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CNN International: Russian Drones Hit Kyiv Science Academy; Protesters Demand Spanish Government Limit Evictions; Children In U.S. Immigration Courts Alone As They Fight. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired September 29, 2026 - 04:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[04:30:00]

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POLO SANDOVAL, CNN ANCHOR: And the trip will be something of a homecoming. You see, before he became Pope, Robert Prevost spent nearly two decades serving in Peru as a missionary, and then as a bishop. Well, Russian drones hit Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences building in the heart of Kyiv. Up next, we'll have the latest on casualties. Stay with us.

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SANDOVAL: Welcome back. I'm Polo Sandoval in New York, and in Ukraine, the Mayor of Kyiv says that at least two people have been killed in the Russian attack on the National Academy of Sciences. CNN's Clare Sebastian with more.

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CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, shocking scenes unfolded in central Kyiv on Monday afternoon. People leaning out of second-floor windows of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, trying to escape after the building housing Ukraine's top scientific research institution was hit by a Russian drone in broad daylight.

Well, firefighters managed to rescue these people as smoke billowed from the top of the building. The attack is part of a new Russian strategy we've seen over the past month of round-the-clock strikes, mostly targeting the Ukrainian capital. It's a strategy that's seen Russia hit an expanding list of targets, from warehouses to data centers, even a strike on the headquarters of Ukraine's domestic security service.

And it has fundamentally altered people's lives. School is now happening in bunkers. On Sunday in Kyiv, the air raid siren was on for a total of 18 hours. This high-rise apartment block, among those hit. And even as the U.S. looks to restart trilateral talks, this cycle of violence may only get worse.

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President Zelenskyy promised Monday that Russia will definitely face a response, he said. But the Kremlin is already painting this as revenge, as it often does in this war. Ukraine will have to pay a price for the actions taken in recent months, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday, referring, of course, to Ukraine's deep strike campaign that has targeted mainly oil infrastructure and military facilities. That he said is precisely what is happening now. Clare Sebastian, CNN, London.

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SANDOVAL: Now to France, which is bracing for a major nationwide strike from public sector workers today. Teachers, healthcare workers, railway workers, also firefighters. They are among those who are expected to participate, and the walkouts could disrupt some rail services as well as cause some schools to close for the day. Workers are protesting plans to freeze their base pay as the cost of living continues rising. The strike comes days before the government is set to submit its draft 2027 Budget.

Officials say that an 87-year-old woman will get to stay in her home after her eviction sparks some of these widespread protests in Spain. It was just last week the police carried Maricarmen Abascal out of her home on a stretcher after an investment fund bought her apartment and then evicted her. Abascal's lawyer says that her client will be allowed to stay in her home after reaching an agreement with the landlord. The Spanish Prime Minister says that his cabinet will be meeting today to approve some housing relief measures.

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MARICARMEN ABASCAL 87-YEAR-OLD EVICTED TENANT (through translator): I want what happened to me to help ensure it doesn't happen to other people. I wanted to lead people to fight, so the unfair laws that allowed for my eviction can be changed. That is why on Tuesday, Maricarmen's law must be approved, so they can take a first step to end with this.

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SANDOVAL: And protesters have been camped out in Central Madrid, and that's where we find CNN's Polo Mosquera, who's joining me from -- from there. Pao, just more on what these measures are that are being considered by Spain's governments. Tell us more about that.

PAU MOSQUERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Polo, when it comes to this, there are multiple sides, but there are two that are the most important. This is protesters and also the Spanish government. Demonstrators that have been camping out in this encampment are using this demonstration as to put pressure on the government for they to approve an emergency decree as to tackle the main problems of tenants in Spain.

They are asking the government to ban all evictions where there is no housing alternative, also to automatically renew all contracts after they expire and freeze the prices for the duration of the lease. We don't know how many people exactly has been sleeping in here overnight, but the Spanish government delegation in Madrid told us yesterday that during the day on Monday there were around 3,000 people.

Now, it is important to say, Polo, that from the Spanish government side, the cabinet is right now meeting and discussing what exactly will they present on the pressure that will take place in just a matter of hours. The thing is that they are convinced that they need to present this emergency decree as to tackle the country's housing crisis, but they still remain divided over how to handle some of the points that it will include.

