After Wednesday’s fatal crash which took down a commercial jet and a military helicopter on a training flight at Washington DC’s Reagan National airport, public officials and aviation experts are resurfacing concerns about how uniquely congested the airspace is around the country’s capital.

As of Thursday night, authorities have said all 64 people on the American Airlines flight were presumed dead as well as three more on the army helicopter, making the incident the deadliest US air tragedy since 2001.

On Thursday, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate armed services committee, Daniel Driscoll, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the army, questioned why military helicopters needed to conduct training exercises near such a busy commercial airport.

Driscoll told lawmakers that the incident seemed “preventable” and vowed to review army practices.

“There are appropriate times to take risk and inappropriate times to take risk,” he noted. “I think we need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk, and it may not be at an airport like Reagan.”

The US military has provided little information on its helicopter training activities near the capital and did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Martin Chalk, a former British Airways captain who retired in 2020, posited that military pilots might need to train in this particular area to prepare for transporting senior political and military figures to and from the area, which is close to the Pentagon as well as the White House, Capitol Hill and other buildings at the heart of the federal government.

“The military tend to have a bit of a law-unto-themselves approach,” he said, explaining that military pilots do not have to follow all civil aviation protocols.

He emphasized that it is not clear yet exactly what happened but he suggested that investigators could ask questions about the exchanges between the aircraft and the tower.

“There was communication between the air traffic control tower and the helicopter pilot about whether they can see the CRJ [the American Eagle Bombardier jet] – did the controller give too much authority to the helicopter crew, or did the helicopter crew mistake what they saw?” Chalk asked.

Lawmakers and citizens have previously raised concerns about the crowded skies over the greater Washington DC area, however.

Last year, Bill Johnson, a commercially certified pilot and a retired US army explosives expert, saw more than 20 UH-60 army helicopters fly over his house in one hour as he was working outside in his vegetable garden in Annandale, a residential community in Virginia’s Washington DC suburbs.

At first Johnson was bothered by the noise. But, as he kept noticing the thrum of military training flights overhead, he began to fear that the increasing congestion in the skies could result in disaster.

Johnson sent letters to military leaders at nearby Fort Belvoir, where the Black Hawk Sikorsky involved in Wednesday’s collision was based and flew from that night, and the Department of Defense. He sent a complaint to his congressperson and even to the Federal Aviation Administration warning them about the dangers of too many low-altitude army training helicopters soaring through the area.

“On 3/29/2024 at 1503 hours I observed two US army UH-60s nearly collide over 1-495 near Annandale,” he wrote in one complaint to the FAA from last March, noting they passed each other above the highway only “about 50-100 meters apart”.

That April, Johnson forwarded another complaint to the US Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, raising similar concerns.

“Given that these are everyday training flights over known congested areas,” he said, referring to a nearby antenna, how precisely “does the military guarantee the safety of persons and property on the ground?”

No one answered his question, he told the Guardian on Thursday.

“We lost more than 60 people, and two aircraft, and we shut down a major airport, and it was completely avoidable,” he said.

“There’s so many places they could have been doing training. Why did they have to do it at the end of the runways of DCA?” Johnson continued, referring to the airport code of Reagan National airport.

Federal lawmakers from Virginia and Maryland have also issued warnings about the excessive number of aircraft flying near each other over the country’s capital.

But last year year, a bipartisan body of congressional officials approved the addition of 10 additional commercial flights into DCA, over their objections.

“As we have said countless times before, DCA’s runway is already the busiest in the country,” Virginia US senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen and then senator Ben Cardin, all Democrats, said in a joint statement months before the law was passed. “Forcing the airport to cram additional flights in its already crowded schedule will further strain its resources at a time when air traffic controllers are overburdened and exhausted, working 10-hour days, six days a week.”

The group of lawmakers filed an amendment to the proposal to block the increased flights into Reagan, but the original bill passed that May despite their protests.

The bill, Texas senator Ted Cruz said at the time, “ultimately gives the FAA the stability it needs to fulfill its primary mission – advancing aviation safety – while also making travel more convenient and accessible”.

Weeks after the bill passed, the lawmakers’ fears were nearly proved. Air traffic controllers cancelled the takeoff of one American Airlines plane speeding down a runway just before another plane attempted to land on an intersecting airstrip.

In a statement after Wednesday’s fatal crash, Major Gen Trevor Bredenkamp, a commander in the army National Capital Region, said its investigation is ongoing and will be conducted in conjunction with the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board.

After Wednesday’s fatal crash which took down a commercial jet and a military helicopter on a training flight at Washington DC’s Reagan National airport, public officials and aviation experts are resurfacing concerns about how uniquely congested the airspace is around the country’s capital.

As of Thursday night, authorities have said all 64 people on the American Airlines flight were presumed dead as well as three more on the army helicopter, making the incident the deadliest US air tragedy since 2001.

On Thursday, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate armed services committee, Daniel Driscoll, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the army, questioned why military helicopters needed to conduct training exercises near such a busy commercial airport.

Driscoll told lawmakers that the incident seemed “preventable” and vowed to review army practices.

“There are appropriate times to take risk and inappropriate times to take risk,” he noted. “I think we need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk, and it may not be at an airport like Reagan.”

The US military has provided little information on its helicopter training activities near the capital and did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Martin Chalk, a former British Airways captain who retired in 2020, posited that military pilots might need to train in this particular area to prepare for transporting senior political and military figures to and from the area, which is close to the Pentagon as well as the White House, Capitol Hill and other buildings at the heart of the federal government.

“The military tend to have a bit of a law-unto-themselves approach,” he said, explaining that military pilots do not have to follow all civil aviation protocols.

