All eyes have been on Boris Johnson as the PM reshaped his top team after winning an 80-seat Tory majority.
But amid all the furore about chancellor Sajid Javid’s dramatic exit, much else has been happening outside of the Westminster bubble.
Here are five important stories you may have missed.
A&E trolley waits are the worst on record
More than 100,000 A&E patients waited for hours to be treated in hospitals during January – the highest number since records began.
There were 100,578 patients delayed more than four hours, of whom 2,846 waited more than 12 hours from decision to admit to admission, according to performance statistics released by NHS England.
For both delays, this is the highest number of so-called trolley waits since records began.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said the figures show the strain on the NHS is “relentless, deepening and showing no sign of recovery”.
Murder of women at highest level in a decade
The number of women and girls killed in England and Wales soared by nearly 10% in a year to the highest in more than a decade.
Some 241 females were victims of murder, manslaughter or infanticide in the 12 months to March 2019, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The rise from 220 the previous year is the second annual increase and the highest number since the year ending March 2006, when there were also 241.
Almost half (48%) of the adult women were killed in a domestic homicide – an increase of 12 to 99 (14%) from the year to March 2018.
Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, described the figures as “horrendous”, but said they were “no surprise whatsoever” and an “inevitability” in light of cuts to public services over the years.
A minister refused to commit to a human rights accord
Solicitor general Michael Ellis refused to confirm that the UK would be remaining in the European Convention on Human Rights.
The 1998 Human Rights Act enshrines the Convention, which was initially spearheaded by Winston Churchill and came into force in Britain in 1953.
Labour’s Geraint Davies asked Ellis about the move in the Commons.
“Can he give a solemn undertaking today that we will not be withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights?,” he asked, adding: “Nor will we withdraw from the Council of Europe?”
In his response, Ellis said the UK will remain committed to human rights despite Brexit, but refused to be drawn on the specifics of the European Convention.
Davies could then be heard saying: “Churchill will be turning in his grave.”
Social mobility is stalling
The proportion of disadvantaged young people going to university has failed to increase.
New figures show that, of young people starting university in 2018/19, just over one in 10 were from areas of the UK where few youngsters go into higher education – the same proportion as the year before.
The latest statistics show that, in 2018/19, of all UK university entrants, aged under 21, starting their first, full-time undergraduate degree, 11.4% were from “low participation neighbourhoods” – the places with the fewest youngsters going into higher education.
This is the same proportion as in 2017/18, and up 0.2 percentage points from 11.2% in 2016/17.
Coronavirus has closed a GP surgery in London
A GP surgery in Islington, north London, has temporarily closed due to the coronavirus – the third to do so today.
A warning on the Ritchie Street Health Centre said the premises would be closed until Friday and asked patients with symptoms to call 111 and not come to the practice.
It follows two similar closures in Brighton and one in Taunton, Somerset.
Meanwhile, the quarantine of 83 people being held in Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, Merseyside, has been lifted following 14 days in isolation after they all tested negative for the covid-19 strain of the coronavirus.
All of those in quarantine were flown back from China and taken directly to the hospital after arriving in the UK on January 31.
On Wednesday evening, the UK’s ninth case of coronavirus was confirmed in London.