Sales at Elon Musk’s carmaker plummet nearly 38% in 2025 as it loses ground to China’s BYD; gold continues to rise
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
Sales of new cars in the European Union rose by 1.8% last year, with electric cars making up a bigger share of the market, while Tesla sales plummeted as it lost ground to China’s BYD.
11.30am GMT: Rachel Reeves gives speech
1.15pm GMT US ADP Employment change
3pm GMMT: US Conference Board Consumer confidence for January
5pm GMT: European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde speech
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© Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
© Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
© Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
Live updates from the last eight at Melbourne Park
Sabalenka beats heat and Jovic | And you can mail Katy
Looking at the head-to-head, Svitolina has beaten Gauff before at the Australian Open, but that was in 2021, when Gauff was only 16 and hadn’t yet graduated to the status of double grand slam champion. Gauff has defeated Svitolina in the two matches they have played since, but they did both go to three sets. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this match goes the distance too. Svitolina is in supreme form, having won all nine of her matches in 2026.
Gauff and Svitolina have made their entrance, with the Rod Laver Arena roof closed. That’s always the case for the night session walk-outs, but we’re not sure yet if the the heat rule is in place which would mean the roof stays on for the match. It’s still 42C (!!!) at 7pm in the evening. Zverev placed his match under the roof earlier, the doubles matches are taking place under the roof on Margaret Court and the start of the wheelchair events have been postponed until tomorrow.
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© Photograph: Dita Alangkara/AP
© Photograph: Dita Alangkara/AP
© Photograph: Dita Alangkara/AP
A staggering 32 of 36 teams go into the final set of matches with their hopes of staying in the competition still alive
With seven wins from seven, Arsenal have a perfect record in the league phase. Only Bayern Munich and Inter have found the net against Mikel Arteta’s team, who dismissed Atlético Madrid 4-0 in October. The bottom side, Kairat, visit the Emirates Stadium on the final night, with Arsenal needing a draw to confirm top spot and, theoretically, the most favourable last-16 draw.
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© Composite: Alamy
© Composite: Alamy
© Composite: Alamy
The Leicester City chair plays down talk of another relegation but knows the mood among fans is fraught
Leicester City are hurting but Aiyawatt “Top” Srivaddhanaprabha, looking towards the pitch at the King Power Stadium, insists he shares supporters’ frustrations. He acknowledges the warm glow of their extraordinary Premier League title win almost a decade ago has long faded. He watches every game, which sometimes means tuning in from Thailand in the early hours. An 8pm kick-off in England is a 3am start in Bangkok.
“I want to see the real passion of the players and the performance,” the chair says. “When it is not there, I can’t sleep, so it’s love and pain. Leicester is like my son. So I have to do it right. Of course, a son can be naughty, a son can fail the exam, a pain in your head. The son can be top of the class, graduate, have a bad girlfriend or good wife, you never know. So I feel the same, but the love is there. The responsibility is there. The first thing for me is to identify the problem and fix it.”
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© Photograph: LCFC
© Photograph: LCFC
© Photograph: LCFC
From a cult hero ski jumper, to African bobsleigh pioneers and more, here are half a dozen unexpected heroes
Michael “Eddie the Eagle” Edwards, was the antithesis of the Olympic high-flyer. Heavily disadvantaged by his 82kg (181lb) weight – far heavier than his rivals – poor eyesight and the small matter of being entirely self-funded, he became Great Britain’s first Olympic ski jumper. He finished 67th and last at the 1987 world championships but managed to hit the qualifying standard to secure the sole British spot for Calgary. At the Games, he finished last in the normal hill (70m) and large hill (90m) events. In the normal hill, he scored 69.2 points from two jumps of 55m, while the winner Matti Nykänen scored 229.1 points from 89.5m jumps. Despite the last-place finishes, his enthusiasm captured global media attention but also lead to the “Eddie the Eagle Rule” which was introduced to tighten entry requirements and prevent similar “Olympic tourists”.
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© Photograph: John Downing/Getty Images
© Photograph: John Downing/Getty Images
© Photograph: John Downing/Getty Images
© Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
© Manish Swarup/Associated Press
Fifteen years after a tsunami caused the Fukushima nuclear accident, only bears, raccoons and boar are seen on the streets. But the authorities and some locals want people to move back
Norio Kimura pauses to gaze through the dirt-flecked window of Kumamachi primary school in Fukushima. Inside, there are still textbooks lying on the desks, pencil cases are strewn across the floor; empty bento boxes that were never taken home.