He emphasized that it is not clear yet exactly what happened but he suggested that investigators could ask questions about the exchanges between the aircraft and the tower.

“There was communication between the air traffic control tower and the helicopter pilot about whether they can see the CRJ [the American Eagle Bombardier jet] – did the controller give too much authority to the helicopter crew, or did the helicopter crew mistake what they saw?” Chalk asked.

Lawmakers and citizens have previously raised concerns about the crowded skies over the greater Washington DC area, however.

Last year, Bill Johnson, a commercially certified pilot and a retired US army explosives expert, saw more than 20 UH-60 army helicopters fly over his house in one hour as he was working outside in his vegetable garden in Annandale, a residential community in Virginia’s Washington DC suburbs.

At first Johnson was bothered by the noise. But, as he kept noticing the thrum of military training flights overhead, he began to fear that the increasing congestion in the skies could result in disaster.

Johnson sent letters to military leaders at nearby Fort Belvoir, where the Black Hawk Sikorsky involved in Wednesday’s collision was based and flew from that night, and the Department of Defense. He sent a complaint to his congressperson and even to the Federal Aviation Administration warning them about the dangers of too many low-altitude army training helicopters soaring through the area.

“On 3/29/2024 at 1503 hours I observed two US army UH-60s nearly collide over 1-495 near Annandale,” he wrote in one complaint to the FAA from last March, noting they passed each other above the highway only “about 50-100 meters apart”.

That April, Johnson forwarded another complaint to the US Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, raising similar concerns.

“Given that these are everyday training flights over known congested areas,” he said, referring to a nearby antenna, how precisely “does the military guarantee the safety of persons and property on the ground?”

No one answered his question, he told the Guardian on Thursday.

“We lost more than 60 people, and two aircraft, and we shut down a major airport, and it was completely avoidable,” he said.

“There’s so many places they could have been doing training. Why did they have to do it at the end of the runways of DCA?” Johnson continued, referring to the airport code of Reagan National airport.

Federal lawmakers from Virginia and Maryland have also issued warnings about the excessive number of aircraft flying near each other over the country’s capital.

But last year year, a bipartisan body of congressional officials approved the addition of 10 additional commercial flights into DCA, over their objections.

“As we have said countless times before, DCA’s runway is already the busiest in the country,” Virginia US senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen and then senator Ben Cardin, all Democrats, said in a joint statement months before the law was passed. “Forcing the airport to cram additional flights in its already crowded schedule will further strain its resources at a time when air traffic controllers are overburdened and exhausted, working 10-hour days, six days a week.”

The group of lawmakers filed an amendment to the proposal to block the increased flights into Reagan, but the original bill passed that May despite their protests.

The bill, Texas senator Ted Cruz said at the time, “ultimately gives the FAA the stability it needs to fulfill its primary mission – advancing aviation safety – while also making travel more convenient and accessible”.

Weeks after the bill passed, the lawmakers’ fears were nearly proved. Air traffic controllers cancelled the takeoff of one American Airlines plane speeding down a runway just before another plane attempted to land on an intersecting airstrip.

In a statement after Wednesday’s fatal crash, Major Gen Trevor Bredenkamp, a commander in the army National Capital Region, said its investigation is ongoing and will be conducted in conjunction with the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Nearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon Solutions, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged today.

The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had “high confidence” that the 90 users in question had been targeted and “possibly compromised”.

It is not clear who was behind the attack. Like other spyware makers, Paragon’s hacking software is used by government clients and WhatsApp said it had not been able to identify the clients who ordered the alleged attacks.

Experts said the targeting was a “zero-click” attack, which means targets would not have had to click on any malicious links to be infected.

WhatsApp declined to disclose where the journalists and members of civil society were based, including whether they were based in the US.

Paragon has a US office in Chantilly, Virginia. The company has faced recent scrutiny after Wired magazine in October reported that it had entered into a $2m contract with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s homeland security investigations division.

The division reportedly issued a stop-work order for the contract to verify whether it complied with a Biden administration executive order that restricted the use of spyware by the federal government. The Trump administration has revoked dozens of the Biden administration’s executive orders in its first two weeks in office, but the 2023 order, which prohibited the use of spyware that posed a risk to national security currently remains in effect.

WhatsApp said it had sent Paragon a “cease and desist” letter and that it was exploring its legal options. WhatsApp said the alleged attacks had been disrupted in December and that it was not clear how long the targets may have been under threat.

The company is currently notifying victims of the alleged hacking, who will be contacted by WhatsApp.

“WhatsApp has disrupted a spyware campaign by Paragon that targeted a number of users including journalists and members of civil society. We’ve reached out directly to people who we believe were affected. This is the latest example of why spyware companies must be held accountable for their unlawful actions. WhatsApp will continue to protect people’s ability to communicate privately,” a company spokesperson said.

The Guardian reached out to Paragon Solutions for a comment but the company did not immediately respond.

Paragon’s spyware is known as Graphite and has capabilities that are comparable to NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. Once a phone is infected with Graphite, the operator of the spyware has total access to the phone, including being able to read messages that are sent via encrypted applications like WhatsApp and Signal.

The company, which was founded by the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, has been the subject of media reports in Israel recently, after it was reported that the group was sold to a US private equity firm, AE Industrial Partners, for $900m.

Reports suggested the deal had not yet received full regulatory approval in Israel. Cyberweapons like Graphite and Pegasus are regulated by the Israeli ministry of defence. The Guardian reached out to AE Industrial Partners, which is based in Boca Raton, Florida. Paragon is not listed among the company’s investments on its website.

