After weeks of will-they-won’t-they, MPs finally voted for the festive gift we’ve all been dreaming of (sort of) – a general election to go ahead on December 12.
There was also the small matter of a second Brexit deadline passing us by on Halloween, and an extension agreed by the EU for January 31, 2020. Contrary to earlier warnings from Conservative MP Mark Francois, the UK did not explode.
Scanning through the papers, it may have felt at times as though the entire world was revolving around Westminster – but of course it wasn’t.
Here are just five stories from the past week that are (almost) absolutely nothing to do with parliament, government, or Brexit:
1. Turns out the loss of tropical forests is worse for our climate than we thought. Six times worse, in fact.
The loss of pristine tropical forests has a far greater impact on climate change than previously thought, scientists have warned.
Researchers at the University of Queensland, Australia, found that once all the emissions associated with clearing intact tropical forests are taken into account, the impact on the climate is more than six times worse than previously thought.
The researchers looked at the loss of intact tropical forests – tracts of woods which are free of significant human activity – between 2000 and 2013, and examined not only the immediate carbon emissions of clearing and burning woods usually used as a measure, but other less obvious impacts too.
There were 549 million hectares of intact tropical forest remaining worldwide in 2013, but scientists have warned they are disappearing at an increasing rate and the opportunity to use them in the fight against climate change was dwindling.
The University of Queensland and Wildlife Conservation Society’s Professor James Watson said the study’s approach better captured the true carbon impact of the loss of intact forests.
“Humanity needs to better fund the conservation of intact forests, especially now we’ve shown their larger-than-realised role in stabilising the climate.
“Our study will hopefully mobilise more funding from the climate finance sector, improving and expanding efforts to retain intact forests across the tropics,” he said.
2. Riot police stormed shopping centres in Hong Kong to thwart protestors
Riot police stormed several Hong Kong shopping centres on Sunday in a bid to thwart more pro-democracy protests.
Organisers put calls out on social media urging protestors to gather in seven different locations in order to push for political reform, after a chaotic day of protests and clashes with police on Saturday.
After five months of opposition, the pro-democracy demonstrations have shown no signs of abating.
With scores of riot police taking up position in malls, most of the rallies failed to get off the ground – but even they couldn’t stop small pockets of hardcore protestors taking action.
Police said they had dealt with “masked rioters” armed with fire extinguishers, who had vandalised turnstiles and smashes windows, at a subway station linked with the New Town Plaza shopping centre, whilst protestors in other areas threw paint and attacked an outlet of Japanese fast food chain Yoshinoya, which has been frequently targeted after its owner voiced support for the Hong Kong police.
Police rushed into one of the malls after objects were thrown at them. At another, protesters used umbrellas and cable ties to lock the mall entrance to prevent police from entering.
Later on Sunday, police stormed the Cityplaza shopping complex on Hong Kong Island after some protesters sprayed graffiti at a restaurant. A human chain of dozens of people was broken up and angry shoppers heckled the police.
Elsewhere, a man slashed several people with a knife outside the Cityplaza centre, biting off part of the ear of a district councillor who was attempting to stop him
Local media said the man told his victims that Hong Kong belongs to China.
Television footage showed the man biting the councillor’s ear and being badly beaten up by a crowd after the attack, before police arrived. At least five people were injured, reports said.
The protests began in early June over a now-shelved plan to allow extraditions to mainland China but have since swelled into a movement seeking other demands, including direct elections for Hong Kong’s leaders and an independent inquiry into police conduct.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, has refused to budge on demands and last month provoked further anger after banning face masks. She is due to head to Beijing on Tuesday.
On Saturday protestors attacked the Hong Kong office of China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency for the first time, in a show of anger against Beijing.
Xinhua said in a statement that it strongly condemned the “barbaric acts of mobs” that had vandalised and set fire to the lobby of its Asia-Pacific office building.
3. Scientists traced the homeland of the entire human race
The ancestral homeland of every single human alive today can be traced back to the south of the Zambezi River, in northern Botswana, scientists said this week.
In a study published in the journal Nature, the researchers believe that they have, for the first time, been able to pinpoint the geographical location where the earliest ancestors of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) arose 200,000 years ago.
Back then, this region – covering parts of Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe – was believed to be lush green and home to an enormous lake, allowing the ancestors to thrive for 70,000 years.
As the climate started to change, the population began to disperse – paving the way for modern humans to migrate out of Africa, and ultimately, across the world.
Professor Vanessa Hayes, a geneticist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia, said: “It has been clear for some time that anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago.
“What has been long debated is the exact location of this emergence and subsequent dispersal of our earliest ancestors.”
4. More than 150 migrants were rescued off the coast of Libya
More than 150 migrants were rescued by an Italian offshore supply vessel off the coast of Libya earlier this week, arriving safely in Sicily on Sunday.
The Asso Trenta docked at Pozzallo on Sunday with 151 people who had been saved from the waters on board.
It was not immediately known if the migrants would stay in Italy or be distributed among other European Union countries.
Just hours before a German charity’s rescue boat, Alan Kurdi, disembarked 88 migrants at Taranto on the Italian mainland.
Under an EU-brokered deal, 67 of them will go to four other countries, while the others will stay in Italy.
A Taranto official, Gabriella Ficocelli, told Italian news agency ANSA that the migrants included five unaccompanied minors who were “tired and tried by the voyage”.
They arrived in Italy eight days after being rescued from Libyan-based traffickers’ unseaworthy vessels in the Mediterranean Sea.
5. John Bercow made an appearance as a Bonfire Night effigy
A giant effigy of House of Commons Speaker John Bercow was set alight during an annual Bonfire Night event on Saturday.
The sometimes-outspoken figure joined the likes of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and Harvey Weinstein, after Edenbridge Bonfire Society in Kent cited his “controversial behaviour” over the past 12 months as the key reason for his selection.
The 11-metre effigy of Bercow – holding the heads of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn – was unveiled on Wednesday and went up in flames at the weekend.
The event raises money for local charities and also features an effigy of Guy Fawkes.
Past targets for the society’s celebrity effigy have included Katie Hopkins, Jonathan Ross, Katie Price, Wayne Rooney, Lance Armstrong, Gordon Brown, John Prescott, Anne Robinson and Saddam Hussein.
Bonfire society chairman Bill Cummings said “This year we have chosen the infuriating Commons Speaker John Bercow as our celebrity guy, and I am sure you will agree that our artist, Andrea Deans, has captured his likeness very well.
“Our message to Mr Bercow is that you cannot keep disrupting Parliament and this is one situation you cannot argue yourself out of.
“We hope Mr Bercow will appreciate the humour contained in our caricature and take it in the good spirit with which it is intended.”