There was a massive earthquake on the Turkey-Syria Border, a huge rail spill in Ohio, and Russia is still invading Ukraine (or vice-versa, to hear Russia tell it). It’s a busy time in the news, and as is usual, if we pay too much attention to the top headlines we’re naturally going to miss a lot that’s going on outside of the immediate spotlight.

Enter the Update: Your source for news every couple of weeks, whether there’s anything to talk about or not!

Twitter Files releases are continuing, and as ever have gained neither traction nor even mention on major media outlets. Instead, headlines remain focused on the non-movement of battle lines in Ukraine, anticipation of yet another Trump investigation, shadowy and ill-defined power moves among party leadership in advance of next year’s presidential elections, and a few dozen people gathering in cities across the country to protest yet another brutal police killing of an unarmed suspect.

It’s quite curious: In the only newsworthy item on this list, the media focuses on what’s not happening rather than what is. One might almost suspect a pattern, if one weren’t already sufficiently well-acquainted with standard practices to actually know that such patterns are very real. Which brings us to our topic — a list of things that have been happening while the news has been reporting on other stuff.

Hello, good morning, and welcome to the Update!

Today’s major headlines include a new Miss Universe (no, she’s not trans), a Russian missile strike against a Dnipro apartment complex, and Prince Harry’s new royal tell-all book. Since you can learn all about that elsewhere — and, frankly, since there’s not much more of interest to any of these items once you’ve seen the headline — we’ll move on to other things.

Hello and welcome to a special Solstice edition of the Update!

That’s right: Today’s the winter solstice (in the northern hemisphere; happy midsummer to everyone else). To celebrate it, and at the same time to honor ancient tradition, we’re serving up a lovely new batch of news items for you today. Cleverly hidden within one of them is a twice-baked small hard bean; if you find it, you’re the Bean King for the next year.

But enough about the weather; let’s get on with the news!

Hello again and welcome to another exciting edition of The Not Fake News Update, where we concentrate not on the news items everyone already knows about but instead on those items that probably got drowned out amid all the noise. Thus, while it’s newsworthy that Raphael Warnock won the runoff Senate race in Georgia and that Kirsten Sinema has departed the Democratic Party after they had decided to primary her from the left, these are the last mentions of such items you can expect to see here.

Instead, let’s look at some less well-known items, such as:

So, yes, there was an election. As always, it was the most important of our lifetimes. As always, the very existence of our nation and way of life were at stake. And as always, two nearly identical political parties both won and the rest of us lost, so nothing’s going to change.

Enough said; moving on to important things:

On this date in 1307, a dawn raid was launched on the Knights Templar by King Philip IV of France, leading to the capture, torture, and execution of hundreds of innocent men. Philip was later named “the Fair”, but for his looks rather than his sense of justice.

Since that day, a lot of things have happened, most not newsworthy. Here are a few of the more recent events that you might have missed due to 24-hour news masquerading as disaster porn:

GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM!!! And, for everyone in the continental United States, we’d like to wish you a very pleasant good evening. Unless you’re in Florida, that is, in which case we’d like to wish you something very well-anchored to hang onto until the storm passes.

That’s right, folks: Hurricane Ian has hit Florida with near-Category 5 winds. This is the 551st hurricane known to have impacted Florida, the most heavily hurricane-hit state in the United States, and is expected to do several billions of dollars worth of damage. Which, of course, nobody could possibly have predicted would ever happen; not in a million years. Thus, it has made the front page.

The Queen is dead. Long live the King.

Enough about that. Let’s talk about a few of the things you might have missed while the headlines were dominated by the shocking news that a near-centenarian monarch passed away quietly.

The world continues ever chaotic, with wars, droughts, plagues, famines, earthquakes, and hurricanes galore. So it ever was, and so it shall be until time ends, or so we’ve been reliably informed.

Amid the never-ending cycle of disaster and in-depth reporting, it’s easy to miss the occasional item of import that happens while we’re foolishly paying attention to Donald Trump or some other headline-hogging unpleasantness. What’s worse, sometimes the things we miss are the positive ones; tragedy has a way of grabbing column inches, while triumph often falls below the fold. We at The Not Fake News have undertaken to help correct this tendency with our regular Updates.

And so, without further ado, here we go!