“For some time Paragon has had the reputation of a “better” spyware company not implicated in obvious abuses, but WhatsApp’s recent revelations suggest otherwise. “This is not just a question of some bad apples – these types of abuses are a feature of the commercial spyware industry,” said Natalia Krapiva, senior tech legal counsel at Access Now.

WhatsApp said it believed the so-called vector, or means by which the infection was delivered to users, was through a malicious pdf file that was sent to individuals who were added to group chats. WhatsApp said it could say with “confidence” that Paragon was linked to this targeting.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which tracks and identifies digital threats against civil society, said Citizen Lab provided WhatsApp with some information that helped the company understand the vector that was used against the company’s users.

The group is expected to publish a report in the future that will provide more details about the alleged targeting.

WhatsApp announced the news just weeks after a judge in California ruled in the company’s favor in a landmark case against NSO Group, the high-profile spyware maker that in 2021 was placed by the Biden administration on a commerce department blacklist. At the time, the Biden administration said it had placed NSO on the so-called entity list because the company had engaged in activities “that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States”.

NSO has lobbied members of Congress to be taken off the list.

WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO in 2019 after it said 1,400 users had been infected by the company’s spyware. In December, the judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled that NSO was liable for the attacks, and that NSO had violated state and federal US hacking laws and WhatsApp’s own terms of service.

Have you been affected? If so please contact
Stephanie.Kirchgaessner@theguardian.com

Hamas has announced it will release Yarden Bibas on Saturday, the Israeli father of a young family kidnapped to Gaza who have been one of the most enduring symbols of Israel’s hostages in the coastal strip.

The Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida said on its Telegram channel that Bibas would be released with Keith Siegel, a joint US citizen, and Ofer Calderon, who also has French nationality.

The release of Bibas, whose wife, Shiri, and children, Ariel and Kfir, remain unaccounted for amid “grave concerns” over their wellbeing, represents a painful moment for the large numbers of Israelis and other supporters around the world who have long campaigned for the Bibas family’s release.

Video of Shiri Bibas holding on to her children as she was kidnapped by Hamas gunmen from the Nir Oz kibbutz became an enduring image of the 7 October 2023 attacks, with her son Kfir just 9 months old when he was abducted.

Earlier this week Israel demanded that Hamas clarify the condition of Shiri Bibas and her children after the Palestinian group released a breakdown, without providing names, of the numbers of hostages who were alive or dead in the group of 33 so-called humanitarian cases slated for release in the first phase of the ceasefire deal.

As the releases under the ceasefire deal have continued, it has become clear to Israelis that Shiri Bibas and her children should have been released in the first exchanges if they were still alive.

Under the agreement, living women and children were supposed to be freed first, stoking fears for the fate of the mother and her children who were abducted and held separately from Yarden.

Ariel and Kfir were the only children being held who were not released in a previous ceasefire deal in November 2023.

Hamas has claimed they were killed in an Israeli strike early in the war and released a video of Yarden in November 2023 after it said he had been informed of his family’s deaths. Israel has previously said it does not have intelligence confirming that claim, but last week the Israeli military’s spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, said there were “grave concerns” for the fate of Shiri and her two children.

Relatives of the Bibas family said in a statement: “We said then, and we say now: we hold on to hope and continue waiting for their return. We await clarity regarding their condition.”

Those concerns were underlined by reports earlier this week that relatives of eight of the 33 Israelis had been informed by Gal Hirsch, the lead Israeli official dealing with hostages and the missing, that Hamas’s claims that they were dead were in line with Israel’s intelligence assessment.

Yizhar Lifshitz, whose father, Oded Lifshitz, 84, is on the list of the initial 33 to be returned, told Ynet: “It’s not exactly data. It’s Hamas saying [the number of] ‘alive’, ‘released’ and ‘dead’.

“There’s a grave concern for his life after this last indication. The last sign of life for him was on day 25.”

The Bibas family have been a particular focus in Israel and abroad. Earlier this week, supporters asked people to wear orange, signifying the colour of the boys’ hair.

“The information we received is not good,” Jimmy Miller, a cousin of Shiri Bibas, told the Jewish News Service last week. “The army is afraid about the state in which they will be returned, but nothing is proven yet. They fear the information we had received a year ago is real, but we won’t know the truth until we see it with our own eyes.”

Even as Israelis have braced themselves for bad news about the Bibas family, supporters have clung to hope.

At a rally in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Leah Corry, 65, a special needs teacher who knows the children’s grandparents, told the Guardian: “My heart says they might be alive, but from a rational point of view, thinking logically, they aren’t with us any more. Because of their ages, because there has been no proof of life.

“If they were alive, everyone would want them to come out. I think the families know they are dead. There are no children coming out in the releases.”

Tal Sabbah, 37, an operations manager, said he had first heard reports more than a year ago that the Bibas children and their mother had been killed. Like Corry, he thought the release of adult male hostages was confirmation they would not be returned alive.

“It breaks my heart,” Sabbah said, particularly after becoming a father for the first time, but he said it was something he had accepted. “I think I’ve processed it already quite a long time ago.

“Now it is like the final confirmation. I think, as sad as it is, it is also an important piece of the puzzle, just to know.”

As Donald Trump threatens to slap steep tariffs on many countries, he is boasting that his taxes on imports will be a boon to the US economy, but most economists strongly disagree – many say Trump’s tariffs will increase inflation, slow economic growth, hurt US workers and result in American consumers footing the bill for his tariffs.

“Virtually all economists think that the impact of the tariffs will be very bad for America and for the world,” said Joseph Stiglitz, an economics professor at Columbia University and a winner of the Nobel prize in economic sciences. “They will almost surely be inflationary.”

