Powerful winter storm could trigger devastating conditions across the U.S.

January 23, 2026

Winter storm threatens catastrophic conditions across US — Snow falling in the Queens borough of New York last week

The Cold That Came Knocking: A Nation on Edge

When the sky cracked open and the first ice glaze appeared on a Rochester lamppost, people in this part of the country reached for extra sweaters and, for many, a hint of old dread. Forecasters had warned for days: a sprawling winter system born off the California coast was on a slow, deliberate march east, threatening a hazardous cocktail of freezing rain, heavy snow and bone-deep cold that could touch 160 million Americans. By the time the mid-Atlantic and Northeast felt its teeth, life felt less like it was paused and more like it had been rearranged.

There’s something almost cinematic about a storm that announces itself across three time zones. Plows began humming in small towns, grocery store lines lengthened, and emergency rooms started making contingency plans. Airports stuttered: FlightAware tallied more than 1,500 cancellations ahead of the weekend. Commuters canceled meetings. Parents checked on elderly neighbors. On social media, photos of cars rimed in ice and interstate rest stops swamped with weary truckers circulated like a modern-day cautionary tale.

On the Ground: Voices From the Storm

“The roads looked like glass by dawn,” said Maria Delgado, who runs a bakery in upstate New York. “We had a delivery truck skid right in front of the shop. I told my staff, ‘We’ll be ready for customers, but only if it’s safe to get here.’”

In a Houston suburb, the mood was different but no less urgent. “Five years ago we froze,” said Jamal Carter, a high school teacher who remembers the 2021 grid collapse that left millions in the dark. “There’s a bone-deep worry this time. But there’s also a lot more trucks, more crews. People have learned, even if learning came the hard way.”

Utility workers and state emergency managers—who spoke on the record under their titles—described a shuffle of resources: tree crews staged for limb removal, mutual aid agreements mobilized, spare transformers trucked into staging yards. “We have teams ready to move at a moment’s notice,” said one regional utility operations manager. “The priority is keeping critical facilities—hospitals, shelters—powered first.”

Texas: Memories of a Broken Grid

The southern state that once became a cautionary tale for winter preparedness has been speaking loudly about its fixes. “There is no expectation of widespread power loss,” a state official told reporters, pointing to investments, legislative changes and new winterization mandates for generators and pipelines. Yet even as officials expressed confidence, the memory of widespread outages in 2021 lingered like frost on a window: an image many Texans still carry with them.

“We’ve insulated pipes, we’ve got backup heaters,” said Sonia Alvarez, who lives outside Austin. “But my neighbor still packs up his car with blankets and a small cooler—just in case. You don’t shake that kind of fear overnight.”

New York and the Northeast: Bracing for Bitter Cold

In New York State, authorities were blunt. Officials urged residents to limit time outdoors—“five or six minutes could be dangerous,” one emergency coordinator warned—because hypothermia and frostbite can creep in faster than most expect. Shelters were placed on alert, plow routes prioritized, and thousands of utility workers stood ready.

“Hypothermia isn’t just for the extremes,” said a county public health nurse. “We’ve seen folks who thought shoveling a driveway was harmless, and the next thing you know they’re in trouble. That’s why we’re asking neighbors to check on each other.”

Why This Storm Feels Different

At the heart of the system was a stretched polar vortex—an armored ring of frigid, low-pressure air that usually sits tightly above the Arctic. When it elongates, it lets a sluice of polar air pour south. The result: intense cold, sustained winds and the kind of icy rain that clings to branches and power lines, weighing them down until they snap.

“What matters here is the duration and the mix,” explained Dr. Leila Hassan, a climate scientist who studies atmospheric dynamics. “Freezing rain can cause catastrophic ice accumulation quickly because liquid water releases heat as it freezes on contact; when that happens over a broad region, you’re looking at prolonged outages and widespread damage to trees and infrastructure.”

Scientists caution there’s no simple headline for climate’s role. “We’re seeing more frequent disruptions of polar circulation,” Dr. Hassan added. “There’s evidence suggesting climate change may increase the odds of these events by altering jet stream patterns, but natural oscillations still play a big role. It’s complicated—fraught even—but worth taking seriously.”

What Communities Are Doing

Across towns and cities, the response blended official logistics with neighborly pragmatism. Warming centers opened in church basements. Volunteer groups handed out heat packs and batteries at transit hubs. Municipalities deployed sanders and salt trucks along the busiest corridors, and hospitals reviewed generator supplies.

Local governments urged everyone to prepare basic kits: water, nonperishable food, a battery-powered radio, blankets, and charged power banks.
Transport officials advised avoiding travel unless essential; schools pre-emptively shut down in many districts.
Volunteers worked in shelters, making sure pets were welcome and medication needs were accounted for.

“This is when community ties matter most,” said Reverend Thomas Ng of a Buffalo-area church hosting a warming center. “We’ve got folding cots, coffee and a volunteer to watch the stove. Sometimes the small comforts keep people going.”

Numbers, Risks, and the Bigger Picture

Here are the facts that underscore why this storm is a national story: roughly 160 million people were expected to feel some impact; more than 1,500 flights were canceled before the storm landed; at least 14 states declared states of emergency; parts of the Upper Midwest reported wind chills as low as -55°F (-48°C). The National Weather Service warned of “catastrophic ice accumulation” and the possibility of long-duration outages and dangerous travel conditions.

These events also force us to ask larger questions: How resilient are our grids, roads, and social safety nets against extremes? What does it mean when once-sudden anomalies become recurring challenges? And how do we balance immediate emergency responses with long-term investments in infrastructure and climate adaptation?

Practical Steps and Final Thoughts

If you’re reading this and the storm is heading your way, here’s a quick checklist that could make a difference:

Keep phones charged and car fuel tanks topped up.
Have a basic emergency kit: water, food, blankets, medication, flashlight, batteries.
Check on neighbors, especially older adults and people with limited mobility.
Avoid unnecessary travel; ice is deceptive and deadly.

Storms that stretch across a continent are equal parts spectacle and test. They show us the drama of nature and the seams in our systems—both human and mechanical. They can bring out the best in communities: strangers handing out scarves, utility crews working through the night, shelters offering warmth and coffee. They also remind us of the hard work ahead: building infrastructure that endures, communities that are prepared, and policies that reckon with a planet that’s not as predictable as it once seemed.

So as you zip a coat against the wind and watch the first flurries begin to settle, ask yourself: how would you fare if the lights went out tonight? Who in your neighborhood would you check on? Sometimes, the most meaningful preparations are not what we buy at stores but the connections we keep—and the small, diligent acts of care that keep us all a little warmer.

Russia demands control of Ukraine’s Donbas as UAE talks begin

hanad

January 23, 2026

Russia demands Ukraine's Donbas region as UAE talks begin — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said territory remained the key issue while Vladimir Putin has said Moscow intends to get full control of eastern Ukraine by force if talks fail

A hush in the desert: diplomats, doubts and the stubborn question of land

In the glass-and-marble calm of Abu Dhabi, beneath a sky that seemed indifferent to history’s urgencies, an unusual quartet of delegations converged. For the first time in nearly four years of war, Ukrainian and Russian representatives sat at the same table — not shadowed by intermediaries but facing a U.S.-brokered framework that promises, and threatens, so much.

