Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Wednesday 7 November.

Top stories

With midterm voting in full swing, top Democrats have expressed 100% confidence in winning control of the House of Representatives. The opinion poll analysis website FiveThirtyEight puts the party’s chances at 85.8%, with the chances of Republicans maintaining control of the Senate at 82.0%. Election day has seen Parkland students, who lost lost 17 classmates and teachers to a school shooting at their high school in February, gather to make calls reminding voters to go to the polls. Fox News has released a statement saying it does not condone campaign appearances by its hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro at a Donald Trump rally on Monday night. And Google has announced that “donde votar”, which means “where to vote” in Spanish, was the top trending search in the US for the first half of the day.

On his final stop before voting opened, Trump pushed all the buttons with his routine on immigrants and crime, warning of an “invasion” by a caravan of “Democrat-sponsored migrants” approaching the southern border, and of the supposed threat posed by “leftwing mobs”. His schedule for voting day lists simply “executive time”, which the New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman explained is time the president spends on the phone, television and Twitter. Here’s why his pathologies make this an election like no other. And Beto O’Rourke’s insurgent Democratic campaign to steal a US Senate seat in Texas from the Republicans for the first time in a quarter of a century is the most expensive US Senate race in history. It is also the most closely watched of any senatorial contest. If Democrats do take back the House, progressive caucus leaders have big plans. As you wait for results – here’s when you’ll know the winners – recap the historical firsts that could be marked by this election.

Energy bosses have pushed back on power price cuts in the lead-up to meetings with the energy minister, Angus Taylor. The man dubbed “the minister for lowering power prices” by Scott Morrison will today host the first of two stakeholder briefings about the government’s controversial plans to underwrite new investments in power generation, and also attempt to cajole retailers into delivering out-of-cycle power price reductions before the next federal election. Energy retailers were mostly tight-lipped before today’s power price discussions in Sydney but the chief executives of Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and TransGrid pushed back ahead of the roundtable, declaring network costs had already come down by between 15% and 17%.

The world has two years to secure a deal to halt biodiversity loss if humanity is to avoid extinction, the UN’s biodiversity chief has warned. Conservationists are desperate for a biodiversity accord that will carry the same weight as the Paris climate agreement. But so far, this subject has received miserably little attention despite many scientists saying it poses at least an equal threat to humanity. In the lead-up to a key international conference to discuss the collapse of ecosystems Cristiana Pașca Palmer told the Guardian that high rates of biodiversity loss from habitat destruction, chemical pollution and invasive species will accelerate in the coming 30 years. By 2050, Africa is expected to lose 50% of its birds and mammals, and Asian fisheries to completely collapse. The loss of plants and sea life will reduce the Earth’s ability to absorb carbon, creating a vicious cycle.

The superannuation lobby is creating the false belief that retirees haven’t saved enough, according to a study from the Grattan Institute, with the typical retiree having a higher standard of living than they did when they were working. The Melbourne-based thinktank is calling for Australia’s generous superannuation tax breaks and age-based tax breaks to be pared back by billions of dollars annually. It says a large portion of Australians have been unnecessarily convinced by the superannuation lobby’s “fear factory” that they won’t have enough savings for retirement, and this is leading to poor policy outcomes.

Platypuses could be exposed to 50% of a human daily dose of antidepressants just by eating their normal diet of insects, according to research. A team of scientists, led by researchers at Monash University, have analysed insects and spiders found in six Melbourne streams for traces of 98 different types of pharmaceuticals. Published in Nature Communications today, the research detected 69 different types of pharmaceuticals in insects and 66 types in spiders. It suggested the pharmaceuticals were transferred to spiders after they consumed insects. The scientists then estimated what the potential exposure could be for the main species that feed on invertebrates in those streams: platypus and brown trout.

Sport

WWI heroes made playing fields from battlefields, writes Andy Bull. The experience of the war never seems so close as it does when you read or hear about the men doing the everyday living of it.

Football is changing the loves of 9,000 Kenyan girls. “We didn’t have any women playing football in the coastal region of Kenya,” an organiser explains. “Therefore it was a good opportunity to start a conversation. When girls came to the pitch there was a lot of attention.”

Thinking time

Lily and Luc Velez are siblings, and they are close. They are also both gay. But while Lily’s school believed in supporting gay students, Luc’s did not. “My face and Atar, and those of other gay students in my year, are plastered across the school website to promote the school. Leaders of the school music groups and sports teams are gay. We help make the school what it is. You don’t get to claim that our sexuality is incongruent with the school’s values, and then use us for publicity,” writes Luc. Meanwhile, the heads of two Anglican schools have backed away from the letter calling for the preservation of exemptions in discrimination law that allow them to expel LGBT students and sack teachers.

“It’s a simple rule: pants first, shoes second. That always usually works for me.” Scotty Mo didn’t want the job, it was handed to him – as he’ll gladly tell you. But now that the mantle of greatness has been thrust upon him, Scott Morrison is going to take that mantle, put a surf cap from Mick Fanning’s mum on it and serve it with meat and three veg. Fair dinkum. He’s the nation’s daggy dad and, just in case you weren’t aware of it, he’s going to stone the flamin’ crows and show you just how ridgy-didge he is. Take this Guardian Australia quiz and see if you can tell who said what – our 30th prime minister, or another Australian?

Phew. The best drama shows being made right now are 30 minutes long, writes Stuart Heritage. To watch a half-hour drama in 2018 is to fling yourself into the unknown. Homecoming is just one of a raft of exceptionally good new half-hour dramas. Netflix has Maniac, Amazon also has Forever, and even Facebook has Sorry For Your Loss. Each of these shows have the traditional trappings of an hourlong, and yet they’re shorter and punchier and all the better for it.

Media roundup

The NT News reports that a riot erupted last night at the Don Dale youth detention centre, with buildings set alight and thick smoke seen coming from within the complex. “Gear and loathing” is the big bad Daily Telegraph headline today, with the paper revealing that half of NSW residents who benefit from negative gearing tax savings live in Labor electorates. And Australia is set to sign the landmark trade deal with Indonesia at the Asean summit next week, according to Indonesian government sources, writes the Age.

Coming up

The ACT magistrates court expected to decide whether the trial of a former high-ranking intelligence officer known only as Witness K and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, will be held in public or closed.

School students will gather on the steps of the Victorian parliament to launch a nationwide school strike calling on federal politicians to take urgent action to stop climate change and the Adani coalmine.

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