On inauguration day, Trump threatened to impose a 25% across-the-board tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico on 1 February “because”, he said, “they’re allowing vast numbers of people” to “come in, and fentanyl to come in”. Trump also threatened China with a 10% tariff unless its stops fentanyl shipments, while he maintained his longer-term threat of a 60% tariff on Chinese goods.

“It’s inconceivable that other countries won’t retaliate,” said Stiglitz, who was chairman of Bill Clinton’s council of economic advisers. “Even if some of the governments might not want to retaliate, their citizens will demand that you can’t allow yourself to be beaten up. When you make like a gorilla thumping on his chest, are countries just going to say, ‘Are we chopped liver?’ Their politics will demand that they do something.”

The tariffs, tensions and fears of retaliation and a trade war will probably cause many businesses to reduce their planned investments, and that, economists say, will hurt economies worldwide.

Marcus Noland, executive vice-president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said: “The impact of imposing these tariffs,” will “have the effect of depressing US economic growth, contributing to a higher rate of inflation, and those effects will be worse if the other countries retaliate in kind”.

Trump insists that his aggressive trade policies will be a win-win for Americans. On inauguration day, the White House issued his “America First Trade Policy” memo, saying: “I am establishing a robust and reinvigorated trade policy that promotes investment and productivity, enhances our nation’s industrial and technological advantages, defends our economic and national security, and–above all–benefits American workers, manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs and businesses.”

But many economists say this is wishful thinking, predicting that, if implemented, Trump’s tariffs will injure many US manufacturers, farmers and workers. Jim Stanford, a prominent Canadian economist who was long the top economist for Canada’s auto workers’ union, warned that if Trump imposes 25% tariffs on Canada, it would badly damage the US and Canadian auto industries.

“The Canadian and US auto industries have been intertwined for 60 years,” Stanford said. “What happens if they put a 25% tariff on all the auto parts and products coming from Canada and Mexico? Some auto parts cross the border eight times before they’re put in the final vehicle.” For instance, some basic steel might be shipped from Mexico to the US, where it is molded into a carburetor part and then that piece is shipped to Canada where the carburetor is produced before being shipped to Mexico to be installed during final assembly after which the car is ultimately sold in the US.

“The tariffs would apply each time parts cross the border,” Stanford said. “That 25% would be compounded on each step. The impact on costs would be astounding.”

Stanford said it was wrong for Trump to suggest that Canada and its automakers would pay for those 25% tariffs. “By and large, that’s false. It’s clearly going to raise auto prices in America. It is Americans who will directly pay for it. There’s no doubt about that.”

Economists note that one result of sizable tariffs is that consumers ultimately fork over more money to the government when they buy imports and that overall leaves consumers with less money to buy goods, and that hurts manufacturers and retailers.

Noland, of the Peterson Institute, noted that Trump and other supporters of across-the-board tariffs “claim it will aid industrial revitalization. What we found is it actually tends to have the opposite effect. It tends to damage the industrial sector by decreasing efficiency in production relative to other countries.”

When Trump hit China with tariffs during his first term in office, China retaliated in particular against US agricultural exports, hurting American farmers. Noland predicted that if Trump again slaps tariffs on China, farmers would again get hit by retaliation.

Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University expert on trade policy, warned that Trump’s tariffs will have additional undesirable effects. “US exporters will face a particularly tough time, as they are likely to face rising tariff barriers in their foreign markets,” Prasad said. “In addition, tariffs are likely to drive up the dollar and reduce the competitiveness of their exports in global markets.”

He added that the looming threat of tariffs and the unpredictability of what they will be is “fomenting enormous uncertainty in the global business environment, which is harmful for business investment and job creation”.

Stiglitz sees another worrisome downside to Trump’s tariff plans and the likely retaliation against the US. When central bankers see inflation climbing due to tariffs, “central banks will raise interest rates,” Stiglitz said. “That has a chance of leading to the worst of possible outcomes – interest rates going up with stagflation, interest rates going up in the face of a weak economy.”

In some ways, Stiglitz explained, this would prove counterproductive to one of Trump’s goals for tariffs: to have them help pay for “Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires”. “If growth slows down, tax revenues will slow down,” he said.

David Seif, Nomura’s chief economist for developed markets, said several Trump policies, including tax cuts and reduced regulations, could help offset tariffs’ harmful effects on economic growth. But because of Trump’s tariffs, he said, “there is likely to be higher inflation this year than there otherwise would be, and that might limit the Federal Reserve to a single rate cut this year.” That would undercut Trump’s hopes of getting the Fed to rapidly cut rates.

Seif said the Trump administration seems to be considering two waves of tariffs – a near-term wave, for instance, to get countries to slow the flow of immigrants and fentanyl to the US. Then he sees a longer-term wave of perhaps large, across-the-board tariffs aimed at generating revenue and strengthening US manufacturing.

But economists warn that with the US near full employment – the jobless rate is just 4.1% – it could be hard to find enough workers to significantly expand the manufacturing sector, especially when many immigrant workers face deportation.

Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive policy thinktank, said it was hard to predict what will happen on tariffs because “there is a kind of war going on in the Republican party between where the Maga folks are on trade and where the chamber of commerce is.”

Owens said many people are asking, how do Trump’s tariff policies, which will probably result in higher costs for consumers, square with his promise to lower prices? She warned that tariffs will hit less affluent Americans hardest because they “spend a disproportionate amount of their income on consumption”.