It was the kind of diplomatic moment that television loves: suited figures arriving in motorcades, terse press statements, a clutch of aides with folders that might contain maps, timelines or ultimatums. Yet behind the choreography lay the blunt, immovable issue that has obstructed every ceasefire, derailed every draft and hardened hearts across two nations: territory.

Why Donbas still divides everything

Ask anyone paying attention and they will tell you the same thing in different words — conversations about security guarantees, weapons withdrawal, or economic aid all come to rest at the edge of a map. Who holds which towns and who decides the fate of people living under occupation are the questions that refuse to be sidestepped.

“Territory is not a bargaining chip for us,” Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters before boarding the flight to Abu Dhabi, stressing that any settlement would need to ensure Ukraine’s ability to deter future aggression. “War doesn’t end if borders are ambiguous.”

From the Russian side the message was equally blunt, if not more maximalist. Kremlin sources — speaking to journalists in Moscow — reiterated that Kyiv’s forces would need to withdraw from parts of eastern Ukraine known collectively as the Donbas. “This is a very important condition,” a Kremlin aide said in press remarks that emphasized their red line.

What’s at stake on the ground

The Donbas is not an abstraction. It is a region of ruined factories, small towns with scarred façades, and people who have lived for months and years under the whiplash of shifting lines of control. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, areas of eastern Ukraine have been occupied, contested and militarized — a patchwork that complicates any neat political solution.

Put simply: to concede territory is to concede the lives and futures of those who live there, and neither side can make that concession without risking political implosion at home. Kyiv fears that ceding ground would reward force and invite further assaults. Moscow has framed territorial control as the proof of victory.

Faces behind the headlines: voices from cities and villages

In a Kyiv neighborhood still smelling faintly of last winter’s smoke, Olena, a retired schoolteacher, pushed a wool scarf into place and said, “If we sign away my village, do we sign away my brother? My neighbors? What promise will keep them safe?”

Over in the Donbas, in a town whose name feels like a wound when uttered in Ukrainian households, a market vendor named Serhiy spoke quietly about exile and choice. “People want their roofs, their graves, their shops,” he said. “We have lived through sieges. We want no more marching orders from outsiders.”

These are the ordinary moral calculations that rarely make it into diplomatic briefs: a grandmother’s decision to return or not, a father’s worry about enlistment in a future conscript army, a teenager’s education interrupted for years. Negotiations that do not reckon with this human arithmetic will, history suggests, be brittle.

The American angle: a broker with clout and controversy

The United States, under the initiative pushed by political actors in Washington, has sought to nudge both capitals toward settlement. A small, highly visible delegation — including figures close to the U.S. president — flew into Moscow for late-night discussions and then headed to Abu Dhabi for the trilateral meeting.

“We are not here to impose a solution but to create one that holds,” a U.S. envoy told reporters. “That requires hard trade-offs and real guarantees, not slogans.” Whether the parties will accept those trade-offs is another matter.

Is this the right place for peace?

Abu Dhabi is an intentionally neutral-looking venue: luxurious hotels, tight security, a sense that time can be bought. But the desert setting cannot iron out the deep asymmetries between a nation fighting for survival and an aggressor that still wields greater firepower and strategic depth.

So what does “neutral” mean when one side controls land and lines and a significant portion of the combat power? This is a question analysts keep returning to.

Numbers that matter — and what they tell us

To understand the stakes, look at the labels beneath the headlines. As of mid-2024, millions of Ukrainians had been uprooted: millions across borders in Europe and millions displaced within their own country, according to UN and Ukrainian government estimates. Casualties — military and civilian — have reached into the tens of thousands. And the material toll? Critical infrastructure damaged across the east and south, with energy systems repeatedly targeted, plunging entire neighborhoods into cold during bitter winters.

In recent days, Russian strikes left many in Kyiv without heat or power. The city’s mayor reported that almost 2,000 apartment blocks were still struggling to bring warmth back to millions of residents in sub-zero conditions — figures that turned abstract strategy into frozen, shivering human need.

Is a deal possible — and at what price?

There are reasons for both skepticism and guarded hope. On one hand, diplomatic activity has accelerated, and negotiators are now, crucially, sitting in the same room. On the other, the gulf over territory is not simply negotiable ink on a paper: it is a crucible of national identity, memory and security. “Any agreement that papered over this without durable verification and enforcement would be dangerous,” said Dr. Marta Kovalenko, an international relations scholar. “Both sides need credible safeguards, and third-party verification is essential.”

What would those safeguards look like? International peacekeepers, phased withdrawals, referendums under neutral supervision — each carries its own logistical and political traps. Who would provide the guarantees? Who would police them? These follow-up questions are already making negotiators’ hairline fractures visible.

Looking beyond the map: why you should care

Wars redraw more than borders; they redraw global politics, economy and conscience. Energy markets wobble with every infrastructure strike. Refugee flows reshape cities across Europe. The rules of international order — norms about territorial sovereignty and the costs of aggression — are on trial.

And for the people living through this, the questions are painfully local. Will children return to school without bomb drills? Will pension payments arrive? Will families be able to keep the graves of loved ones accessible? These are the small metrics by which any “victory” will be judged.

What to watch next

Whether the Abu Dhabi talks issue a concrete framework for verification and timelines.
How both sides handle the question of referendums, resettlement and return of displaced people.
Whether external guarantors can be summoned — and trusted — to enforce any agreement.

Final thoughts: hope, caution, and the texture of compromise

There is no clean exit from a war like this. Compromise will be messy; compromise will hurt. Yet sitting across from your adversary and speaking openly is a step that cannot be undone. “If peace is to come,” said one veteran diplomat who has spent decades in negotiation rooms, “it will be because someone learned how to translate pain into protection.”

So what do you think? Is it possible to design a deal that respects borders and protects people — or are we asking diplomacy to do the impossible? The answer will unfold in negotiations, in the cold nights of Kyiv, in the marketplaces of the Donbas, and in the minds of leaders who must choose between glory and the quiet, difficult work of ending a war.

New Zealand landslides claim at least two lives; others unaccounted for

hanad

January 23, 2026

New Zealand landslides kill at least two, others missing — Mounds of earth buried and crushed a shower block at the campsite

Night of Mud and Metal: A Town Wakes to Loss

When the rain finally stopped in the early hours, Mount Maunganui looked like a place that had been quietly erased and rewritten by a force half-earth, half-water. In one sweep of brown, a slope let go—tons of volcanic soil and rock hurtling down into a family home and a nearby campsite, crushing a shower block, tossing caravans like matchboxes, and filling a heated pool with mud and wreckage.

By morning the harbourside city of Tauranga — a sunny stretch on New Zealand’s North Island that usually smells of sunscreen, salt, and summer barbecues — was wrapped in emergency tape and the low-thrum of diggers. Rescuers had already pulled two bodies from the ruined house; officials said others were unaccounted for, and a young girl was among those missing. “Police are working to support their loved ones at this incredibly difficult time,” a spokesperson said, the words thin against the roar of machinery and the quiet, knotting grief of families across the road.

Voices Beneath the Mud

People who were there describe a surreal, terrifying sequence: the mountain gave, the ground shuddered, and then a wave of dirt slammed into the campsite. “The whole room started shaking,” recalled Dion Siluch, a Canadian tourist who had been getting a massage at the Mount Hot Pools. He walked out and found a caravan floating in the pool. “It took me a while to realise that the mountain had collapsed and had pushed everything into the pool,” he said. His voice carried both the confusion of someone who had just seen the world tilt and the brittle steadiness of someone who expected answers.

