A Spirit of Dialogue

Days 18–24 — January 18–24, 2026

The Gate

On the morning of the twenty-fourth, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Pretti was thirty-seven years old. He worked as an intensive care nurse at the VA hospital, caring for American veterans. He had no criminal record. He was a legal gun owner with a permit to carry. He was a United States citizen.

Bystander video showed him holding a phone, not a gun. He was filming as a Border Patrol agent shoved one woman aside and pushed another to the ground. Pretti moved between the agent and the women. He raised his arm to shield himself. He was pepper sprayed. Multiple agents forced him onto his hands and knees. Someone shouted about a gun. Video showed an agent removing the weapon from Pretti and stepping away. Moments later, another agent pointed a handgun at Pretti's back and fired four shots. More shots followed.

The Department of Homeland Security said Pretti had "approached agents with a handgun and violently resisted." Secretary Noem said he "attacked" officers. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, within hours, called him a "domestic terrorist" who had tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.

A federal judge granted a restraining order barring DHS from destroying evidence.

It was the third shooting by federal agents in Minneapolis in seventeen days—the first had killed Renee Good on the seventh. Thousands of agents had been deployed to the city under "Operation Metro Surge." Governor Walz said Minnesota had had it. Senator Klobuchar called for immigration officers to leave the state.

The federal government called him a terrorist. The video showed a man holding a phone.

The Street

The day before the killing, Minneapolis had shut down.

On the twenty-third, tens of thousands marched in subzero temperatures in the first general strike in the United States in approximately eighty years. Nearly eight hundred businesses closed. Hundreds of clergy were arrested at the airport. The strike targeted the federal immigration raids. Solidarity actions spread to more than three hundred cities.

The Pretti killing came the next morning.

In Uganda, post-election violence left at least thirty dead. President Museveni was declared winner of the January fifteenth vote with seventy-four percent. The army detained two thousand. Opposition leader Bobi Wine went into hiding. The internet was shut down.

The Withdrawal

The United States completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization on the twenty-second.

It was the first departure since the country joined as a founding member in 1948. All funding terminated. All personnel withdrawn. The United States owed more than one hundred thirty million dollars and had contributed roughly seven hundred million annually.

The administration cited the WHO's handling of COVID-19 and its refusal to reform. The WHO said the departure made both the United States and the world less safe.

At Davos, Trump spoke of dialogue. He said he would not take Greenland by force—repeating a claim to the territory that had drawn the largest protests in Greenland's history the week before. He said Iran wanted to talk, and the United States would talk. He said the world needed deals.

The theme of the forum was "A Spirit of Dialogue." More than sixty heads of state attended. Russia's envoy Kirill Dmitriev walked the halls for the first time since 2022.

The Talks

Ukraine, Russia, and the United States met in Abu Dhabi on the twenty-third and twenty-fourth—the first trilateral talks since the invasion began.

The talks followed marathon overnight negotiations in Moscow between Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff and Vladimir Putin. Witkoff said the issues had narrowed to one. "And we have discussed iterations of that issue, and that means it's solvable."

In Davos, Trump and Zelenskyy met on the sidelines. Zelenskyy said the terms of security guarantees had been finalized and a deal on economic recovery was almost ready.

Russia said it would continue fighting until it achieved its territorial objectives.

The infrastructure remained gutted—fourteen of a prewar thirty-four gigawatts of generating capacity. Combined casualties exceeded one and a half million.

The Reckoning

Iran's judiciary promised more punishment.

The death toll estimates continued to climb. The Human Rights Activists News Agency counted 22,490 confirmed or under investigation by the twenty-fourth. The UN Special Rapporteur said civilians killed may surpass twenty thousand. The government's own estimate—previously 3,117 on state television—now exceeded five thousand, per an official who spoke to Reuters.

Reports emerged of chemical weapons. Footage showed security forces in hazmat suits. Some victims died days after exposure. Rights groups reported detainees being tortured, sexually assaulted, injected with unknown substances.

The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning the "violent crackdown on peaceful protests." Twenty-five in favor. Seven against—China, India, Pakistan among them. Fourteen abstentions. Iran rejected it.

A former UN prosecutor called the killings "the worst mass-murder in the contemporary history of Iran."

The judiciary chief wrote on X: "Our main work at the judiciary about the recent developments has just started."

The Demolition

Israel demolished the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem.

Forces stormed the compound on Ammunition Hill shortly after seven in the morning on the twentieth. Bulldozers entered. Staff were forced out; their devices confiscated. National Security Minister Ben-Gvir posted a video standing before the destruction. "This is a historic day," he said. "It's a holiday."

UNRWA's commissioner-general called it deliberate defiance of international law. The UN Secretary-General demanded Israel restore the premises.

The compound had stood empty since early 2025, when the Israeli law banning UNRWA operations took effect. UNRWA had distributed two-thirds of all food in Gaza. It sheltered more than a million displaced. Now its headquarters was rubble, and Ben-Gvir stood smiling in the frame.

The Human Cost

In South Africa, fourteen children died in a school bus crash.

A truck and a minibus collided in Vanderbijlpark, south of Johannesburg, around seven in the morning on the nineteenth. The minibus was overtaking stationary vehicles when it struck the truck head-on. Twelve died at the scene. Two more in hospital.

The vehicle had been overloaded—seventeen passengers in a fourteen-seat Toyota Quantum. The twenty-two-year-old driver was arrested and charged with fourteen counts of murder. He declined to seek bail.

Between 2018 and 2022, more than eight hundred schoolchildren had died in scholar transport accidents in South Africa.

In Haiti, the transitional presidential council voted to fire Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé—two weeks before the council was scheduled to dissolve. Armed gangs controlled ninety percent of Port-au-Prince. More than five thousand nine hundred had been killed in 2025. The United States called the removal a threat to stability. No one had been elected president since Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021.

The Passing

William Foege, the epidemiologist who devised the strategy that eradicated smallpox—the only human disease ever eradicated—died on the twenty-fourth at eighty-nine. He was a former director of the Centers for Disease Control. He died the same week the country left the organization built to protect global health.

Valentino Garavani, the Italian fashion designer, died in Rome on the nineteenth at ninety-three. He had dressed Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Julia Roberts, Cate Blanchett. His shade of red bore his name.

Roger Allers, co-director of The Lion King, died at seventy-six. The film remained the highest-grossing traditionally animated feature of all time.

The Ledger

The theme was dialogue. A nurse lay dead in Minneapolis, called a terrorist by the men who sent the agents who killed him. The city had already answered: the first general strike in eighty years, the day before the bullet. The United States left the WHO the same week the man who eradicated smallpox was buried. Talks convened in Abu Dhabi while Russia held its territorial line. Iran's courts prepared to punish the survivors. In Jerusalem, a minister stood in rubble and called it a holiday. The powerful gathered in the Alps. The wars ground on.

Here continues the account of the year 2026.