Owens noted that Trump advisers have talked up how tariffs will help US workers while also helping finance trillions in tax cuts for the rich. “If these tariffs are to pay for tax cuts for billionaires,” Owens asked, “doesn’t the supposed benefits that tariffs have for the working class get canceled out somewhat?”

• The Guardian is co-publishing this piece with the Century Foundation

Fears are growing for a truck driver who has spent three days trapped inside a sinkhole in Japan, as rescue workers started building a ramp in a desperate attempt to reach him.

The 74-year-old, who has not been named, became trapped when the sinkhole opened up in a road near Tokyo on Tuesday, swallowing him and his two-tonne truck.

The hole has since grown in size, while leaking water pipes and a nearby gas pipe have complicated efforts to rescue him. As darkness fell on Friday, workers had started constructing a 30-metre long a ramp that they hope will allow them to reach the man, whose cab is covered in soil and other debris.

As residents of Yashio, a town in Saitama prefecture, questioned the slow pace of the rescue operation, the local fire chief, Tetsuji Sato, described the scene at the traffic intersection where the sinkhole opened up as “extremely dangerous”.

“We are planning to construct a slope from a safer spot so that we will be able to send down heavy equipment,” Sato said, adding that groundwater was continuing the leak inside the hole, which is still expanding. The Kyodo news agency reported the sinkhole was 15 metres deep and 40 metres wide.

Residents living within a 200-metre radius of the site were ordered to evacuate, and 1.2 million people in nearby towns and cities have been asked to cut back on baths and laundry to prevent leaking sewage water from making the operation even more hazardous.

“It’s difficult not to use the toilet, but we are asking people to do their best to use less water,” a prefectural official said.

Authorities in Yashio believe the sinkhole was formed as a result of corroded sewage pipes, which allowed water to seep into the surrounding soil and loosen it. Some sewage water in the area has been collected and disinfected before being released into a nearby river to reduce the runoff into the hole.

The rescue operation, in its fourth day, has been complicated by further erosion of the sinkhole walls, making it impossible for workers to remain below ground for long periods.

Concern is growing for the health of the trapped truck driver, who spoke to rescue workers shortly after his vehicle fell into the hole on Tuesday morning, but has not been heard from since around noon the same day. The 72-hour period considered crucial to the survival of people who become trapped without food or water has passed.

Workers had hoped to complete the slope by the end of Friday, but an official said it could take several days to complete.

Once the ramp is complete, heavy equipment will be used to clear the rubble and rescue workers will venture into the sinkhole to search for the man, Kyodo said.

Some people living nearby questioned why it was taking so long to locate the truck driver. “It feels rather abnormal that the search is taking this long,” Takuya Koroku, a 51-year-old factory worker, told Agence France-Presse. “I wonder if he could have been saved much sooner. I’m scared to go near it.”

Almost half of Danish people now consider the US to be a considerable threat to their country and the overwhelming majority oppose Greenland leaving to become part of the US, new polling has found.

The research by YouGov, shared exclusively with the Guardian, comes after weeks of tension between Denmark, Greenland and the US over Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that he plans to take control of the autonomous territory, which is part of the Danish kingdom.

The Arctic island, which has a population of 57,000 people, was formerly ruled as a colony by Denmark, which continues to control its foreign and security policy. Trump’s interest in Greenland comes at a time of growing momentum for its pre-existing independence movement.

The poll of just over 1,000 people in Denmark, conducted between 15 and 22 January, found that 46% considered the US to be either “a very big threat” or “a fairly big threat” to Denmark.

This is higher than the number who said they considered North Korea or Iran a threat – of which 44% and 40% did respectively. But the threat of Russia remains considerably higher; 86% of respondents said they considered Moscow a threat.

Of those surveyed, 78% said they would oppose Greenland being sold to the US, but 72% said the final decision should be Greenland’s, not Denmark’s.

The findings come in a week in which the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, toured Berlin, Paris and Brussels to shore up support amid Trump’s Greenland threats, after a reportedly “horrendous” call with the US president.

Frederiksen said Europe must unite in the face of changing relations with the US. “I want to ensure that all of Europe stands together. Not only in connection with the kingdom of Denmark but also more broadly,” she said.

She added: “Everyone in Europe can see that it will be a different collaboration with the USA now.”

Trump has said the US needs control of Greenland – and the Panama canal – for “economic security” and has described ownership and control of the territory as an “absolute necessity”. Greenland has long been on his radar as a target for purchase and in 2019 he confirmed reports that he had been urging aides to find out how the US could buy it, describing a sale as “essentially a large real estate deal”.

As well as oil and gas, Greenland’s supply of in-demand raw materials for green technology is attracting interest from around the world, including from China.

An opinion poll published earlier this week found that 85% of Greenlanders did not want the island to become part of the US. The survey by the pollster Verian, commissioned by the Danish paper Berlingske, showed only 6% of Greenlanders were in favour of becoming part of the US, with 9% undecided.

Almost half of Danish people now consider the US to be a considerable threat to their country and the overwhelming majority oppose Greenland leaving to become part of the US, new polling has found.

The research by YouGov, shared exclusively with the Guardian, comes after weeks of tension between Denmark, Greenland and the US over Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that he plans to take control of the autonomous territory, which is part of the Danish kingdom.

The Arctic island, which has a population of 57,000 people, was formerly ruled as a colony by Denmark, which continues to control its foreign and security policy. Trump’s interest in Greenland comes at a time of growing momentum for its pre-existing independence movement.

The poll of just over 1,000 people in Denmark, conducted between 15 and 22 January, found that 46% considered the US to be either “a very big threat” or “a fairly big threat” to Denmark.