Other witnesses spoke of frantic digging, of hands clawing at wet earth, and of voices—human cries—that cut through the chaos. “I could just hear people screaming,” said hiker Mark Tangney, who ran from the track to help. “We were on the roof of the toilet block with tools trying to take the roof off because we could hear people shouting: ‘Help us, get us out!’” For a while, those calls for help were vivid, immediate, unbearably close. Then the land kept moving and rescuers had to pull back for everyone’s safety. The voices went silent.

On the Front Line

Emergency services worked like a well-rehearsed human machine—police, firefighters, and volunteers coordinating around the risk that more ground could come away. Assistant Police Commissioner Tim Anderson described the operation as a rescue mission while the slope remained unstable, and would not be drawn on exact numbers, saying only that the missing were “single figures.” Nearby, a dozen family members watched from across the street, wrapped in blankets, eyes fixed on a scene that felt part disaster movie, part private tragedy.

Tourist Season, Traditions, and Tipped Caravans

Mount Maunganui is both a neighbourhood and an idea: a compact beach town where the summit walk up the extinct volcanic cone is a morning ritual and the sands fill with enthusiastic sun-seekers. In summer the mountain hums with walkers and families drawn to the white beaches and the local cafés that do a brisk business before noon. The campsite that was struck is a seasonal hub; camper vans, couples, and spontaneous road-trippers gather there with a view of the sea and the mountain.

“You expect to get sunburn or a flat tyre, you don’t expect the ground itself to betray you,” said Aroha Rangi, a local café owner who watched the rescue efforts from the corner of her shop. “This place is built around the outdoors—people walk the mountain every day. Now we’re all looking up at it differently.”

What Science and History Tell Us

Landslides aren’t new to New Zealand; the country’s steep, volcanic landscapes and temperate, wet climate have always set the stage. Mount Maunganui itself is the remnant of an ancient volcano—beautiful, benign, and in a single night dangerously mobile. Scientists say events like this fall at the intersection of geology and extreme weather. GNS Science, New Zealand’s geoscience authority, has long warned that saturated slopes following intense rain are the classic trigger for slope failure.

Globally, researchers link the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events to climate change. The IPCC’s past assessments note that some regions are seeing heavier downpours that can overwhelm soil stability. For coastal communities and popular outdoor spots, that translates into a new sort of vulnerability: landscapes we assume are permanent are, in fact, dynamic and changing faster than many of us imagine.

Local Data and Wider Context

Tauranga, home to roughly 155,000 people, is one of New Zealand’s fastest-growing cities.
Mount Maunganui is a magnet for domestic and international tourists, particularly in the southern summer months.
New Zealand’s emergency services regularly contend with landslides, flood events, and storm damage—risks compounded when heavy rain follows extended wet periods.

Faces in the Crowd

At the site, grief and grit sat side by side. A dozen family members gathered on the opposite kerb, sharing cigarettes, making tea, and clinging to each other’s arms. “We’re just waiting to hear if our daughter is alive,” one woman said, voice small but firm. Nearby, a retired builder handed out gloves and bottled water to volunteers who had spent hours trying to free anyone trapped under the mud.

“It felt like trying to hold a tide back with a bucket,” said William Pike, a Fire and Emergency commander, of the initial rescue attempts. “We heard voices, we responded. Then it became too dangerous to push on because the slope was still moving. It’s a terrifying decision—to step back when people might still be trapped.”

Questions to Sit With

How do communities balance the lure of outdoor life with the unpredictability of the land beneath their feet? What does safety look like in places where nature shifts rapidly? These are not only local questions. From the Philippines to British Columbia, people are grappling with how to live with landscapes that can change in an instant.

For the families waiting in Tauranga, the technical and philosophical debates are secondary to the urgent, human ones: are our people safe, are they coming home, what support will be there in the aftermath? The answers will come slowly—identification, counseling, rebuilding—and some will never be complete.

Where We Go From Here

Rescue crews continue to work, but with caution. Heavy machinery scrapes and lifts, crews map the unstable ground, and specialists assess how to proceed without triggering further collapse. The city has closed off the area and begun the grim work of recovery and accounting.

In the weeks ahead, expect investigations into why the slope failed, whether warnings existed, and what mitigation measures—drainage, slope reinforcement, updated risk maps—might prevent another tragedy. Expect also the quieter work of community recovery: counselling centres, fundraisers for affected families, and conversations about whether some camps or structures should be relocated.

For now, Tauranga breathes in a held way, waiting for news, counting the missing by single figures and holding rituals of grief. The mountain is still there, a silhouette against a shaken sky, as beautiful and as unsettling as ever. What would you do if the ground beneath your feet began to change? How do we reconcile a love of the outdoors with the reality that the earth is not always steady? These are the questions communities everywhere must answer—not as abstractions, but in the rubble, with the people who live and love there.

Kyiv mayor: Nearly 1,940 apartment blocks still without heating

hanad

January 23, 2026

1,940 apartment blocks still without heating - Kyiv mayor — People warm themselves in an emergency service tent in a residential neighbourhood of Kyiv yesterday

Winter Under Siege: Kyiv’s Second Blackout and a City That Keeps Turning Toward Warmth

When the heat left Kyiv this week, it wasn’t the kind of silence that comes from doors closing on an apartment. It was the sudden hush of radiators gone cold, the low hum of refrigerators that becomes conspicuously loud, the paper-thin clatter of children’s shoes in hallways that were supposed to be warm. As of this morning, Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported that 1,940 apartment buildings were still without heating after another Russian airstrike—a brutal reprise for families who thought they had just been put back on the grid after attacks in early January.

“We are reconnecting buildings for the second time in two weeks,” Mr Klitschko wrote on Telegram, a small administrative note that reads like the chronicle of a city that must relearn basic comforts every few days.

A city of steam and short breaths

Walk through Kyiv now and you’ll see it in the small things: steam rising from manhole covers like the city’s own breath, scarves pulled up to noses on buses running at half-capacity, and neighbors trading tea thermoses on stairwells. Outside a Soviet-era block in the Obolon district, a group of pensioners clustered around a mobile electric heater in a courtyard, their cheeks pink from the cold.

“You learn how to sleep with two layers,” said Olena, 68, who has lived in the same two-room apartment for forty years. “But it’s not the cold I fear. It’s when the heat might not come back at all.”

Temperatures across much of Ukraine have been well below 0°C, the kind of weather that turns a power cut into an immediate humanitarian problem. With more than one million households in Kyiv reported without electricity by President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this week, what began as a military strike on infrastructure spilled instantly into the domestic realm: no heating, no hot water, no light for medical equipment or for those working from home.

Damage beyond the capital

Kyiv was not the only city that felt the shock. The latest strikes hit energy facilities and other critical infrastructure in Vinnytsia, Dnipro, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Poltava and Sumy regions, according to official briefings. For residents in these cities, the strikes are not abstract acts on a map; they are interrupted commutes, schools running on emergency generators, and supply chains that spring leaks.

“These attacks are aimed to break the routine of civilian life,” a Kyiv-based humanitarian coordinator told me. “When a power line falls, it doesn’t only take out a city block. It takes out hospitals’ ability to sterilize equipment, bakeries’ ovens, and the small shops that feed neighborhoods.”