For example, we know that the coalition partners remain divided on how to act when it comes to evictions, and this is why it is so important the discussions that are taking place right now at Moncloa Palace. From the protesters' side, they have told me that -- they have told me that they are pretty convinced that if the decree that the government comes with during the day do not convince them, they will continue to protest here in Puerto Del Sol, and they will continue to camp out in this central place of Madrid until the government listen to them, Polo.

SANDOVAL: Pau Mosquera, thank you so much for walking us through that what appears that encampment as protesters continue to insist for limits on evictions, we'll check back with you. Thank you.

All right, now to a disturbing development in the handling of undocumented migrant children in the United States. Dozens of children are attending deportation hearings in immigration court rooms, but without an attorney representing them, and that includes children as young as two years old. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez has more in this CNN Exclusive Report.

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PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Migrant children are increasingly going through immigration court alone, the place where an immigration judge will decide if they stay in the United States or they're removed. That was the case in a Texas Immigration court room today, where 25 children appeared before an immigration judge, many without attorneys.

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That included an eight-year-old, a nine-year-old, a 13-year-old from Honduras who was ordered deported. Again, he did not have an attorney, and during his back and forth with the immigration judge, he said, "I have no one. I have nothing." As he burst into tears, talking there about Honduras, his home country. Now there was also a three-year-old who played with the mic. His attorney beamed in remotely.

Now in some of these sketches that you'll see here, there are adults that are sitting with the children. Well, those are caseworkers. They are there to supervise the children, not to provide them legal representation, and it is becoming more challenging for children to get legal representation after the Trump Administration allowed a contract for legal service providers to lapse.

That was a contract that subcontracted to 100 legal service providers around the country. Now the administration has since struck another contract. However, multiple sources I spoke with say that is not enough. There is a large population, hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children who need help in the courtroom as well as through the immigration process, and these are children who crossed the U.S.- Mexico border alone or were brought into custody after a family member or guardian was detained by ICE.

Now these are children that are in shelters that are operated by the Department of Health and Human Services. And in a statement, an HHS spokesperson said, "Under the Trump Administration, ORR remains committed to ensuring that every unaccompanied illegal alien child has legal representation in the immigration court." But as was the case in Texas, there are still multiple children, very young children, who are continuing to go through this process and face deportation on their own. Priscilla Alvarez, CNN, Washington.

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SANDOVAL: Well, the FBI is grappling with a fallout from a massive data breach. The bureau says that it's now operating under the assumption that hackers successfully stowed data on all current FBI employees, and that includes home addresses and other sensitive personal information. Now, thousands of former employees are also potentially affected by this hack, and one former FBI official says that the uncertainty is causing a lot of concern, leaving agents wondering if they were exposed.

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GREG EHRIE. FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, NEWARK FIELD SERVICE: Incredibly disturbing to hear this and hear about a leak and not knowing the extent of that and the obvious question, retirees, current agents are all asking, "Am I involved? Is information about me out there in the wild?"

Talking to my former colleagues and current colleagues, that's a matter of concern. Certainly, understand that the bureau wants to understand the extent of the leak and the information that may be out there before they start notifying people. But there's a certain what we call due diligence that if somebody's information is possibly out, you need to contact that person.

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SANDOVAL: Quick break, but when we return, SpaceX makes its latest trip to orbit, sending a massive Starship rocket to deliver satellites into space. We'll tell you how it went next.

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ANNOUNCER: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

SANDOVAL: Some out of these world images. SpaceX celebrating after the launch of its so-called Starship rocket. Spacecraft made its first trip to orbit on Monday and deployed 26 new Starlink satellites, but it was an engine issue that forced the control team to cut down its original 10-hour flight plan into flying only about three hours instead.

It then splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and then you see what happened here. It burst into flames. Well, still though, the mission did supply SpaceX and aeronautical experts with more critical data on how to continue sending massive rockets with heavy payloads into space.

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SANDOVAL: Earlier, I spoke with Sarah Treadwell. She's a NASA Solar System Ambassador, and I asked Sarah what this merely the rocket size means for future SpaceX missions. Here's what she told me.

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SARAH TREADWELL, NASA SOLAR SYSTEM AMBASSADOR: The goal of Starship is to maybe get people someday to Mars, and if we ever want to get people past the Moon, we have to have things that can take a lot of equipment and a lot of -- of you know supplies and people out there, and so you need something that is large enough to do that.

