BRUSSEL (ANP) - Belgische politici hebben afschuw, rouw en medeleven geuit om het dodelijke ongeluk tussen een trein en een schoolbusje in het Vlaamse Buggenhout. Daardoor kwamen tot nu toe vier mensen om het leven, onder wie twee tieners.
De Belgische premier Bart De Wever is "diep geraakt door het afschuwelijke ongeval in Buggenhout", schrijft hij op X. "Mijn gedachten gaan uit naar de getroffen families."
Gedeputeerde van de provincie Oost-Vlaanderen Kurt Moens (N-VA) spreekt tegen VRT over een "gitzwarte dag".
'Diepste medeleven'
Volgens VRT is Moens verantwoordelijk voor de school waar de tieners in het schoolbusje op zaten. "Het ongeval in Buggenhout raakt ons allemaal heel erg. Ik betuig mijn diepste medeleven aan de families van de slachtoffers en wens de gewonden veel sterkte toe. Met het crisisteam in Buggenhout volgen we de situatie nauw en ik kan alleen maar mijn respect betuigen voor de professionele manier van handelen van onze hulpverleners."
De Vlaamse minister-president Matthias Diependaele (N-VA) schrijft op X over "vreselijk nieuws uit Buggenhout". Hij bedankt ook "de hulpdiensten die ter plaatse alles op alles zetten".
'Hartverscheurend nieuws'
De Vlaamse minister van Mobiliteit Annick De Ridder (N-VA) stuurt "haar diepste medeleven" naar de naasten van de slachtoffers, schrijft ze op X. Vlaamse minister van Onderwijs Zuhal Demir (N-VA) heeft het via X over "hartverscheurend nieuws".
"Woorden schieten tekort bij het ongeval in Buggenhout", aldus de Belgische minister van Justitie Annelies Verlinden (CD&V) via X. "Ik wens iedereen veel warme nabijheid toe." De Belgische minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Maxime Prévot (Les Engagés) bedankt via X zijn collega's uit andere landen "die al hun medeleven hebben betuigd".
Ook spoorwegbeheerder Infrabel en vervoerder NMBS hebben hun medeleven betuigd met de slachtoffers in Buggenhout. De diensten hebben zich naar eigen zeggen vanaf de eerste melding hardgemaakt voor een snelle evacuatie van de trein. Ze wensen "alle personen die door dit diepmenselijke drama zijn getroffen" sterkte.
As SpaceX and OpenAI race toward IPOs, a tiny circle of tech leaders tightens its grip on AI’s future
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian. Let’s recap a whirlwind five days that may determine the future of AI.
SpaceX reveals plan for $1.75tn stock market debut that could make Musk a trillionaire
Mars colony and Grok warnings: five strange details in SpaceX’s pitch to investors
The main takeaways from Elon Musk’s plans for $1.75tn SpaceX flotation
Meta is rapidly reorganizing its workers’ jobs around AI: ‘Transfers aren’t optional’
Nvidia’s revenue blows past Wall Street expectations as AI boom accelerates
Incoming Ofcom chair vows to take on ‘tech bros’
OpenAI makes breakthrough on 80-year-old maths problem
Meta settles major social media addiction lawsuit with school district
Tesla Cybertruck pulled from Texas lake after attempting ‘wade mode’
Continue reading...Well, maybe not quite a thousand, but when life gives you bald lemons, make lemon ice cubes or indeed any of these super suggestions from our panel of lemonheads
I regularly use lemon zest, but the result is that I often have two or three bald lemons hanging around going mouldy. What can I do with them?
Bel, by email
“We use a lot of zest and peel in our cooking at the restaurant,” sympathises Chris Shaw of Toklas in London, “so we also end up with a load of peeled lemons.” Not that that’s a hardship, mind, because no matter what you’re making, you’re almost always going to need acid in some shape or form. As Jad Youssef, author of Lebnani, says: “If something’s flat, lemon juice is usually the fix. In Lebanon, we always have cut lemons on the table, ready to squeeze over pretty much every meal.”
To be a bit more specific, though, Bel’s first port of call might be dressings, particularly at prime salad time. “Whisk the juice with olive oil, a pinch of salt, maybe a bit of garlic, and a drizzle of pomegranate molasses,” Youssef says. That would then mingle nicely with all manner of things: tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, or grilled courgette or aubergine.
Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com
Continue reading...Life is tough on the autonomous territory – not least for its footballers, as this documentary testifies
As the football-industrial complex churns out ever more eyeball-aimed product, precision engineered to trigger either triumphalism or nostalgia (or both), there’s occasionally room for stories like this about Greenland’s eight team championship playoff: scrappy chronicles of big-hearted underachievers in obscure corners of the football universe. (One of them, about perennial losers American Samoa, even got turned into a feature film directed by Taika Waititi.) Could Greenland’s strugglers and strivers end up as characters in a big-screen comedy? Stranger things have happened and, after the country’s surprise arrival in the geopolitical spotlight, this might yet be the best way for outsiders to get some understanding of the place.
As it is, one of the main virtues of this film is to convey just how tough life is in the world’s largest island (an “autonomous territory”, part of the kingdom of Denmark). We see the team captain, Patrick Frederiksen (a charismatic presence and one of the documentary’s main characters), moodily hunting for seals, giant icebergs floating yards away from the edge of a football pitch, and the non-appearance of half the team for the week-long playoffs due to cancelled flights (travelling by boat takes longer, but is more reliable). The team in question is the slightly unmemorably named B-67, who hail from Greenland’s capital Nuuk; they appear to have an Old Firm-ish sort of rivalry with Nagdlunguak, from the island’s third largest town, Ilulissat. The shortness of the playing season, it is regularly pointed out, is one of the main factors hampering Greenland’s football, as there are only a few short summer weeks where the place thaws enough for outdoor matches. The aforementioned travel issues mean, moreover, it’s almost impossible to arrange games against anyone other than local sides.
Continue reading...PC, Xbox, PlayStation 5; IO Interactive
The stealth masters behind Hitman go loud for this game about Bond’s brilliant beginnings
Given that we’ve not had a great James Bond video game in decades – or any Bond film at all in five years – there’s a lot of pressure on 007 First Light to reinvigorate a British cinematic hero. But developer IO Interactive has been auditioning for this role for some time. It’s there in the globetrotting nature of its Hitman assassination games, starring a besuited hero who knows how to turn a soiree to his deadly purpose; then there’s the developer’s evident eye for corporate opulence and brutalist architecture. Even their in-house game engine, Glacier, sounds like a secret codename cooked up in a Bond villain’s lair. All it would take is a slight shift in Hitman’s moral compass – more old boys club, fewer old boys clubbed – to turn IO’s familiar series into a Bond game with minimal fuss.
007 First Light refuses that easy route. We join young Bond in his pre-00 days, as a petulant, belligerent rule-breaking trainee. Actor Patrick Gibson begins as a cookie-cutter insubordinate, but warms to the role once he’s bouncing off M (herself a green leader looking to make her mark), and an enjoyably urbane Q who drops the frustrated quartermaster routine and introduces Bond to the wonders of vinyl. A scene where he teaches our agent to tie a bow tie is a perfect bit of prequelcraft: arriving at an iconic look through a lovely character touch.
Continue reading...