Energy as a front line

Russia has framed the strikes as targeting the energy infrastructure that supposedly fuels Ukraine’s “military-industrial complex.” Kyiv fires back with stronger language, calling the deliberate targeting of civilian energy systems a war crime. The rhetorical divide—military necessity versus collective punishment—doesn’t change the immediate arithmetic of suffering.

Analysts say that damaging energy networks during winter has a multiplier effect: repair crews need safe access, spare parts, and time—three commodities that grow scarce under the threat of repeated strikes. “An electricity grid is like a living organism,” said Dr. Petro Lysenko, an energy systems analyst who has been monitoring Ukraine’s grid resilience. “You can patch it, reroute it, and isolate damaged nodes. But continuous attacks degrade not just hardware but institutional capacity—personnel fatigue, depleted materials, and the erosion of contingency plans.”

On the ground, improvised warmth

In neighborhoods where official reconnection lags, civic resilience becomes the thermostat. Volunteers set up warming centers in school gyms and cultural houses. Small businesses open back rooms as refuge spaces. A bakery in Holosiiv, for example, switched its ovens toward community service for two days, handing out loaves to elderly residents and hot tea to anyone who needed it.

“We are not waiting for miracle repairs,” said Marta, a volunteer organizing a warming point. “We bake, we share, we call the neighbors. It’s the only way to keep going and to keep hope alive.”

1,940 apartment buildings in Kyiv without heating (as of this morning)
More than 1,000,000 households in Kyiv reported without power after the strikes (per President Zelensky)
Regions affected include Vinnytsia, Dnipro, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Poltava, and Sumy

Collateral flames and cross-border consequences

The ripple extends beyond Ukraine. In Russia’s Penza region, debris from a downed drone reportedly struck an oil depot, causing a fire—one of four drones intercepted by air defenses, according to the regional governor Oleg Melnichenko. Authorities said there were no injuries, and emergency services were on the scene. The image is grim and global in its symbolism: fragments of a conflict that began on one border can set alight infrastructure on the other, illustrating how modern conflict can spill across lines in unpredictable ways.

Diplomacy moves as sirens wail

As rockets and drones carved their marks across infrastructure, diplomats moved across deserts. Ukrainian, U.S., and Russian officials convened in the United Arab Emirates for security talks this week—work accelerated after a U.S.-drafted plan to end the war was discussed in Moscow by top U.S. negotiators with President Putin. Diplomacy, it seems, is trying to outrun a missile clock.

“Talks are necessary, even urgent,” said a senior Western diplomat who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the discussions. “But negotiations won’t stick if the weapons keep arriving each week. What will hold any peace is the protection of civilians—not just words.”

What does this mean for the rest of the world?

When energy and civic infrastructure become targets, the damage is not only local. Global energy markets pay attention. Humanitarian flows—donors, aid logistics, refugee routes—are reshaped. And the norms of war, long tested but essential, strain under new tactics. Europe has watched as its deadliest conflict since World War II grinds on, and many question what deterrence looks like in a world where electricity is as strategic as ammo.

Ask yourself: would our cities be resilient enough to handle prolonged outages? How should the international community protect critical civilian infrastructure in an era of long-distance, low-cost strikes? These are not hypothetical questions for Ukrainians; they are urgent operational problems.

For Kyiv’s residents, the calculations are more immediate. The city’s reconnection efforts offer relief, if only temporarily. But the broader human story is of people who stitch their lives back together every morning with tea, shared generators, and the stubborn domestic rituals that declare, “We will not let our lives be defined only by what flies overhead.”

Closing

In the stairwell where Olena lives, a child slammed a door and laughed despite the cold, a small sound against a hard week. “If we can still laugh,” she said, “then someone still believes we will be warm again.” In the interim, Kyiv keeps reconnecting—apartment by apartment, person by person—because cities are, at their best, made of the ordinary things people cannot afford to lose: light to read by, warmth to sleep under, and the company of neighbors who will share a cup of tea in the dark.

Denmark signals quick start to U.S. talks on Greenland

hanad

January 23, 2026

Talks with US on Greenland to start quickly - Danish FM — Greenland's prime minister said allies would have to step up their commitment to Arctic security

The Day Greenland Stepped Into the Global Spotlight

There is a hush over Nuuk that feels almost ceremonial: the soft clack of boots on wet pavement, the distant creak of a fishing trawler, and the plume of warm breath in arctic air. For decades, Greenland’s vast white silence has been its shield; now that silence is breaking up into a conversation the world can no longer ignore.

Diplomatic channels are warming up, Danish officials say. Meetings between Denmark, Greenland and the United States to redraw — or at least clarify — the terms of American military access to the Arctic are expected to begin soon. But the Danish foreign minister when I spoke with him in Copenhagen insisted on one thing: these talks must be removed from the fevered glare of headlines.

“We will start those discussions quickly,” he told me, rubbing his temples. “But we will not send them live on social media. This isn’t about spectacle. It’s about security.”

Why Greenland?

Ask a schoolchild in Nuuk or a diplomat in Brussels and you’ll get the same short answer: geography. Greenland is the world’s largest island — roughly 2.16 million square kilometers — three quarters of it a humming white fortress of ice. It sits like a gatekeeper between North America, Europe and the Arctic Ocean; its northern bays and airstrips, historically sparse and strategically brittle, have in recent years become linchpins of global strategy.

Beyond the maps are deeper stakes. Greenland’s surface is 80% ice sheet; its population is small — roughly 56,000 people, most of them Inuit — and clustered along the coasts. Yet beneath the ice and gravel lie minerals and metals that the renewable and defense industries covet: rare earths, uranium and other “critical minerals” that global supply chains have taxed and fought over.

Climate change speeds the shift. The Arctic is warming at approximately four times the global average, opening stretches of ocean that once were impassable and exposing resources once locked beneath centuries of ice. Shipping lanes shorten, seasonal windowing expands, and the geostrategic calculus rewrites itself.

On the Ground in Nuuk: “Sovereignty Is a Red Line”

I met a small-group of local leaders in a community hall whose walls were papered with photographs of seals, family gatherings, and hunting trips. Jens-Frederik Nielsen — Greenland’s prime minister — was direct. “We’ve been part of Denmark’s kingdom for many years,” he said, folding his hands. “But this island has a people. We will discuss partnership, we will discuss security, but sovereignty is a red line.”

He’s not alone in that view. A fisherman I met in Ilulissat, bundled in a patched parka, shook his head when I mentioned talk of “total access.”

“You don’t just come and take a place where my grandparents charted the coast,” he said, voice steady. “We know the seas. We know the storms. This is not a parking lot.”

Those words reveal two realities at once: pride in local identity and anxiety about being a pawn in a bigger game. Greenlanders I spoke with — teachers, shopkeepers, hunters — share a desire for economic opportunity. They also want respect for local governance and rights over land and resources.

Washington’s Calculus

From the U.S. perspective, the Arctic is no longer peripheral. Military planners point to the island’s northern bases — most notably the airfield at Pituffik, known to many by the name of its American custodian, Thule — as vital nodes for early-warning systems, satellite tracking and transatlantic reach.