Along the corridor, shoes line the route the children took when they fled, some still in their indoor plimsolls, as their town was rocked by a magnitude-9 earthquake on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 which went on to cause the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chornobyl.
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© Photograph: Kazuma Obara/The Guardian
© Photograph: Kazuma Obara/The Guardian
© Photograph: Kazuma Obara/The Guardian
From crying miners to birthday girls via a body therapist and a meat packer, portraits from Richard Avedon’s celebrated series In the American West are on show in a new exhibition curated by his granddaughter
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© Photograph: Richard Avedon
© Photograph: Richard Avedon
© Photograph: Richard Avedon
The historic port district – and setting for Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting – has evolved into a cultural and culinary hub. In the first of a new series, a local resident visits the venues powering the resurgence
Leith is Edinburgh’s port district, where people, goods and new ideas have flowed into the city for centuries. Here, the Water of Leith river meets the sea, and on bright days, when pubs and restaurants spill out to the Shore area, there’s nowhere quite like it. I moved here 13 years ago, and it has been a joy to watch the area evolve and reinvent itself. Today it’s the city’s creative heart, full of artists, musicians, designers and startups, with a thriving food and drink scene. The arrival of the tramline from Edinburgh city centre in 2023 has given it a big boost too.
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© Photograph: Iain Masterton/Alamy
© Photograph: Iain Masterton/Alamy
© Photograph: Iain Masterton/Alamy
This second novel in a sharp duology offers a powerful interrogation of language in the age of mechanical mass destruction
Never knowingly unknowing, Ali Smith pre-empts the most likely criticism of her latest novel, Glyph, when a character says: “I’m just not sure that books that are novels and fiction and so on should be so close to real life … or so politically blatant.”
Glyph, which follows sisters Petra and Patch as they reflect on childhood attempts to grapple with the finality of death following the loss of their mother, goes further than any of Smith’s recent work in robustly answering this charge. While the Seasonal Quartet playfully anatomised the social fracture of post-Brexit Britain, and immediate predecessor Gliff dealt with the violence of the securitised state, Glyph, in its explicit engagement with the Israeli government’s apartheid and genocide in Palestine, raises the ethical stakes decisively. To engage in a Smithian pun – this is Art in the Age of Mechanical Mass Destruction.
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© Photograph: Isabella De Maddalena/opale.photo/eyevine
© Photograph: Isabella De Maddalena/opale.photo/eyevine
© Photograph: Isabella De Maddalena/opale.photo/eyevine
Adorable spirits guide the dead towards reincarnation in this beautifully strange Hong Kong anime – but watch out for the gut-wrenching violence
The wonder of Studio Ghibli meets the gruesomeness of Game of Thrones and the dark fury of a Greek tragedy in this striking and deeply strange animation from young Hong Kong film-maker Tommy Kai Chung Ng. His film is a gorgeous fairytale glutted with gut-wrenching moments of violence that make it strictly not suitable for kids. In one scene, a medieval feudal lord burns peasants alive in a grain store; in another, a teenage princess lashes the back of a general she blames for her father’s death to a bloody pulp.
It opens in a place called Another World, an afterlife stopover for humans who have died, on their way to reincarnation. In this netherworld we meet a troupe of adorable pint-sized spirits called soul keepers, whose job is to guide the dead to the next life. The dead leave their unresolved resentments behind in Another World; they become knots tied in beautiful threads of red silk. The place is run by Goddess Mira, who despairs that after millennia of untying knots she has failed to eradicate human hate and cruelty. It’s a world beautifully animated in a kaleidoscope of trippy pastels, with some breathtaking images.
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© Photograph: Publicity image
© Photograph: Publicity image
© Photograph: Publicity image
Exclusive: Campaigners say ‘menacing vehicles’ are putting children at risk owing to their large front blind zones
The number of US-style pickup trucks on UK roads has almost doubled in the past 10 years, data shows.
The vehicles are more environmentally damaging than ordinary cars, and more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. Campaigners have said the extra-large vehicles, which are often too big for UK streets and parking spaces, are built like “battering rams”.
