officer on a bicycle approached her while she sat in a parked car with another person, authorities said. Body camera video shows the officer shot Gomez three times as she tried to drive away.
The officer, identified by the city as Felipe Hernandez, was charged in January and fired months later from the Las Cruces Police Department.
“This settlement should be understood as a statement of the City’s profound feeling of loss for the death of Gomez and of the City’s condolences to her family,” the city of Las Cruces said in a news release sent Friday.
Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. His trial is scheduled for June 2. The Associated Press sent an email Saturday seeking comment from Hernandez’s attorney.
A lawyer for the Gomez family said her relatives are grateful to the city “for recognizing the injustice of Teresa’s death,” the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.
“They trust that the city will redouble efforts to make sure no other family suffers the tragedy of losing a loved one to abusive police conduct,” Shannon Kennedy said in a statement to the newspaper.