A U.S. official, speaking on background, described the approach bluntly: “We need assured access to key facilities. We’re not looking to erase sovereignty. We’re looking for long-term, predictable partnerships that keep the Arctic secure.”

That language sounds reasonable, yet the heat in public rhetoric has stoked fear. The president’s aides have at times spoken of “lasting access,” language that, stripped of diplomatic nuance, can sound dangerously absolute. That’s why Danish officials have insisted the island’s status under international law is not on the table.

Allies, Adversaries, and the New Arctic Order

In Brussels and across European capitals, leaders are recalibrating. The European Union has acknowledged a need to reinforce the Arctic’s security architecture and to invest more in Greenland’s economy. Officials say the EU plans to increase financial support to the island and to coordinate defense investments with partners such as Canada, Norway and Iceland.

“We underestimated how quickly the Arctic would matter to the 21st-century security environment,” an EU foreign policy advisor told me. “Now we must catch up — but must do so with diplomacy and respect for local choice.”

But this isn’t simply a transatlantic quarrel. Moscow and Beijing’s growing activity in the High North provides urgency. Russia has modernized northern bases and naval capacity, and Chinese companies have invested in ports and mining projects across the Arctic rim. That combination — Russian military posture and Chinese economic reach — has European and American planners uneasy.

What’s on the Table

Updated military access agreements for existing bases, with clearer operational rules;
Proposed restrictions on certain foreign investments in strategic sectors;
Financial packages to boost local infrastructure and resilience in Greenlandic communities;
Cooperation on search-and-rescue, environmental monitoring and ice forecasting.

Any such package faces a delicate political tightrope: balancing defense imperatives with local sovereignty and environmental stewardship.

Voices from the Arctic Frontline

“We want partners, not proprietors,” said Aqqaluk Petersen, a young mayor from a fishing town near the Jakobshavn glacier. “Investment could mean jobs and better hospitals. But if decisions are taken in rooms where no Greenlandic voice sits, then there will be resistance.”

A retired U.S. military planner I met in Copenhagen put it more plainly: “Long-term presence requires a long-term consent. You can’t bolt strategy onto a community and call it security.”

Why This Matters to You

If you live in London, Shanghai or Minneapolis, Greenland might still seem “far away.” But the island’s fate is tied to global concerns: rising seas driven by melting ice, the security of maritime trade routes, and the supply chains for the technologies that power daily life — smartphones, electric cars, wind turbines. Who controls access to these resources, and under what rules, will ripple across economies and ecosystems.

So let me ask: do we want brittle deals struck in flashpoints of political theater, or carefully negotiated frameworks that sit on respect, environmental safeguards and local consent?

What Comes Next

Diplomats will meet. Military planners will run options on maps. Greenlanders will push for terms that protect home and culture. European capitals will hedge, seeking both transatlantic cooperation and an independent strategic posture. It will be messy, and it will take time.

But perhaps that messiness is healthy — an opportunity to craft something better than a headline-grabbing tantrum. If Arctic security is the problem, then the solution must be strategic, rooted in law, and attentive to the people who live where the ice meets the sea.

“We are at the beginning of a conversation,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen told me as we left the hall. “If the world wants Greenland as an asset, it must treat Greenland as a partner.”

That is a simple demand, and perhaps the most difficult to grant: behind sovereignty and strategy lies a human ledger — a ledger of homes, livelihoods and futures. Will global powers write the next chapter with humility and patience? Or will they repeat old mistakes and assume might alone rewrites right?

For everyone watching: this is not just a negotiation over turf. It’s a test of how the world makes rules in an era where climate change redraws maps faster than diplomacy can. Greenland’s silence is over. The question for the rest of us: will we listen?

Spain Confirms Final Death Toll in Train Disaster: 45 Fatalities

hanad

January 23, 2026

Final death toll from Spain's rail disaster is 45 — Of those 45 people, all are Spanish apart from three women from Morocco, Russia and Germany, according to the latest update

A country stunned: the human cost behind the headlines

The sun set over whitewashed Andalusian hills as families lit candles and placed them on kitchen tables, on village church steps, at the corners of narrow streets where neighbors lingered and whispered. Spain, a land of festivals and crowded summer trains, found itself holding its breath: two more bodies pulled from the twisted metal of a high-speed train have pushed the official death toll to 45.

It is hard to make sense of numbers when grief is local and immediate. For the people of Adamuz, a town best known for its dusty olive groves and Sunday markets, the list of names is not a statistic but a row of chairs kept empty at funerals. “He used to joke that trains were as much a part of Spanish life as siestas,” said María López, who grew up with one of the victims. “Now we can’t sit through the silence.”

What happened on the rails?

The catastrophe unfolded on a stretch of renovated, straight track in southern Andalusia, where a modern Iryo service derailed and crossed into the path of a Renfe high-speed train. Emergency teams spent days combing through wreckage, and forensic coordinators—tasked with a grim and delicate job—confirmed the final recoveries this week.

More than 120 people were hurt in the crash, official coordinators say; among the 45 dead, most were Spanish citizens, with three foreign victims identified as women from Morocco, Russia and Germany. The scale of the disaster—Spain’s deadliest rail accident in over a decade—has reopened uncomfortable questions about how such tragedies occur on tracks deemed safe and modern.

Two separate incidents, one shaken system

As the nation mourned, other incidents compounded the sense of crisis. Near Cartagena in Murcia, a passing commuter train was struck by a crane arm that swung into its windows—an accident that left six people with minor injuries. In Catalonia, a commuter service outside Barcelona collided with a retaining wall that collapsed onto the tracks after heavy rain; one train driver was killed and 37 passengers were injured.

These back-to-back events prompted the suspension of Barcelona’s Rodalies commuter network for safety checks, leaving hundreds of thousands of daily users stranded and tentative riders asking: can we trust our trains again?

Voices from the ground: grief, anger, and urgent questions

At a packed mass in honor of David Cordón, a former international beach football player killed in the crash, sorrow turned sharply to demands for answers. “David loved life. He would never have imagined ending like this,” said Ana Ruiz, a longtime friend. “We need to know why. We need to know who is responsible.”

Across towns and cities, the mood is less ceremonial and more insistent. “People are scared,” said José Navarro, a commuter from Valencia who rides high-speed lines weekly. “It’s not just about this train. It’s about whether maintenance, weather preparedness and human oversight are up to scratch.”

From the union side, Diego Martín Fernández, secretary general of the Semaf drivers’ union, has been blunt: “To restore public confidence, we need guarantees. The safety checks must be thorough and transparent—procedures cannot be bypassed in the name of speed or schedules.” Semaf has called a national strike for 9–11 February, citing repeated safety failings. The union says the workforce won’t return to stations without firm commitments.

Officials respond—but questions remain

Transport Minister Óscar Puente, speaking in Madrid, insisted he would negotiate with unions to avoid the strike and emphasized that the recent tragedies are not linked. “We must be careful not to conflate unrelated events,” he said, while also promising full investigative resources. “We owe the families the truth.”

Investigators describe the Andalusian collision as “extremely strange”—a loaded phrase when you consider the stretch involved had been recently renewed and was straight and level. That description has deepened suspicion and frustrated relatives who crave clarity and accountability.

How big is Spain’s high-speed system?