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© Photograph: Rebecca Cook/Reuters
© Photograph: Rebecca Cook/Reuters
© Photograph: Rebecca Cook/Reuters
She was half of a 90s art power couple that seemed unstoppable. But they split and the trauma floored her. Now she’s back with defiant paintings celebrating her punk past – and late-career motherhood
Sue Webster is reminiscing about boozy 90s art openings. A hazy memory of Damien Hirst riding Leigh Bowery’s shoulders is surfacing, and a terrible fight with Jake Chapman at Charles Saatchi’s gallery. “It was a verbal thing but he was probably about to punch me. You’d get very drunk on the free champagne.”
Webster, and her former partner in art, romance and general punk rockery, Tim Noble, hit London in 1992 as the YBAs rose to fame. Five years later, Saatchi stopped by their cheap-as-chips live-work space in Shoreditch and, with his taxi still running outside, snapped up a light sculpture called Toxic Schizophrenia and a “shadow sculpture” titled Miss Understood and Mr Meanor. The shadow sculptures were meticulously melded pieces of junk and detritus which, when lit from one side, projected self-portrait silhouettes onto the wall. Webster says she would sometimes cry when saying goodbye to an artwork after selling it. So what does an artist do when such a long and successful partnership ends? “I wanted to unravel my brain, and work out how I ended up here,” she says.
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© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
© Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
Project employs technology that can be used to store and release renewable energy using even gentle slopes
A hillside “battery” outside Plymouth in Devon has begun generating electricity using a first of a kind hydropower system embedded underground.
The pioneering technology means one of the oldest forms of energy storage, hydropower, can be used to store and release renewable energy using even gentle slopes rather than the steep dam walls and mountains that are usually required.
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© Photograph: Taylor Keogh Communications/RheEnergise
© Photograph: Taylor Keogh Communications/RheEnergise
© Photograph: Taylor Keogh Communications/RheEnergise
Does Britain have any leverage over human rights or security concerns or is it a decaying nation that cannot risk trade relations?
This week, Keir Starmer will reportedly visit China. This will be the first trip of this kind by a British prime minister since Theresa May’s three-day visit to Beijing in 2018. Since then, relations between London and Beijing have become increasingly fraught, caught between growing security concerns and deep economic interdependence. Allegations of espionage and influence operations have sharpened political and public suspicion in the UK, even as deep trade links and supply chains on which the country depends make disengagement unrealistic. As fierce debate about the recent approval for the new Chinese embassy has shown, there are strong opinions about how to best manage relations with Beijing – as well as what, precisely, constitutes a threat and what is an opportunity. The result is an uneasy balancing act in which caution and cooperation coexist, often uncomfortably.
These security concerns are grounded in recent experience. In December, the Foreign Office disclosed it had been the target of a sustained cyber-attack two months earlier that was suspected to be the work of a Chinese group known as Storm 1849. This followed investigations into alleged espionage involving parliamentary researchers and repeated warnings from security agencies about technology transfer and data exposure in sensitive industries.
Peter Frankopan is professor of global history at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is The Earth Transformed: an Untold History.
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© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/Reuters
© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/Reuters
© Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/Reuters
Creamy celeriac with aromatic garlic and paprika topped with a salty-sour chorizo dressing
Celeriac is easy to ignore or overlook, but it really deserves a bit of attention in winter. January is a time for turning on the oven and cooking without having to think too much, and this is the sort of dish that more or less looks after itself while you get on with your evening. The kitchen feels warmer, the smell changes and you know that dinner is sorted. This is simple, honest food, and not remotely trying to be clever. It’s just something to put in the middle of the table, cut into and share, which is exactly what you want when the days are cold and nights are long.
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© Photograph: Ola O Smit/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Kitty Coles
© Photograph: Ola O Smit/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Kitty Coles
© Photograph: Ola O Smit/The Guardian. Food and prop styling: Kitty Coles
The prime minister may have seen off the challenge for the moment – but what will be the cost to his leadership? Peter Walker reports
Ever since Andy Burnham abandoned Westminster to become Greater Manchester’s first ever mayor in 2017, he has been dogged with questions about returning to parliament for the top job. He never hid his ambition to become prime minister one day – he couldn’t, really, given that he tried and failed twice to become Labour party leader. But he insisted time and again that he was perfectly happy back in his beloved north, and had no plans to get back to London.
Then on Saturday night, he finally cracked. He wrote to Labour’s ruling body to ask for permission to stand in Gorton and Denton, promising a “hopeful and unifying campaign”, in what he admitted was a risky move. Winning the byelection was not a given and he would have to give up being the mayor if he succeeded. But instead he was blocked by the committee, including Keir Starmer, from standing at all.
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© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
© Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
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