And we have not had anything since Saturn V, which was the rocket that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon. We haven't had anything large enough to do that. If anything, we actually went backwards in time as the United States progressed in its space program, to the point where we couldn't even send our own astronauts up into outer space.

So, for Starship to be making these big jumps forward to be pushing further out is a very significant step for the space industry and for NASA as well.

SANDOVAL: Absolutely, certainly a sign of progress. Now, when you look back at it too, and with the caveat that you know we haven't heard a whole lot from SpaceX yet in terms of the issues with this mission, but just as an expert that was observing all this play out, Sarah, what do you think were the issues that SpaceX identified that do need to be addressed before they make it to the next step?

TREADWELL: They are you know notoriously kind of quiet when it comes to saying what exactly happened, right? So, I don't even know what happened exactly with that engine. But what I do know is that this is how SpaceX does things. They -- they iterate. They -- they use their failures as a way to learn what didn't work and how they can improve on it, which is a completely different model than what NASA's budget can afford them.

You know, NASA doesn't have the budget to blow up a rocket and see what went wrong, right? They have to always keep -- keep their tabs on what's -- what's happening and -- and be very careful with their launches. And so, SpaceX being able to -- to work this way really helps them progress a lot quicker. SANDOVAL: There was some a pretty a pretty dramatic end to this. I want to show some of the video to some of our viewers where you could almost see that we were going in for perhaps an ideal sort of conclusion to this, but then it ended up in an explosion.

Just remind our viewers what SpaceX philosophy has been in terms of reusing some of their equipment, some of their vehicles, and their components. Obviously, in this particular case, it won't be an option.

TREADWELL: Yeah, you know, I think what's interesting, and you're not the first person I've heard this from. Actually, every Starship has kind of ended this way because it's not really meant to land in the water. Not -- it isn't. It's not meant to land in water. They're landing it this way because the idea is eventually to have both the booster and Starship get caught in what we call chopsticks.

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So, it's literally going to land back down in these chopsticks, and they haven't tested that a lot yet because if something were to go wrong, you're not only ruining your -- your vehicle, but then you're ruining the platform that it's you know trying to land back in and stuff like that. So, they've been always landing in in water while they're testing the designs of the system, and it's not meant to tip over and hit water that hard. So that's why we're always having these fiery endings. So, it's just kind of what's been happening.

SANDOVAL: How do you think Monday's mission actually helps achieve those future goals of SpaceX and NASA? You mentioned even exploration on the way to Mars. What's next? What's the next big launch for SpaceX that you'll be closely watching?

TREADWELL: I know that this was a big goal to first of all, you know, deliver a payload into orbital space that they haven't done before, so that was a big achievement, and that is something that they wanted to prove because there are many things that they want to do while in orbit with Starship. They want Starship to be able to refuel to go on to other places.

Obviously, we want to have people eventually on it to go to the moon and to deliver things to the moon. I think in the short term, what we're going to see is we're going to see the attempts of those catches now. Last -- oh no, gosh, it was I think two years ago now. There, there was the catch of the booster, which was incredible, and so I think now we're going to be seeing a lot more attempts of catching of the booster and the Starship itself as we keep progressing towards that rapid reusability.

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SANDOVAL: Well, two of China's pandas are now in Zoo Atlanta, but visitors won't be able to see them, at least, not just yet. I'll tell you why. Stay with us.

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SANDOVAL: Welcome back. We are now getting our first look at China's pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, who are now in their new home at Zoo Atlanta. Some of this new video showing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services inspecting the pandas after their arrival on Sunday, and both of them are part of Beijing's long tradition of panda diplomacy.

According to China state media, the pandas are on loan to the Atlanta Zoo for 10 years, during which time the pair is meant to breed to boost panda populations. But visitors will have to wait to officially get to see them, as their routine quarantine period ends in about a month.

And one of the world's most active volcanoes, it is showing some new signs of activity. The U.S. Geological Survey is maintaining an orange alert now for Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, saying that large-scale lava fountaining events are possible. Some of the video you're looking at here from Sunday shows small lava flows glowing at the volcano summit. Scientists say that Kilauea has been erupting intermittently since December 2024, making for some truly incredible images since then.

And with that, thank you so much for staying with us the last hour. I'm Polo Sandoval in New York. Our coverage continues with CNN Headline Express in a moment.

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