mi potete aiutare per favore visto che non capisco pienamente il php chiedo ha voi!!!!

ho uno script questo:riporto solo la parte incriminata
Codice PHP:
<?php
$limit = 10;
global $mysql;
$mysql = new mysqli('localhost', 'root', '', 'html_it_articles');
if($mysql)
{
    die("Errore di connessione al database, impossibile procedere");
}
$query = ("SELECT COUNT(*)AS tot FROM articles");
$result = $mysql->$query->fetch_assoc();

$page = isset($_GET['p']) ? $_GET['p'] : 1;
$totals = $result['tot'];
$totals_pages = ceil($totals / $limit);

$articles = $mysql->query("
    SELECT
        AR.id AS id,
        AR.title AS title,
        CONCAT(SUBSTR(AR.article, 1, 200),  ' ...') AS content,
        CONCAT(AU.surname, ' ', AU.name) AS author
    FROM
        articles AR,
        authors AU
    WHERE
        AR.author_id = AU.id
    ORDER BY id DESC
    LIMIT ".(($page - 1) * $limit).",".$limit);
?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <head>
        <title>Articoli</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <ul>[*][url="News.php"]Lista articoli[/url][/list]
        

Articoli totali: <?php echo $totals; ?></p>
        <table width="500px">
            <?php
            while($article = $articles->fetch_assoc())
            {
                printf('<tr>
                        <td>%d. [url="show.php?id=%d"]%s[/url] (%s) </td>
                    </tr>
                    <tr>
                        <td>

%s</p></td>
                    </tr>
                    <tr>
                        <td><hr /></td>
                    </tr>',
                    $article['id'],
                    $article['id'],
                    $article['title'],
                    $article['author'],
                    $article['content']
                    );
            }
            ?>
        </table>
        

Pagina <?php echo $page; ?> di <?php echo $totals_pages; ?> 

        <?php
        if($page - 1 > 0)
        {
            echo '[url="?p='.($page - 1).'"]&lt; prev[/url] | ';
        }else
        {
            echo '&lt; prev | ';
        }
        if($page + 1 <= $totals_pages)
        {
                    echo '[url="?p='.($page + 1).'"]next &gt;[/url]';
        }else
        {
                    echo 'next &gt;';
        }
        ?>
        </p>
    </body>
</html>
che mi da questo errore:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE, expecting ',' or ';' in /membri/sk1zzo/News.php on line 183

E LA RIGA 183 E QUESTA
$mysql = new mysqli('localhost', 'root', '', 'html_it_articles');