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Brendan Larsen spent hours taking hundreds of photographs of the sky over a mountain in New Zealand

A photograph showing thousands of satellites cross-hatching the night sky over New Zealand appeared so extraordinary the astrophotographer who captured it is fighting accusations it was created by AI.

To create his spectacular image – now viewed millions of times online – Brendan Larsen spent two hours in September snapping hundreds of photographs of the night sky over Mount Taranaki in the North Island.

Results will determine makeup of Congress and other key offices and could define president’s final two years in office

• US midterms 2026 live – latest updates

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Donald Trump faced a political reckoning on Tuesday as millions of Americans voted in midterm elections that could shift the balance of power in Washington and define the final two years of his divisive presidency.

Based on consistently favourable opinion polls, Democrats were optimistic about regaining control of the House of Representatives and potentially also the Senate, although the party has suffered enough anguish during the Trump era to remain wary.

Victory for party comes despite unusual and aggressive efforts by Republicans to redraw congressional districts

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Democrats are winning competitive House races as well as ones in solid Republican districts and are expected to flip the US House of Representatives after two tumultuous years of Donald Trump’s second presidency. A change in House control would give Democrats a perch to conduct robust oversight of the administration for its final two years.

Republicans currently hold 218 seats in the House and Democrats have 214. (There is one vacancy in a Republican seat and one vacancy in a Democratic seat, and one Republican member switched his party affiliation to independent.) Democrats need to flip just three seats to gain control of the House.

Report says cost of maintenance could soon reach £2m a week, including 24-hour patrols to avert fire risk

The Palace of Westminster will be at risk of a Notre Dame-style fire or a similar catastrophic event if MPs do not tackle the issue of funding refurbishments, a parliamentary committee has said.

Decisions about how and when to begin a full restoration of the building, which is Grade I-listed and a Unesco world heritage site, have been repeatedly delayed amid disagreement over how it should be done and spiralling costs.

Voting machine issues affect Westchester county, New York, but emergency ballots are provided to voters

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Voting in US midterm elections took place relatively smoothly nationwide on Tuesday, with only a handful of reported issues as tens of millions of voters cast their ballots.

With control of the US Congress in the balance, glitches at polling locations were minimal as Americans lined up to vote.

Landmark victories in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina set to give party control of chamber

• US midterm elections – live updates

• Track live results from all 50 states

Democrats are on the brink of returning to the majority in the US Senate, after their candidates won historic victories across the United States in a sweeping repudiation of Donald Trump.

Democratic victories in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina, projected by the Associated Press, will give them control of the chamber, assuming they can hold on to all seats they currently hold. It was a stunning turnaround for the party, two years after voters put them into the minority in Congress’s upper chamber as they returned Trump to the White House.

Report says cost of maintenance could soon reach £2m a week, including 24-hour patrols to avert fire risk

The Palace of Westminster will be at risk of a Notre Dame-style fire or a similar catastrophic event if MPs do not tackle the issue of funding refurbishments, a parliamentary committee has said.

Decisions about how and when to begin a full restoration of the building, which is Grade I-listed and a Unesco world heritage site, have been repeatedly delayed amid disagreement over how it should be done and spiralling costs.

Chief executive Melanie Perkins describes job cuts as ‘without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history’ in email to staff

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Canva is cutting or relocating more than 1,200 jobs, representing 22% of its global workforce, as part of a major restructure that includes laying off staff who helped build the Australian-founded design platform.

The changes mirror a trend across the technology sector, where software companies are fighting to stay competitive against cheaper artificial intelligence disrupters while aggressively embedding AI tools themselves.

V&A, London
Treasures from the two world-defining cultures that somehow coexisted in one mighty city keep on dazzling in this gorgeous, unmissable show

Two empires compete to bewitch you in this exhibition that offers a double bubble of beauty. It collides the Byzantine empire, whose capital Constantinople was officially inaugurated on 11 May AD330, with the Ottoman Turks who conquered this great city in 1453 and turned it into Istanbul. The combined glories of two lost worlds – the Ottoman empire was dissolved in 1922 – beget an utterly enrapturing blockbuster. I lost all track of time in this dream city of gold and ivory.

Even the human form is magically transfigured here into mineral and metal. The martyred abbess St Eudokia becomes a Byzantine icon of marble inlaid with coloured glass, wearing a crown of precious stones and an exquisite dress patterned with diamonds and decorated with pearls and emeralds. It is a masterpiece of abstract splendour that looks like a Klimt painting, but this icon can’t have influenced him because it wasn’t excavated until 1929.

Voters across the country are heading to the polls today to cast their ballots in the 2026 midterm elections.

(Image credit: Tyrone Turner)