Remember, remember the fifth of November. It’s Guy Fawkes night in the UK, marking the day when the gunpowder plot attempted to blow up parliament. 414 years later, the same parliament is getting ready for yet another election; the third in five years.

Smaller parties in favour of scrapping Brexit altogether are reported to be in talks on forming a non-aggression pact, in which the Green and Liberal Democratic parties, as well as Scottish and Welsh national parties, would not stand candidates against each other.

However, in a country fed up with Brexit, parties are also putting forward ideas for issues besides leaving the EU.

Labour has proposed a dramatic increase in public spending along with a massive infrastructure project.

But perhaps surprisingly, the ruling Conservatives are looking to match or even exceed Labour’s spending promises, proposing the biggest public funding boosts in 15 years. 

Whoever takes over in 10 Downing Street, the UK is looking set for levels of public spending not seen since the 1970s, a decade defined by economic difficulty in the UK.

A colony of cannibal ants has been discovered living in an abandoned nuclear bunker in Western Poland.

Scientists from the Polish Academy of Scientists discovered the colony of almost a million wood ants living in a bunker once used to store Soviet nuclear weapons.

The team, lead by Professor Wojciech Czechowski, determined that the ants fell down a ventilation pipe and became trapped in the bunker. 

The ants appear to have survived by eating the dead bodies of others unlucky enough to fall into the pipe.

The team have been studying the ants since 2013, but a new paper details an experiment in which the colony of lost ants has escaped.

Researchers have the ants a sort of bridge to allow around 100 ants to escape and mix with ants on the surface. When the researchers saw no aggression between the bunker ants and the ground ant, they deduced they were once the same colony that had split into two.

The researchers have now permanently left the bridge, allowing all 1 million lost ants to return home.

Royal residences of the Polish Kings and Queens will be open for free this month as part of the „free November” initiative.

Tourists will be able to check out the historic Wawel Castle in Krakow, as well as the Royal Castle, Wilanów Pałace and Royal Bathrooms in Warsaw.

The sites are home to some of Europe’s most impressive collections of art and architecture, not to mention history.

https://wawel.krakow.pl/en/free-november-2019

And renovations at Gdańsk’s main railway station are moving into their next phase and there are some important changes to the pedestrian tunnels under the station.

The corner section of the main passageway, connecting the tunnel under the road to the tunnel under the railway tracks, is closed.

Instead, the tunnel under the tracks can be accessed using the entrance behind KFC and the tunnel under the road from the entrance by the kindertransport monument.

The works are expected to last for the next month and are part of a plan to modernise and rejuvenate the historic station.

The Weather: A mild day today, reaching 10 degrees Celsius, or 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the afternoon. Some showers around lasting through today and into tomorrow.