This is higher than the number who said they considered North Korea or Iran a threat – of which 44% and 40% did respectively. But the threat of Russia remains considerably higher; 86% of respondents said they considered Moscow a threat.

Of those surveyed, 78% said they would oppose Greenland being sold to the US, but 72% said the final decision should be Greenland’s, not Denmark’s.

The findings come in a week in which the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, toured Berlin, Paris and Brussels to shore up support amid Trump’s Greenland threats, after a reportedly “horrendous” call with the US president.

Frederiksen said Europe must unite in the face of changing relations with the US. “I want to ensure that all of Europe stands together. Not only in connection with the kingdom of Denmark but also more broadly,” she said.

She added: “Everyone in Europe can see that it will be a different collaboration with the USA now.”

Trump has said the US needs control of Greenland – and the Panama canal – for “economic security” and has described ownership and control of the territory as an “absolute necessity”. Greenland has long been on his radar as a target for purchase and in 2019 he confirmed reports that he had been urging aides to find out how the US could buy it, describing a sale as “essentially a large real estate deal”.

As well as oil and gas, Greenland’s supply of in-demand raw materials for green technology is attracting interest from around the world, including from China.

An opinion poll published earlier this week found that 85% of Greenlanders did not want the island to become part of the US. The survey by the pollster Verian, commissioned by the Danish paper Berlingske, showed only 6% of Greenlanders were in favour of becoming part of the US, with 9% undecided.

South Carolina is set to execute Marion Bowman Jr, a 44-year-old man who has maintained his innocence and in his final days became outspoken about the brutal conditions on death row.

The state, which has aggressively revived capital punishment after a 13-year pause, is due to kill Bowman by lethal injection at 6pm local time on Friday. It will be the first execution in the US of the new year.

Bowman and his attorneys have been fighting for the courts to intervene and revisit his conviction, citing ineffective trial counsel, claims of withheld evidence and concerns about the drawn-out method of killing.

But on Thursday, the US supreme court rejected what is likely his final appeal, as his family pleaded for his life to be spared.

Bowman is the third Black man to face execution in South Carolina in recent months, after the state was able to restock its supply of pentobarbital, a sedative. The cases have sparked protests over wrongful convictions, racial bias in capital punishment and the suffering caused by pentobarbital.

Bowman, imprisoned for more than half his life, was convicted of the 2001 killing of Kandee Martin, a 21-year-old childhood friend. He has said he did not kill her and that he refused to accept a plea deal because of his innocence. His attorneys have said the evidence used against him was not reliable; the primary witnesses implicating him were two men also charged in the crime who received reduced sentences, and a third man who had pending charges in a separate case, which were subsequently dropped.

His lawyers have also argued that the state withheld evidence casting doubt on the witnesses, including a memo outlining a claim that one of the witnesses confessed to the shooting.

Bowman’s legal team has also argued in a recent petition that the lawyer who represented him at trial was “infected by his own racism”, writing that the lawyer pressured him to plead guilty because he was Black and his victim was white.

Attorneys for the state have responded that Bowman was rehashing arguments already litigated, and the South Carolina supreme court called his appeal “meritless”. The US supreme court rejected his petition relating to his trial counsel’s “biases”. His attorneys also unsuccessfully challenged the state’s use of pentobarbital, noting that an anesthesiologist who reviewed the autopsy of the last man executed by South Carolina said it appeared he “consciously experienced feelings of drowning” and that it took 23 minutes to kill him.

On Wednesday, Lorraine Johnson, Bowman’s aunt, pleaded for his sentence to be commuted, noting he was close with his daughter and deserved to build a relationship with his newborn granddaughter.

“Marion is someone who would do anything for someone else if he is able. He has been a kindhearted person ever since he was a child … Marion always asks about what is going on in my life and tries to build me up when I am down,” she said in a statement. “I do not think that Marion’s mother would recover if he were to be executed.”

In an unusual move, Bowman opted not to request clemency from the state’s governor.

“He cannot in good conscience ask for a supposed mercy that would require him to spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit,” his lawyer, Lindsey Vann, said in a statement. “After more than two decades of battling a broken system that has failed him at every turn, Marion’s decision is a powerful refusal to legitimize an unjust process that has already stolen so much of his life.”

No South Carolina governor has granted clemency to a capital defendant in the modern death penalty era. South Carolina’s governor has typically waited minutes before the execution to declare his decision, a tradition advocates have described as cruel.

The ACLU of South Carolina filed a lawsuit this week challenging a 2023 state law that keeps secret the identities of its suppliers of pentobarbital, a measure that allowed authorities to revive executions. Defendants are forced to choose how they will die – either lethal injection, firing squad or electrocution.

The execution comes as Donald Trump has pledged to vigorously pursue capital punishment at the federal level. Joe Biden commuted most federal defendants sentenced to death before stepping down, but his clemency action did not impact people on state death rows like Bowman.

In earlier conversations with his lawyer, which were relayed to the Guardian, Bowman spoke out about the “inhumane” treatment of people on death row placed on “execution watch”. In September, when the state said he was in line to be killed, he was moved to a solitary cell, with nearly 24/7 isolation, cut off from the men on death row who have become his family over decades. He could touch both walls at the same time, lost access to many of his possessions, and had to wear full-body shackles and be led around with a dog leash anytime he left his cell.

“These people have helped me survive this – people who never would’ve gotten together on the outside, who are so different, but still have so much humanity in common,” Bowman said of the others on death row, separated from him in his final months. “Some say they never had a friend until they came here. There’s no such thing as unredeemable.”

When he has had brief moments to communicate with others in passing, “I tell them to keep their heads up,” Bowman added. “They are going to be left to grieve me, but I need to make sure they continue to have the courage for their own fight.”

