After months of machinations by elected leaders and parliamentary strategists, the decisive vote on the future of Brexit may finally fall to the people of the UK.

How did we finally get here? The British parliament has forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ask the European Union for a delay in the Brexit deadline from October 31 to January 31. If the EU agrees, a decision that could come later today, Johnson says he'll push for national elections on December 12.

To be clear, national elections are not a second Brexit referendum. But if they're held while the question of Brexit remains undecided, that single issue will surely shape the outcome.

Why would Johnson want a pre-Brexit election? He may calculate that his main rival, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, is a profoundly weak candidate, and that it's best to go to voters before the opposition can replace him with a formidable alternative.

He may also reckon that Labour would enter elections at a big disadvantage since it's more divided over Brexit than other parties. Corbyn would struggle to craft an electoral strategy that unites pro-Brexit Labour voters in the north with pro-Remain Labour voters in London.

Johnson may also believe, not without reason, that an election victory would clear the way for him to finish Brexit on his terms, without more delays from Parliament.

What would Boris have to do to schedule those elections? The simplest way would be for two-thirds of MPs to vote to hold elections. But if the Labour Party won't support that, the Conservatives have a Plan B. If another opposition party that does favor early elections – say, the Scottish National Party – calls for a vote of no confidence in the government, the Conservatives could abstain, allowing the government to fall, precipitating early elections if no other collection of parties can form a government within 14 days.

Who is likely to win the election? For now, the numbers favor Johnson's Conservative Party. An aggregation of four major polls conducted over the past two weeks has the Conservatives at about 37 percent, with Labour at 25 percent, the Liberal Democrats at 18 percent, the Brexit Party at 11 percent, and Greens at 5 percent. Vote percentages don't translate precisely to the number of seats won, but if the results came close to these percentages, Johnson might well claim a mandate to move forward, perhaps in partnership with others, toward a final deal with the EU early next year.

Wouldn't Johnson be taking a huge gamble? Yes, he would. Ask former prime minister Theresa May, who lost the Conservative Party's absolute majority in 2017 by calling elections she mistakenly believed would boost her party's Brexit leverage. No one can be sure how a campaign might play out. Some within his party argue that he should deliver Brexit before going to voters.

Might this election decide the Brexit question? If Johnson's Conservatives were to win a decisive victory, he'd probably have the public mandate he needs to push forward with his current Brexit plan, which would likely become law early next year.

But if voters move toward Labour and the Liberal Democrats in sufficient numbers to push Johnson out of Downing Street, that would likely lead to a considerable delay in negotiations with the EU and a second Brexit referendum in which voters would be presented with new Brexit options to choose from.

There is also the (quite large) risk that the result of the vote is ambiguous. If Conservatives win, but with a reduced majority, the Brexit outlook might well become even more confused, as Johnson's leverage would be weaker.

Yes, you read that right: Brexit could still become even more confusing.

Britons don't see eye-to-eye on much these days, but on one thing they agree: they want a general election. Voters from all parties – Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats – support the government calling a snap election by more than two to one. But they disagree on when to hold them. Conservatives want to resolve Brexit first before holding a general election, as a guarantee that the job gets done. Liberal Democrats, who've asserted themselves as the party of Remain, also support dealing with Brexit first by 13 percentage points. Labour supporters prefer an election before the end of the year and trying to resolve Brexit with a new parliament – but only just. The close polling shows that it's more divided over Brexit than other parties. Here's a look at the numbers.

Hydrogen was the first element to form in the moments after the big bang, it's the most abundant element in the galaxy, and it's the first element on the periodic table. It is present as water in the atmosphere but makes up organic compounds in the biosphere. Under normal environmental conditions, hydrogen spontaneously and explosively combines with oxygen, producing invisible flames that leap upwards. It's a gas that releases energy by reacting naturally with the oxygen in the air, emitting harmless water — and that makes hydrogen an ideal resource for powering electric cars.

Learn more at Eniday: Energy Is A Good Story

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Kurds Without Guns – Think of the Kurds now retreating from northeast Syria as part of the recent US-Turkey and Turkey-Russia deals, and you'll probably picture men with guns. But more than 176,000 civilians, nearly 80,000 of them children, have been forced from their homes in that region, according to the UN. It's not clear where these people will go. In their place, Turkey's government says it will dispatch large numbers of Syrian Arab refugees who are now living in camps inside Turkey. In short, Turkey is remaking the ethnic balance inside the borders of another country as part of a deal with Washington.

Baby Shark: The Protest Remix – A woman driving through Beirut with her 15 month-old son in the passenger seat finds her vehicle surrounded by dozens of shouting protesters. The child becomes frightened. To reassure the thoroughly befuddled toddler, protesters begin dancing and singing "Baby Shark" a hit children's tune that's been watched close to 4 billion times on YouTube. We're watching (and rewatching) this video of the incident, because we're almost as amused and bewildered as the kid.

What We're Ignoring:

Les Expos sont là! – It took more than half a century, but the Montreal Expos have finally advanced to baseball's biggest stage, the World Series! The pride of Quebec and their mascot Youppi! have taken the first two games in this best-of-seven series from the Houston Astros. It's a....wait, what? Ah...It appears the Expos left Montreal in 2004 to become the Washington Nationals. So, ya know, never mind.

3,000: Envoys from Russia and 54 African countries met in the Russian resort town of Sochi for a summit to discuss trade, military cooperation, and nuclear energy. Around 3,000 delegates attended the event, where Vladimir Putin promised cooperation without "political or other" intervention.

44: Millionaires account for one percent of the world's population, but they own 44 percent of global wealth, according to Credit Suisse research. While economic inequality persists in every region of the world, the gap between the world's haves and have-nots has actually narrowed slightly since peaking in 2016.

100: Since the Turkish invasion of northeast Syria began, at least 100 ISIS prisoners have escaped detention centers there and remain at large. The US special envoy to Syria told Congress that the remaining 10,900 ISIS fighters detained in that area are still imprisoned.

77 million: Zimbabwe's state-owned electricity company has cut power to mines, farms and other users because of unpaid bills totaling $77 million. Severe droughts have already caused daily power shortages lasting up to 18 hours.