© Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times
Fallout from collision that left 57 dead in 2023 has put pressure on prime minister amid a growing belief of a cover-up by the authorities
Tens of thousands of people are expected to join protests and strikes as Greece marks the second anniversary of a fatal train crash, the fallout of which has put the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in the line of fire.
As experts attributed the disaster to oversights and major systemic failures, organisers vowed that Friday’s demonstrations, which coincide with nationwide industrial action, would be on a scale not seen in years.
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© Photograph: Vaggelis Kousioras/AP
© Photograph: Vaggelis Kousioras/AP
Syria has a new leader, and for thousands it is a time of celebration and optimism. But old enmities and fears about what comes next haunt the country. Michael Safi reports
After more than a decade of war, and half a century of repressive rule under Bashar al-Assad and his father, Syrians have a new ruler and a new future. Michael Safi spent a week travelling around the country, speaking to people about their surging hopes and joy – but also their fears of how fragile this peace could prove to be.
Driving from Lebanon to Damascus with a family, he heard about the painful toll the years of war and repression had taken on them: a father killed, a brother disappeared, a sister jailed. But they also told him how optimistic they still were for this moment of history.
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© Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters
© Photograph: Ammar Awad/Reuters
Democrats warn that cutting jobs at Noaa ‘will cost American lives’ – key US politics stories from Wednesday at a glance
The Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency housed within the Department of Commerce, the Guardian learned on Thursday.
“This will cost American lives,” said Democratic congresswoman and ranking member of the House science, space and technology committee, Zoe Lofgren, in a written statement. Her comments were issued alongside congressman Gabe Amo’s, the ranking member of the subcommittee on environment, after news of the firings broke.
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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
The seven will appear to form a straight line in the night sky in display that won’t be seen again until 2040
Seven planets will appear to align in the night sky on the last day of February in what is known as a planetary parade.
These planetary hangouts happen when several planets appear to line up in the night sky at once.
“A planetary parade is a moment when multiple planets are visible in the sky at the same time,” said Dr Greg Brown, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, told PA Media. “How impressive a parade it is will depend on how many planets are in it and how visible they are.”
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© Photograph: Alamy/PA
© Photograph: Alamy/PA
From the raw materials required to the machines that make them, every part of the chip supply chain is fiercely contested in the global race for tech supremacy
A small town in the Netherlands hosts the only factory that produces the only chip-making machines that generate a type of light found nowhere naturally on Earth: extreme ultraviolet, a light emitted by young stars in outer space.
This light, known as EUV, is the only way to make one of the world’s most valuable and important technologies at scale: cutting-edge semiconductor chips. The factory is forbidden from selling its EUV machines to China.
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© Illustration: ASML
© Illustration: ASML
As hip-hop’s greatest group announce their final tour, we pick out the best of their LPs – from solo albums to a history-making, gamechanging debut
• No longer ‘forever’? Wu-Tang Clan hint at breakup
Method Man’s second album is preposterously long, hopelessly uneven and features nine skits (one featuring a guest appearance by – uh-oh – Donald Trump). But make a playlist of the best 12 tracks – including Dangerous Grounds, Judgement Day and Break Ups 2 Make Ups – and you’ve got a minor classic.
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© Photograph: Bob Berg/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bob Berg/Getty Images
Percussionist best known for his work with King Crimson and his delight in exploring the boundaries of improvisation
None of the many former art students who enlivened the British rock scene in the 1960s and 70s brought with them a greater sense of anarchic spectacle than the percussionist Jamie Muir, whose stage equipment included not just drums and cymbals but steel chains, blood capsules, a bowl of pistachio shells and a bird whistle.
Muir, who has died aged 79, was introduced to the public in late 1972 as a member of King Crimson. This was the third lineup convened by the group’s leader, the guitarist Robert Fripp, under a name that had first made headlines in 1969 with an appearance at the Rolling Stones’ free concert in Hyde Park, followed by the release of an incendiary and globally successful debut album.
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© Photograph: Michael Putland/Getty Images
© Photograph: Michael Putland/Getty Images
Two new films, Nickel Boys and Presence, offer point-of-view perspectives – but it remains tantalisingly rare in the history of cinema
What if you were watching a haunted house movie – but you were the ghost? Or a racial drama in which you witnessed the horrors of Jim Crow America from a person of colour’s perspective – even if you are white? We can’t actually transcend our lived experience, but the idea of being transported into another person’s shoes has long been central to cinema. This is perhaps most strikingly on display in the very few films that use a first-person perspective – a technique that imbues the camera with a behind-the-eyes quality, allowing us to see what the embodied character is seeing.
Two films released this year deployed this technique with head-turning results: Steven Soderbergh’s horror movie Presence and RaMell Ross’ Oscar-nominated period drama, Nickel Boys, adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer prize-winning 2019 novel. In the former we assume the perspective of a ghost wandering around a house where a family of four live. In the latter, two young black men (Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson) are thrown into a state-run reform school in 1960s Florida. Presence unfolds entirely in the first-person, embracing an intentionally scratchy, rough-hewn look, while Nickel Boys’ more polished approach deploys first-person as part of a suite of aesthetic embellishments.
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© Photograph: Orion Pictures/AP
© Photograph: Orion Pictures/AP
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