Smoke Over Caracas

Days 1–3 — January 1–3, 2026

The Gate

Before dawn in Caracas, the sky lit with strikes—explosions, aircraft, smoke, and outages—then the announcement: the United States says it took the sitting head of state of a sovereign nation into custody and removed him from the country. Trump says Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured and flown out; Reuters reports a helicopter transfer to the USS Iwo Jima and onward toward New York, with Delta Force involvement reported by U.S. officials.

The legal authority is being argued in real time; the geopolitical meaning is simpler: the old taboo—no snatchings of presidents—has been tested in public.

The Street

Iran’s streets filled again—this time sparked by economic collapse and the familiar acceleration from protest to confrontation. Trump posted a warning to Tehran not to “violently kill” protesters and said the U.S. was “locked and loaded,” without explaining what that would mean; Iran’s top security official answered with threats of retaliation and accusations of foreign stoking. The unrest remains Iranian; the rhetoric is already international.

The War

Ukraine and Russia did not pause for the calendar. Strikes continued into the new year, the same bargaining logic written in electricity, roofs, and air defense alerts. The war’s headline is not “movement,” it is endurance—pressure applied nightly to see what breaks first: infrastructure, morale, or attention.

The Earth

Mexico began the year with a reminder from below: a 6.5 earthquake near Guerrero, strongly felt in Mexico City, with deaths reported. The planet does not care what year we think it is.

California offered the other kind of reminder—water arriving as logistics failure: king tides and storm-driven coastal flooding concerns around the Bay Area. Not apocalypse—recurrence.

The Human Cost

Switzerland’s New Year turned catastrophic at Crans-Montana: a packed bar, sparklers (“fountain candles”) lifted toward a ceiling, and then the rapid spread of fire through overhead material. Roughly forty dead; more than a hundred injured; identification slowed by burns. Celebration and mass casualty, separated by seconds.

The Ledger

• Sovereignty was stress-tested in the most literal way: force, custody, removal.
• Iran’s unrest became a stage the moment outside powers spoke in rescue-language and retaliation-language.
• The war remains gravity: it does not need novelty to keep pulling.
• The Earth is still the metronome: quake, tide, surge—no ideology, just consequence.