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Sri Lanka v England: third men’s cricket one-day international – live

Updates from the decider in Colombo, 9am GMT start
Always in reserve: Dawson’s moment beckons at last

6th over: England 17-0 (Rehan 10, Duckett 6) Six dot balls in a row from Liyanage to Rehan. I thought England might go after the seamers, given how spin-dominated this series has been, but Fernando and Liyanage have bowled well.

5th over: England 17-0 (Rehan 10, Duckett 6) Duckett slashes Fernando behind square for two; it would have been four but for a good sprawling stop. All very quiet at the moment.

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© Photograph: Eranga Jayawardena/AP

© Photograph: Eranga Jayawardena/AP

© Photograph: Eranga Jayawardena/AP

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Tech giants head to landmark US trial over social media addiction claims

Meta, YouTube and TikTok accused of making products intentionally addictive and harmful to young people

For the first time, a massive group of parents, teens and school districts is taking on the world’s most powerful social media companies in open court, accusing the tech giants of intentionally designing their products to be addictive. The blockbuster legal proceedings may see multiple CEOs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, face harsh questioning.

A long-awaited series of trials kicks off in Los Angeles superior court on Tuesday, in which hundreds of US families will allege that Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube’s platforms harm children. Once young people are hooked, the plaintiffs allege, they fall prey to depression, eating disorders, self-harm and other mental health issues. Approximately 1,600 plaintiffs are included in the proceedings, involving more than 350 families and 250 school districts.

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© Photograph: David Zalubowski/AP

© Photograph: David Zalubowski/AP

© Photograph: David Zalubowski/AP

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Removing US as World Cup host would be eminently sad – and entirely justified | Alexander Abnos

A country where safety is under threat from federal violence on the streets is not fit to stage soccer’s showpiece event

Removing the United States as co-host of the 2026 World Cup would hurt for pretty much everyone. Fans would miss out on seeing the sport’s pinnacle in their home towns (or somewhere nearby). Cities and businesses small and large would lose the financial benefits they had banked on. It would be a logistical and political nightmare on an international scale, the likes of which have never been seen before in sports. It would be eminently sad. And it would be entirely justified.

It brings me no pleasure to say this. The United States has been eager to host a men’s World Cup for more than a decade and a half. The desire survived and even grew after 2010’s failure to out-bid Russia and Qatar (in public and behind closed doors) for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. With hosting rights for 2026 later secured alongside Canada and Mexico, the US soccer scene prepared to show off that the sport is now part of the nation’s fabric, 32 years after hosting the tournament for the first time in 1994. Soccer’s growing popularity in America has helped inspire other US sports to try new formats, encouraged us to engage more fully with the world in a sporting context, and has been at the center of conversations about our society and culture. The 2026 World Cup was seen as the best chance for the world to fully experience not just how much the US has improved at soccer, but how much soccer has improved the US.

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© Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

© Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

© Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

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A week of ICE and outrage in Minneapolis: the turmoil of the days leading up to Alex Pretti’s death

Since the Trump administration sent ICE agents into the city in December, there have been 3,000 arrests and two fatal shootings. In the freezing cold, as the crisis deepens, the Minnesotan people continue to resist

In many ways, Alex Pretti and Renee Good could have been any of the dozens of Minneapolis residents I met last week. Among them were teachers, store clerks, Uber drivers, charity workers and clergymen – a patchwork of humanity withstanding what many have called the Trump administration’s siege on their city, which began in December last year and has led to 3,000 arrests, two fatal shootings, and routine rights violations in an operation defined by government brutality.

What the administration has attempted to laud as the largest immigration operation in US history has instead become a fully fledged crisis, and the sharpest test of American democracy under Trump’s second term.

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© Photograph: Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty Images

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Football transfer rumours: Bruno Fernandes to consider Saudi move … again?

Today’s rumours are wet

It’s been a quiet transfer window, all things considered, with even the worst internet attention-seekers refusing to don their yellow ties and take a day off school for its final day, their mum’s toy spaceship left idling in a shoebox under the bed. But there might yet be some action – not like that, how dare you – so let’s dive in.

Crystal Palace are enduring a miserable season, rapidly slipping down the table and now in danger of relegation, the perfect example of how to ruin unexpected success. On the other hand, Steve Parish’s quiff still looks pristine, so swings and roundabouts, but he’s now faced with a problem: does he stop lovingly tending it to consider Nottingham Forest’s £35m bid for Jean-Philippe Mateta, or simply pretend that no such thing ever happened?

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© Photograph: Paul Marriott/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Paul Marriott/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Paul Marriott/Shutterstock

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‘Mother of all deals’: EU and India sign free trade agreement

Deal expected to ease access for European cars and wine, in return for Indian exports of textiles, gems and pharmaceuticals

India and the EU have finalised a landmark free trade agreement, which the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, hailed as the “mother of all deals”.

The agreement comes after almost two decades of on-off negotiations between India and the EU, which vastly accelerated in the past six months and were finally concluded late on Monday night.

