Taken at 28,000kmh and costing billions of dollars, the first ever photos taken by astronauts are on show at Paris Photo. For Nasa print dealer Daniel Blau, they are proof that nothing is impossible when nations collaborate

It was one of history’s monumental moments – but if John Glenn hadn’t popped into the supermarket to pick up a Contax camera and a roll of 35mm film on his way to board the Friendship 7, there may have been no visual document of it. The photographs the American astronaut took from the window of his capsule as he orbited Earth on 20 February 1962 gave an unprecedented testimony of the Mercury Project’s first orbital mission. The Soviet Union might have beaten the Americans in the race to human spaceflight – but the Americans had now shot the first galactic colour photographs.

The pictures are also, German gallerist Daniel Blau points out, “the most expensive photographs ever taken. Billions of dollars were spent to get them.” Blau exhibited an original print of Glenn’s first picture taken in space at this year’s Paris Photo , alongside a cache of rare Nasa photographic prints – many of them never publicly seen before, most of them by unknown scientists and astronauts.

Satirical news outlet purchased media platform run by Alex Jones at a court-ordered auction

The satirical news outlet The Onion has purchased Infowars, the rightwing conspiracy media platform run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, at a court-ordered auction.

The news was confirmed on Thursday morning in a video by Jones himself , as well as the head of the Onion’s parent company.

People who use abbreviations were less likely to receive responses, analysis by psychologists found

Reducing your texts to a flurry of abbreviations could have unintended consequences, according to researchers who found that wordless exchanges were more likely to convey “idrc” than “ily”.

Psychologists analysed messages from more than 5,000 people across eight studies and found that those who used abbreviations were deemed less sincere and were less likely to receive responses as a result.

Apartment House
(Another Timbre)
The composer’s ever evolving chamber music is captured here in eight works from 1986-2024, showcasing a singular voice

‘Maybe I’m like a still life painter,” says Linda Catlin Smith , “looking at the same objects again and again over the years.” But this survey of Catlin Smith’s chamber music so devotedly performed by the members of Apartment House – eight works composed between 1986 and 2024, ranging from a bass clarinet solo to string quartets – shows that while her preoccupations may have remained the same, the perspectives from which she views her musical “objects” are always shifting, always finding something fresh. Hers is a compositional voice that never shouts, never draws undue attention to itself, yet creates music of compelling beauty.

Flowers of Emptiness, the string trio that gives the disc its title is also the earliest piece here, Das Rosen-Innere, for cello and piano, the most recent, completed earlier this year. The use of repetition, of single notes or phrases, is common to both, as it is to the three string quartets that provide the spine to this collection – As You Pass a Reflective Surface, from 1991, the chorale-like Waterlily of 2008, and the larger-scale, remarkable String Quartet No.6 (2013) in which the purity of the vibrato-free string writing sometimes recalls Tudor polyphony. In its quiet intensity, Catlin Smith’s music is unlike any other.

The actor who stars in Ridley Scott’s sequel said: ‘I kissed a guy full on the lips – I guess they weren’t ready for that yet’

Denzel Washington has speculated that anxiety was behind the decision to cut a same-sex kiss from Gladiator II.

Washington, whose performance as ruthless power broker Macrinus in Ridley Scott’s sequel has picked up considerable awards buzz, told Variety: “I actually kissed a man in the film but they took it out, they cut it, I think they got chicken.”

• Ranieri to take role as adviser to owners at end of season
• He becomes Roma’s fourth head coach of the year

Claudio Ranieri has come out of retirement at the age of 73 to take charge of Roma until the end of the season, the Serie A club have announced, days after sacking the Croatian Ivan Juric.

Ranieri is Roma’s third coach of the season and this is his third time coaching his home-town club, having guided the Giallorossi from 2009-11 and in 2019. He began his playing career with Roma.

Celebrated authors discuss the somewhat connected stories of their shared surname at literary event in Rio

Born more than 5,500 miles apart, the Booker prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, 65, and Brazil’s most celebrated living Black author, Conceição Evaristo, 77, share the same surname, though they are – as far as is known – unrelated.

But their surnames’ stories are somewhat connected, and shed light on aspects of the history of Brazil, the country that received the largest number of enslaved Africans during the transatlantic slave trade.

Company tells shareholders it expects ‘double-digit percentage growth’ in 2026 and 2027

Walt Disney is trying to roll the credits on its years-long battle to reassure Wall Street and Hollywood that it can dominate a new era of entertainment.

The Magic Kingdom, which rarely issues guidance on future profits, told shareholders it expects an acceleration over the coming years – with “double-digit percentage growth” in adjusted earnings in 2026 and 2027.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world