Spain is proud of its rail network: it operates one of the world’s largest high-speed systems, with over 3,000 kilometers of dedicated high-speed lines connecting Madrid to cities across the peninsula. Millions of travelers rely on those routes for work, tourism and family. That scale makes systemic safety questions especially consequential, not only for Spaniards but for the many international visitors who use trains to explore the country.

Beyond the tracks: climate, maintenance and politics

Analysts point to a tangle of factors that can conspire to create disasters: aging infrastructure kept in motion by tight budgets, extreme weather that strains drainage and embankments, and the human errors that can arise in rushed operational cultures. Heavy rains were linked to the Barcelona-area incident; elsewhere, landslips and flooding have punctuated a wetter and more volatile climate pattern across southern Europe.

“Rail systems elsewhere have faced similar pressures,” said Dr. Elena Martínez, a transport safety expert at a Madrid university. “What matters is resilience—regular, documented maintenance; clear, respected safety procedures; and independent oversight that isn’t swayed by the need to meet timetables or political promises.”

Public faith in rail safety is a fragile commodity. In the immediate aftermath, many regular commuters reported switching to cars or buses, a short-term response with long-term consequences: more road congestion, higher emissions, and greater inequality for those without alternate transport options.

What happens next?

The investigative machinery is in motion: forensic teams, rail regulators and independent experts will examine black boxes, signaling records and maintenance logs. Families seek not only explanations but also systemic change so that other lives aren’t lost needlessly. Parliament is likely to demand hearings; unions will press for binding guarantees; and towns like Adamuz will measure each news update against the names of friends and neighbors they have already buried.

As you read this, ask yourself: what level of risk is acceptable in public transport? How much should speed and efficiency be weighed against maintenance and oversight? These are not just technical questions but civic choices about what we value as a society.

Small rituals, lasting questions

In the days following the crash, people left flowers at stations, candles along platforms, messages on benches. These gestures are small and human—an attempt to make order out of chaos, to anchor memory within place. They are also a reminder that infrastructure is more than concrete and steel; it is the web of routines and relationships that make daily life possible.

Spain will ultimately tally lessons learned and, we hope, implement them. Until then, the country mourns and waits, and relatives continue to search for names that might still be missing from lists. For those who board trains tomorrow, the landscape of travel feels different: quieter, more solemn, a little more uncertain. And for a nation that built one of the globe’s proudest rail systems, the urgent task is to ensure that speed and safety travel together—always.

Current official death toll: 45
Injured: more than 120
Spain’s high-speed network: over 3,000 km, one of the world’s largest
Rodalies commuter strike called by Semaf: 9–11 February

Cosmonaut Captures Breathtaking Aurora from Space — Watch the Video

hanad

January 23, 2026

Watch: Stunning aurora filmed from space by cosmonaut

When the Sky Turned Red: Riding a River of Light from Space to Shore

It began as a whisper on social feeds — a streak of crimson unfurling above the curvature of Earth — and quickly became a chorus. High-definition video from the International Space Station showed bands of light folding and flowing like a slow, otherworldly ocean. Back on the ground, people stepped out of kitchen doors and pubs, phones held up against cold air, mouths open in that soft, stunned silence that comes when something ordinary is made sacred.

“We were sailing inside that light,” wrote one of the crew members aboard the station, describing the sensation of watching the aurora from orbit. The video he sent — miles of red and green spilling beneath the ISS — made the familiar scientific explanation suddenly intimate: charged particles from the Sun, racing across space, colliding with atoms high in our atmosphere and turning invisible energy into color.

Why the lights looked like fire

Auroras are not a light show orchestrated for Instagram. They are the visible signature of space weather: when the Sun spews plasma in a coronal mass ejection or intensifies its solar wind, electrically charged particles spiral along Earth’s magnetic field and slam into oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The specific colors you see depend on which gases are struck and how high up the encounter happens. Oxygen gives us the familiar neon-green at roughly 100–150 kilometers above the surface; at higher altitudes, rarefied oxygen can yield an eerie red. Nitrogen supplies blues and purples.

“People marvel at the prettiness, but the physics is brutal and beautiful,” said Dr. Elena Vargas, a space-weather researcher. “What you’re watching is particles, sometimes traveling hundreds of kilometers per second, dumping energy into the atmosphere. The scale of that transfer is enormous.”

Storms, scales, and what “strongest in two decades” really means

News feeds called it the most intense geomagnetic storm in roughly 20 years — a shorthand that captures public imagination. In the technical language of space weather, storms are measured by indices such as Kp and categorized from G1 (minor) to G5 (extreme). When the aurora reaches latitudes normally reserved for mid-latitude countries — when people in Dublin or northern England see shimmering curtains — it generally signals a major disturbance in Earth’s magnetic environment.

These disturbances are more frequent during the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle. We are currently living in the upswing of Solar Cycle 25, which has produced above-average activity compared with some past cycles. That rising activity makes dramatic auroral displays a more common headline than they might have been a decade ago.

From the ISS to the Irish coast: moments and voices

The footage from space was arresting, but the human stories down below made it real. In a seaside town on Ireland’s west coast, a fisherman named Sean O’Mahony left his nets and walked out onto the pier with his wife and toddler.

“We’ve had Northern Lights before, but this — it looked like the sea had climbed the sky,” he said. “Molly wouldn’t stop laughing; she kept pointing and shouting, ‘more, more!’ It’s something you keep.”

In Galway, an amateur photographer named Aoife Brennan described balancing a tripod between gusts of wind to capture streaks of crimson above the distant outline of Connemara mountains. “People at the pub spilled out and began clapping like it was a concert. Someone started singing an old sean-nós tune. It felt like the whole town forgot its phone bills and went to look at the sky.”

Local color and folklore: how communities make meaning

Across cultures, auroras carry stories. In Irish folklore, the lights have been linked to the Otherworld — omens of change or the handiwork of fair folk. In the Arctic, Sámi and Inuit traditions have long woven auroral displays into myth, sometimes seeing them as spirits of the dead or as a sign to be treated with respect. Those narratives don’t clash with science; they layer human meaning atop cosmic mechanics.

Not just beautiful — potentially disruptive

For all the wonder, space weather has teeth. Strong geomagnetic storms can induce currents in long-distance power lines, interfere with GPS and satellite communications, and increase drag on low-Earth-orbit objects. Airlines sometimes reroute polar flights to avoid communication blackouts. In 1989, a geomagnetic storm collapsed Quebec’s power grid for hours. In 2003, the “Halloween storms” knocked out satellites and disrupted radio.

“A spectacular aurora is a telltale of energetic processes that can affect infrastructure,” warned Dr. Vargas. “We’re seeing more of these events as the Sun wakes up, and it’s a reminder that our technologies are embedded in a space environment.”

Quick facts: Auroras occur in roughly oval regions around Earth’s magnetic poles called auroral ovals.
Oxygen emissions: green at about 557.7 nm; red emissions at higher altitudes produce crimson tones.
Geomagnetic storm scale: G1 (minor) to G5 (extreme); the Kp index ranges from 0 to 9.

Why this matters beyond the spectacle

There’s a larger arc to this story: humanity’s relationship to a star that both sustains and sometimes disrupts modern life. As our dependence on satellites, global positioning systems, and electrical grids grows, so does our vulnerability to solar tantrums. Yet those same solar storms gift us some of the most profound natural beauty many of us will ever see.