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© Photograph: Rajat Gupta/EPA

© Photograph: Rajat Gupta/EPA

© Photograph: Rajat Gupta/EPA

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‘No reason to rush’: Harry Kane in talks with Bayern over contract extension

  • England captain’s deal runs to end of next season

  • Kane and his family are settled in Munich, CEO says

Bayern Munich have confirmed they are in talks to extend Harry Kane’s contract. The England captain joined from Tottenham in 2023 on a deal to the end of next season and secured a long-awaited first major trophy when Bayern won the Bundesliga last May.

He has been the Bundesliga’s top scorer twice and, with 21 goals in 19 Bundesliga games this season, could chase down Robert Lewandowski’s single-season record of 41 goals.

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© Photograph: Angelika Warmuth/Reuters

© Photograph: Angelika Warmuth/Reuters

© Photograph: Angelika Warmuth/Reuters

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Border Patrol commander to leave Minneapolis after shooting of Alex Pretti

Gregory Bovino, aggressive promoter of Trump’s deportation agenda, also said to have been stripped of ‘commander at large’ title

Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who has become the public face of the Trump administration’s on-the-ground immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, is expected to leave the city on Tuesday, as the Trump administration reshuffles leadership of its immigration enforcement operation and scales back the federal presence after a second fatal shooting by officers.

A senior Trump administration official told Reuters that the 55-year-old, who has been a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and civil liberties activists, would be leaving Minnesota along with some of the agents deployed with him.

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© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

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Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo review – the Korean bestseller about platonic partnership

A quietly revolutionary account of cohabiting captured a nation’s heart – but what does it mean for the rest of the world?

When Sunwoo and Hana met on Twitter, they were in their 40s and committed bachelorettes. Both raised by the sea in Busan, they studied in Seoul before entering the city’s famously brutal rat race, Sunwoo as a fashion journalist, Hana as a copywriter. They shared the same taste in music and books, and importantly, both had rejected marriage. No wonder. In South Korea’s stubbornly patriarchal culture, women in dual-income families spend nearly three hours more a day on household chores than men. Instead, Sunwoo and Hana joined the large number of South Koreans living alone. At first, independence felt exhilarating. By middle age however, loneliness was beginning to gnaw, and their boxy studio apartments felt oppressively small.

Two Women Living Together, a 2019 South Korean bestseller that spawned a popular podcast, charts Sunwoo and Hana’s decision to buy a sunlit house together and live not as a romantic couple but as friends. Across 49 warm, chatty essays, they invite us into the life they share with four cats, reflecting on everything from the food they love to their retirement fantasies.

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© Photograph: Melmel Chung B

© Photograph: Melmel Chung B

© Photograph: Melmel Chung B

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Ouyen may have hit the highest recorded temperature in Victoria’s history – and some fear it could get even hotter

As the temperature nears 49C in the Mallee region, residents take refuge in air-conditioned rooms

In the slanting, late-afternoon summer sun, the fields around the small Australian town of Ouyen – almost 450km north-west of Melbourne – turn the colour of honey. The edges shimmer with silver, that old cruel trick of feigning water where it hasn’t rained for weeks.

Summer is always hot out here in the sparse, flat Mallee, but this year is shaping up to be particularly harsh. Just two weeks ago, on Thursday 8 January, Ouyen got to 47.5C. On Monday it reached 44.3C.

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© Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

© Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

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EU car sales grow 1.8% in 2025 with electric cars surging but Tesla loses market share – business live

Sales at Elon Musk’s carmaker plummet nearly 38% in 2025 as it loses ground to China’s BYD; gold continues to rise

European shares have risen modestly this morning, with banking stocks hitting an 18-month high.

Europe’s Stoxx 600 is up 0.2% with banks leading the way. A basket of bank stocks rose 1%.

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© Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

© Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

© Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

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Australian Open 2026 quarter-finals: Alcaraz v De Minaur, Svitolina destroys Gauff – live

Live updates from the last eight at Melbourne Park
Svitolina humbles Gauff | 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: Edgar Su/Reuters

© Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters

© Photograph: Edgar Su/Reuters

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Champions League permutations: who needs what from final night of fixtures?

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

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Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha: ‘It’s love and pain. Leicester is like my son, so I have to do it right’

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

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The Joy of Six: unlikely Winter Olympics stars

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

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The Fukushima towns frozen in time: nature has thrived since the nuclear disaster but what happens if humans return?

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

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Zoning in on Leith, Edinburgh – ‘It’s been a joy to watch the area reinvent itself’

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

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Glyph by Ali Smith review – bearing witness to the war in Gaza

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

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Another World review – kaleidoscopic afterlife fairytale with the dark fury of a Greek tragedy

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

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Number of US-style ‘battering ram’ pickup trucks on UK roads has nearly doubled in a decade

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: Cernan Elias/Alamy

© Photograph: Cernan Elias/Alamy

© Photograph: Cernan Elias/Alamy

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‘I box to exorcise the badness’: Sue Webster on boozy spats, her thrilling new work – and having a baby at 52

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

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First of its kind ‘high-density’ hydro system begins generating electricity in Devon

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

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Starmer's fraught visit to China will tell us what he really thinks of the UK's place in the world | Peter Frankopan

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

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