A prison spokesperson earlier declined to comment on the conditions.

Boyd Young, one of Bowman’s lawyers and a close friend of 15 years, said on Thursday that Bowman was spending his final days writing goodbye letters and preparing to donate his possessions to other men on death row, including a chess set. He got his “last meal” on Wednesday, including fried oysters, shrimp and chicken, juice, chocolate cake and banana pudding – foods he likely hasn’t had for decades. He ate it alone.

He also got an opportunity to hold his granddaughter for the first time.

“He’s way more than a client. He’s a family member,” Young said, noting that Bowman built relationships with his wife and children, exchanging drawings and letters over the years. “Killing him in no way makes the world a better place.”

In Bowman’s final letter to Young, he said: “I never wanted to be writing this to you. It crushes my heart to do so. Man I LOVE YOU Brother! [From] the moment I met you, you was in my corner … Thank you [for] bringing so many people in [to] meet me and eventually grow to love me too.” Bowman expressed gratitude to Young for making him an uncle to his children and taking him on “trips around the world” through the photos and postcards his family sent.

Bowman’s letter concluded: “I’m stopping now before everything in me breaks. I love you for life, brother!”

Hours before the sun rose over the Netherlands, the group crowded around the large external door, appearing to pry it open. Seconds later, the grainy security video appeared to show a powerful explosion, sending plumes of smoke and sparks into the air, and the thieves rush into the museum in the north-eastern city of Assen.

Minutes later they were gone. But the mystery of what exactly took place during their few minutes in the Drents Museum – and what came afterwards – has left officials in the Netherlands scrambling for answers, and prompted a row that has stretched to the other side of Europe.

The daring heist took place last Saturday, with police saying they were notified at 3.45am local time. By then, the thieves had made off with a handful of objects, including the near-2,500-year-old gold Helmet of Coțofenești – one of Romania’s most revered national treasures.

Three gold bracelets dating from 50BC were also taken. The items were part of an exhibit – featuring more than 600 artefacts on loan – that had sought to offer visitors a glimpse of the glory of the Dacia civilisation, an ancient agrarian society that once thrived in what is today Romania.

The helmet, in particular, had long been celebrated across Romania as a symbol of the country’s rich history, its image gracing school history textbooks, postage stamps and even a gold coin issued by the country’s national bank.

“The helmet is one of the most popular and well-known ancient gold objects in Romania,” said Andrea Teunissen-Oprea, the honorary consul for Romania in the Netherlands. “Some people here are saying that it’s as if the Dutch would wake up and discover that [Rembrandt’s] The Night Watch was missing from the museum.”

Dramatically studded and adorned with intricate designs that depict a lamb being sacrificed and mythical creatures such as a griffin, the helmet was believed to have been used during ceremonies. “It is unique in the world,” said Teunissen-Oprea. “Because there are no written documents from this period, the archaeological discoveries are incredibly important for Romania.”

News of the heist had set off an “uproar” across Romania, she said, as mourning over the potential loss of the objects gave way to fury among the art world, politicians and media.

“Even in our most pessimistic dreams, we would not have believed this to be possible,” said the director of Romania’s National History Museum, Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu, earlier this week. He was sacked from his role amid anger that the objects had been loaned out.

The prime minister of Romania, Marcel Ciolacu, mused about claiming “unprecedented damages” from the Dutch museum. He alleged that it was not sufficiently guarded – a claim the Drents Museum rebuffed – as he sprang into action, announcing that Romania would send a team of experts including forensic police officers to help with the investigation, while the loan of the objects would be probed domestically.

“This is a very serious situation,” he wrote on social media, “but this robbery, which must be resolved swiftly, must not become fuel for the spread of all kinds of conspiracy theories by those who aim to make easy political capital.”

The comment appeared to be a reference to Romania’s far-right AUR movement. Emboldened after its strong showing in the presidential and parliamentary elections in late 2024, the party had seized on the theft to call for government resignations. The robbery was “a direct attack on our national history and identity”, it said.

In the Netherlands, the theft set off a frantic search. Dozens of detectives and specialist officers combed through the scores of tips that had poured into a dedicated hotline. On Wednesday, after a days-long manhunt, police said they had arrested three people.

“The suspects are held under strict conditions and are being questioned about their role in the heist,” said Dutch police, who also released a photograph of another suspect and noted that they had not ruled out further arrests.

The Drents Museum described the arrests as offering a glimmer of hope. “We are awaiting further developments with bated breath,” it said in a statement. “The recovery without damage would be, for all, a fantastic next step. Not only for us, but also for the Romanian population.”

Police said the focus was now on recovering the stolen artefacts. It was in some ways a race against time, as the global headlines over the heist meant the objects were likely now too well-known to be sold as they were, sparking fears the thieves would destroy the priceless objects in a bid to sell what might amount to only about 1kg of gold.

It would be a relatively small payoff for such a daring feat, said Teunissen-Oprea. “There’s really a question of why they did it. Why only those four things? Because there were 600 other things there.”

She was among the many frantically hoping that the pieces would be found intact. “We are praying that the pieces are found and not melted down,” she said. “It would be a huge loss not only for Romania, but for the entire cultural heritage of Europe.”

A “very different” Grammy awards will take place in Los Angeles this weekend, impacted by the recent wildfires that have affected California.

The annual celebration of music, taking place at the Crypto.com arena on Sunday, will still feature a range of big-name performers but there will be a noticeable shift in purpose.