Does that contradiction — vulnerability and beauty in the same event — change how we think about technology and nature? Perhaps. It nudges us to treat the sky not as a backdrop but as an active participant in our shared infrastructure and culture. It also requires investment: better forecasting, hardening of critical systems, and international cooperation to protect assets in space and on Earth.

When the next curtain falls

As you read this, scientists on the ground are combing through data from satellites and magnetometers, translating flickers on a screen into actionable forecasts. Amateur skywatchers are cleaning lenses and checking forecast maps. And somewhere, a child who watched the sky catch fire is likely to be a little more awake inside, carrying that image forward.

So, what will you do the next time the night seems to glow unnaturally? Will you step outside and wait with your neighbors? Will you look up and let a celestial phenomenon remind you how small and connected we all are?

When the Sun reaches for us with particles and light, the Earth answers with color — green, red, blue — and a moment of communal awe. In those moments, the border between science and story dissolves, and every observer becomes, briefly, a witness to the conversation between our planet and its star.

Interim Venezuelan leader Rodriguez to embark on an official US visit

hanad

January 23, 2026

Venezuela's interim leader Rodriguez set to visit US — Delcy Rodriguez would be the first sitting Venezuelan president to visit the United States in more than a quarter century

A Quiet Revolution in Diplomacy: Why a Venezuelan Visit to Washington Matters

There are moments when the air itself seems to rearrange. In Caracas, the late-afternoon heat takes on a different feeling—tenser, layered with possibility—when a foreign phone call becomes domestic policy. That is the mood now, after reports that the interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, has been invited to visit Washington. If the trip happens, it will be the first bilateral visit by a sitting Venezuelan head of state to the United States in more than 25 years, save for the routine passage of UN delegations to New York.

“We’re not talking about a courtesy call,” said a senior White House official, who asked not to be named because discussions are sensitive. “This would be a strategic, pragmatic engagement—very calibrated.”

Why the Visit Is Such a Big Deal

For decades, Venezuela and the United States have traded rhetoric as if it were industrial-grade fuel: hot, explosive, and capable of burning everything in its path. From the hawkish populism of Hugo Chávez to deep alliances with Tehran and Moscow, Caracas and Washington long operated like two giant ships orbiting different suns. Now, buoyed by economic pressures, shifting alliances, and the magnetic pull of Venezuela’s oil fields—estimated at roughly 300 billion barrels of proven reserves, the largest in the world—both capitals appear to be rethinking old scripts.

“This is less about handshakes and more about access,” said Marta Espinosa, a Caracas-based energy analyst. “Who controls the taps controls leverage. The United States wants predictable exports; Venezuela wants investment and legitimacy.”

Diplomacy, Sanctions, and the Art of the Possible

Delcy Rodríguez’s journey from an insider in Venezuela’s previous administrations to an interim leader engaging Washington is the sort of plot twist diplomats dream about. She is still reportedly subject to various sanctions and asset restrictions—a reminder that politics rarely cleans house overnight. But the invitation signals an American willingness to interact with a leader once branded untouchable.

“We’re in a process of dialogue, of working with the United States, without any fear, to confront our differences and difficulties,” Rodríguez said in a recent address. Whether that translates to relief from sanctions, easier foreign investment, or a stable route for oil exports is the question now hanging over both capitals.

There are practicalities behind the headline-grabbing optics. Since 2019 Washington has imposed significant sanctions on Venezuela, particularly targeting the state oil company and senior officials. Those measures were intended to pressure Nicolás Maduro’s government—accused by many in the international community of democratic backsliding—while avoiding a chaotic vacuum.

“Sanctions are blunt instruments,” said Benigno Alarcón, a political scientist at Andrés Bello Catholic University. “They can fracture elites, but they also hurt ordinary people. The United States appears to be trying a mixed strategy: pressure plus engagement.”

The Domestic Chessboard

Inside Venezuela, the invitation is a political litmus test. Hardliners—figures like Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López—still command loyalty in parts of the armed forces and the bureaucracy. Their stance toward opening up to Washington is far from monolithic.

“Some in the military see this as capitulation,” said a retired officer who now runs a coffee shop in La Guaira and asked that his name be withheld. “Others see the smell of dollars and foreign parts—that’s persuasive.”

Rodríguez has been reshuffling military leadership—appointing twelve senior officers to regional commands in recent days—moves that observers interpret as an attempt to solidify control while signaling continuity to both domestic and international audiences.

“Every promotion is a message,” the retired officer said. “It’s for the troops. It’s for the generals. It’s for the people watching from Miami and Madrid.”

Voices from the Street

Outside the corridors of power, Venezuelans are navigating a landscape of cautious optimism and bitter skepticism. In a market in eastern Caracas, vendors tally sales in bolívares and barter in hard currency. A fruit seller named Alba summed up the complex feelings: “If a plane brings investment, I will sell more oranges. If it brings war, I will sell them for my children’s safety.”

Opposition activists and democracy campaigners, who have long demanded full political freedoms and fresh, internationally supervised elections, worry that high-level diplomacy could paper over the need for accountability. “Any normalisation must include amnesty for political prisoners, truth, and a clear timetable for elections,” said Javier Morales, an activist whose brother remains detained. “Otherwise it’s a deal between elites.”

Geopolitics and the Global Ripples

Venezuela’s pivot—or partial pivot—toward engagement with Washington ripples beyond the Andean highlands. For Beijing, Moscow, Havana, and Tehran, who cultivated close ties with Caracas during its years of estrangement from the U.S., any warming with Washington represents both a strategic loss and a potential opening for renegotiated relationships.

“You can’t separate energy geopolitics from the broader architecture of the hemisphere,” said Dr. Isabel Romero, an international relations scholar in Bogotá. “The European Union, CARICOM, even Brazil and Colombia will watch closely. A negotiated path could defuse a humanitarian crisis that has pushed more than seven million Venezuelans into exile.”

Indeed, migration—estimated at roughly seven million people displaced since the crisis intensified in the 2010s—remains among the most pressing human consequences. Remittances, family separations, and brain drain are part of a long shadow that any diplomatic reset will have to acknowledge.

Questions for the Reader

What would you want to see from a diplomatic thaw between a superpower and a fractured nation? Are energy interests an acceptable starting point, or must human rights and democratic restoration be the non-negotiables? These are not rhetorical flourishes; they are the choices being negotiated in back rooms, on parade grounds, and in kitchens where people plan for another uncertain year.

What Comes Next

If the visit to Washington goes forward, it will not be a singular event but a test case: can transactional diplomacy be turned into something more durable? Can sanctions and incentives be calibrated to protect citizens without empowering bad actors? Can the international community encourage free elections and human rights while avoiding the pitfalls of ill-prepared regime change?

“Diplomacy is ugly, often slow, and always imperfect,” Dr. Romero said. “But it is better than the alternative—chaos. The key is to anchor any engagement in clear, measurable benchmarks.”

For now, Caracas waits. Markets and ministries adjust. Families watch the headlines with a mixture of hope and fatigue. And in Washington, diplomats run numbers and maps, aware that the fate of a nation—and perhaps the tone of hemispheric politics—may hinge on whether two leaders can find a language they both can live with.

Quick facts: Venezuela’s proven oil reserves are roughly 300 billion barrels—the largest on earth.
Migration: About 7 million Venezuelans have left the country since the crisis deepened in the 2010s (UN and IOM estimates).
Sanctions: Washington has used sanctions as a principal lever of policy toward Venezuela, particularly since 2017–2019.

Diplomacy is, at its best, an act of imagination. It asks opposite camps to picture a common future. Whether that imagination will be commanded by oil derricks or by ballot boxes is the unfolding story—one that will be written by politicians, generals, and ordinary people in market stalls, office towers, and family living rooms across the hemisphere.

Former Uvalde police officer acquitted in school shooting trial

hanad

January 22, 2026

Former officer acquitted in Uvalde school shooting trial — 19 students and two teachers were killed in the attack

Acquittal in Uvalde Case Reopens Wounds: A Town, a Trial, and the Question of Accountability

The courtroom exhaled before the word fell. When the verdict was read, Adrian Gonzales — the 52-year-old former Uvalde school district officer who stood at the center of a national debate about policing and public safety — bowed his head and pressed his palms to his face. Around him, lawyers offered pats on the shoulder. In the gallery, parents and siblings of the children and teachers killed at Robb Elementary sat frozen: some trembling, some wiping away tears, others staring as if trying to steady themselves against a wind that will not die down.

A jury in Corpus Christi found Gonzales not guilty on all 29 counts of criminal child endangerment, each count carrying a possible two-year sentence. After more than seven hours of deliberation, that verdict closed one chapter in a story that began in the small, sunbaked town of Uvalde, Texas, on 24 May 2022 — a day when 19 students and two teachers were murdered in one of the deadliest school shootings in American history.

What the trial centered on — and what it leaves unsettled

Gonzales was among the earliest of more than 400 officers who arrived at Robb Elementary that afternoon. Prosecutors argued that officers waited — for 77 minutes, in the government’s reckoning — before entering the classroom where the gunman had barricaded himself. In that gap, the assault on the children and teachers continued. The charge against Gonzales was not that he pulled the trigger; it was that his failure to act put children in immediate danger.

“They have decided he has to pay for the pain of that day and it’s not right,” defense attorney Jason Goss told jurors in closing, framing his client as one individual unfairly burdened with collective blame. Special prosecutor Bill Turner countered with a different moral calculus. “You can’t stand by and allow it to happen,” Turner told the jury, asking them to see Gonzales’s alleged inaction as criminally culpable.

Gonzales said he could not see the shooter and denied freezing; he insisted he did not leave the scene when response teams were organizing. The jury’s not-guilty finding suggests it did not find the prosecution’s case proved to the standard required in criminal court — beyond a reasonable doubt.

Courtroom scenes and small-town reverberations

The trial was convened hundreds of kilometers from Uvalde itself, in Corpus Christi, after defense lawyers argued a fair trial would be impossible in a town still raw from grief and outrage. Jurors came from across the region, and the 19-day trial played out under intense public scrutiny. Families of the victims traveled to attend, and the courthouse hallways hummed with raw emotion: whispered prayers, clipped legal strategizing, and the occasional, heartbreaking quiet.

Outside the courthouse, a neighbor who did not want to be named said, “Uvalde changed overnight. The people who live here are not just statistics — they’re mothers, fathers, teachers. There’s sorrow and a demand for answers.” A retired law enforcement trainer in Texas, speaking on background, told me, “This kind of prosecution is unusual — rare. The law penalizes certain failures, but proving criminal intent or gross negligence in the fog of a mass-casualty incident is hard.”

Facts, figures, and the bigger American conversation

Some details of the Uvalde response are undisputed: more than 400 officers responded, the gunman was a former student, and the gunman was eventually neutralized by officers after the delay. State and federal reviews concluded that officers allowed the shooter to remain inside a classroom while they debated tactical options — a lapse many officials, including then–Attorney General Merrick Garland, later said cost lives.

This case sits at the intersection of three national fault lines: policing practices and accountability, grief and the search for justice by victims’ families, and the broader debate over gun policy and public safety. In recent years, public-health data has underscored what many already felt in their bones: firearm deaths are a major—if not the leading—cause of death among American children and teens. That reality feeds the urgency and anguish that follow tragedies like Uvalde.

Only two people have been criminally charged in connection with the shooting: Gonzales and former school district police chief Pete Arredondo, who faces similar charges and has pleaded not guilty. The specter of systemic failure, not just individual error, has loomed over reviews of that day’s law-enforcement response.

A community’s rituals of remembrance

Walk Uvalde’s streets and you will find memorials and small altars — stuffed animals, crosses, hand-lettered signs — evidence that the town has tried to stitch meaning onto a wound. Locals speak of neighbors hanging on to rituals: shared meals, communal prayer services in Spanish and English, and school classrooms repurposed as spaces for counseling. “We keep going for the kids who are still here,” said a teacher who moved back to Uvalde after the shooting. “Everything we do is for them.”

At the same time, families who lost children have pushed for accountability. Some insisted that criminal charges were necessary to prompt broader reforms; others feared the trial would only deepen trauma. The tension between collective institutional responsibility and individual culpability is at the heart of what this trial attempted to resolve — but did not, ultimately, settle.

Legal nuance: why prosecutions of police are rare and difficult

Prosecutors who bring charges against officers face a steep evidentiary climb. Criminal statutes typically require proof of a person’s culpable state of mind or a level of gross negligence that goes beyond split-second poor judgment. As one criminal law scholar explained to me, “Courts and juries allow reasonable mistakes in chaotic situations. To convert those mistakes into crimes usually requires a showing of conscious disregard for human life.”

That standard is both legal and cultural. In communities across America, police are often given the benefit of the doubt in moments of crisis; at the same time, trust can be eroded when mistakes compound into tragedies. Which is why trials like Gonzales’s are watched not only as criminal adjudication but as moral reckonings.

Questions that linger

After the verdict, many in Uvalde and beyond asked: What does justice look like after a mass shooting? Is criminal prosecution the right mechanism to address systemic failures? How do communities hold institutions accountable without further fracturing the trust needed for public safety? These are not questions with easy answers.

“We wanted answers. We wanted to see accountability,” said a parent of a child killed at Robb Elementary, voice breaking. “But we also want truth — and truth is complicated.”

Robb Elementary attack: 19 students and two teachers killed (24 May 2022)
Gonzales: acquitted on 29 counts of criminal child endangerment
Jury deliberation: more than seven hours
Officers on scene: over 400; delay before entering classroom: 77 minutes (as reported in investigations)

A larger story of grief, law, and the search for reform

The Gonzales verdict will almost certainly not be the last word in the public discourse around Uvalde. For the families who lost children, the ache remains — as raw as it was three years ago. For law-enforcement leaders and reform advocates, the case raises structural questions about training, command, and crisis decision-making that do not fit neatly into criminal statutes.

And for the wider public—citizens, voters, policymakers—the trial is a prompt to ask hard questions: How should societies balance legal standards with moral urgency? How do we prevent such tragedies in the first place? Which changes are administrative and cultural, and which require the force of law?

In the quiet that follows courtroom drama, communities like Uvalde get back to the lifework of living with loss. They also keep pushing for changes they hope will stop history from repeating. “We didn’t come here for spectacle,” said a community advocate. “We came here to tell the world: look at us, hear us, and do better.”

How will we answer that plea? That is the continuing story — not only of Uvalde, but of a country still grappling with how to keep its children safe, and how to hold institutions accountable when they fail.

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