“It’s not going to be a typical Grammy party atmosphere,” said Harvey Mason Jr, the CEO of the Recording Academy. “It’s not only ‘the show must go on’ but the show must provide a greater service. Of course, we’re going to honor music, but our goal is to utilise music to make a difference.”

The week leading to the Grammys typically sees a string of major parties put on by record labels, but the majority have been cancelled in response to the fires, which have killed at least 29 people and destroyed thousands of structures. Money will instead be diverted to those in need.

“We have some great things in the show that will definitely help to raise funds,” Mason said. “It will honour some of the heroes that have been protecting our lives and our homes. It will hopefully shine a light on some people that need more help and more services.”

The annual tradition that will go ahead in Clive Davis’s legendary gala, which takes place the night before. This year’s event will also include a fundraising element. “We want to ensure that the evening will not only be a memorable night of music but will also provide impactful support for those very much in need,” Davis said.

This year’s nominees are led by Beyoncé, whose country album Cowboy Carter brought her 11 nods, making her the most nominated artist ever alongside husband Jay-Z. Beyoncé has yet to win the award for album of the year and if she wins this weekend, she would be only the fourth Black woman to take it home. The star has been nominated for the award four times before.

“I don’t want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than everyone, and never won album of the year,” Jay-Z said last year on stage. “So even by your own metrics, that doesn’t work. Think about that. The most Grammys, never won album of the year. That doesn’t work.”

Beyoncé has already become the first solo Black female to top the country charts in the US and could make history if she wins in the country categories on Sunday.

The singer, whose mother Tina Knowles lost a home in the fires, has donated $2.5m to relief efforts.

In the category of album of the year, she faces competition from stars including André 3000, Billie Eilish, Charli xcx and Taylor Swift, who won last year. Swift, who has now won 14 Grammys, has also donated to a number of wildfire funds. In an Instagram statement, urging others to also contribute, she wrote that it was “heartbreaking to see the stories unfold”.

The singer has been confirmed to present an award on Sunday.

The evening will be hosted by Trevor Noah and feature performances from multiple nominees Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter with a special tribute to the late Quincy Jones, featuring Stevie Wonder and Janelle Monáe.

“It’s Grammy week,” Roan wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “I am very emo. My heart feels warm and fuzzy with all the support I have been given this past year. I hope you can understand that this has been incredible and scary and spiritual and confusing.”

The evening lands in the middle of an awards season that has seen delays and shifts as a result of the ongoing wildfires. The Oscar nominations were delayed twice and a tweaked ceremony will remove original song performances and spend more time trying to “acknowledge those who fought so bravely against the wildfires”.

The Critics Choice awards were also delayed until 7 February.

This week also saw a benefit concert in Los Angeles with stars including Olivia Rodrigo and Joni Mitchell performing.

A long-neglected 1930s mural in Mexico that warns about the rise of fascism has been revealed and restored – just as some historians say the world faces that threat once more.

The mural, which is titled The Struggle Against Terrorism, covers a 40ft wall in a colonial courtyard in Morelia, Michoacán, and depicts a history of persecution and resistance from biblical times to the modern day.

Giant, looming figures stride across a wall covered with allusions to the life of Jesus, the Spanish Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan, alongside Nazi and Communist symbols, and tools of torture.

After years of work to restore its original visual power, the mural will be unveiled again on Friday.

Painted in 1934, it was the first major commission for Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish, two artists born to Jewish immigrants in the US and living in Los Angeles at a time of political tumult.

“The world was changing,” said Sally Radic, executive director of the Philip Guston Foundation. “Fascism was coming in; the Ku Klux Klan was in Los Angeles.”

Just how two 21-year-old Americans – both of whom went on to become renowned artists – ended up painting a mural in a small Mexican city is unclear, though it seems they were encouraged to go to Mexico by David Alfaro Siqueiros, a pioneer of Mexican muralism.

After the Mexican revolution (1910-20), artists such as Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, who was married to Frida Kahlo, sought to tell the national story to a largely illiterate population by painting it in an epic form on public walls and buildings.

In Morelia, Gustavo Corona, the university rector, wanted to turn the city into “the Florence of Mexico” by inviting artists to paint murals – including throughout the 18th-century colonial building that then housed the university, said Radic.

“And [Guston and Kadish] jumped at the opportunity to do whatever they wanted with this 1,000 sq ft wall,” she added.

They spent six months in Morelia, but scarcely anything is known about their time there. There are a few photos of the artists at work or posing in front of the completed mural, but almost nothing in the way of diaries or letters.

And soon after its completion, the mural was hidden, and almost forgotten.

In the 1940s, the manager of the building that housed the mural, by then a museum, began to covet a painting owned by the church, which depicts the transfer of enclosed nuns from one convent to another.

“Supposedly, the director wanted the painting in the museum, but the church said no,” said Radic. “Finally, they said he could have it – but only if he covered up the mural, because it had nude female figures and a cross that’s upside down. And so they did.”

Thirty years later, the mural was rediscovered “basically by accident” while workers were performing maintenance. “They realised that there was a false wall,” said Radic. “And when they opened it up, they realised they had this mural there.”

By then it was in poor shape: damaged by humidity, covered in grime. “But the fact it was covered up so many years may actually have helped preserve it,” said Radic.

It took two years to repair the damage and revive the original colours.

Of all the murals in Mexico, Radic reckons this one might be unique. It is in a provincial Mexican city and uses a Mexican form, but is filled with international symbolism.

Meanwhile the theme is universal – and perhaps timeless.

By chance, the restored mural is being unveiled just as some fear a resurgence of fascism.

“Sometimes, the stars align. And, you know, 90 years later, it’s basically the same situation,” said Radic, before adding: “But that depends upon your political viewpoint.”