Morning Briefing #158 — September 13, 2026

Morning Briefing #158 — September 13, 2026Your daily briefing connecting world events, technology, and education.No political slant. Just facts.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📋 IN TODAY'S EPISODE━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🌍 WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE WORLD────────────────────────────────• Saudi Arabia Says Drones That Hit Its Pipeline Launched From Iraq; Iraq Fires Commander Saudi Arabia said its East-West oil pipeline near Riyadh and Medina was struck by several drones that originated from…• Sweden Votes in Knife-Edge Election That Could Bring Far Right Into Government Swedes went to the polls on September 13 in one of the country's closest elections in decades, with final opinion polls…• China Expands Coast Guard Patrols East of Taiwan, Raising Tensions China has deployed an average of two coast guard cutters per month in waters east of Taiwan since June, the first time…• A Foster Village 18 Years in the Making Finally Opens Its Doors After nearly two decades of planning, actor Christian Bale has opened Together California, a first-of-its-kind $22…💻 THE TECH CONNECTION────────────────────────────────• Texas Freezes New Data Center Power Hookups as Grid Requests Hit 474 Gigawatts Texas became the first major US data center hub to halt new grid connections while it investigates developers' actual…• Identity Verification Firm IDScan Confirms Breach of Over 150 Million Driver's Licenses IDScan.net, a Louisiana-based identity document verification vendor used by entertainment venues, dispensaries and…🏫 WHAT THIS MEANS FOR EDUCATION────────────────────────────────• AI-Powered Hacking Campaign Hit Schools Hardest, Compromising Hundreds of Organizations A Russian-speaking threat actor used hundreds of autonomous AI agents, built on OpenAI's Codex harness paired with a…• Microsoft and Teachers Unions Unveil National AI Safety Standard for Schools The American Federation of Teachers, the United Federation of Teachers, and Microsoft announced a new National AI…🤖 AI & EMERGING TECH────────────────────────────────• AI Industry Leaders Call for Slowing Development of Frontier Models Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy post calling on the AI industry to deliberately slow the pace of…• A Dozen States Now Regulate AI Companion Chatbots to Protect Minors Twelve states have enacted companion-chatbot laws in 2026, requiring operators to disclose non-human status, screen for…🛡️ CYBERSECURITY WATCH────────────────────────────────• Springfield Public Schools Closed a Week After Severe Cyberattack One of New England's largest school districts shut down classes for over a week after a "level 4" cyberattack knocked…• Microsoft's Biggest-Ever Patch Tuesday Fixes Two Actively Exploited Bugs Microsoft's September update patched nearly 1,000 security holes, its largest single batch ever, pushing 2026's total…• Google Rushes Fix for Chrome Zero-Day Already Under Attack Google patched an actively exploited flaw in Chrome's V8 engine that let attackers run malicious code just by getting a…📈 WHAT'S TRENDING────────────────────────────────• PlayStation's September Showcase Confirms Marvel's Wolverine and Final Fantasy VII Revelation — Sony's September State of Play delivered a packed lineup, confirming Marvel's Wolverine launches September 15 and…• The Traitors: New Blood Brings 80,000 Applicants' Favorite to NBC — A civilian spin-off of the hit competition show, filmed at a Scottish castle, premieres Thursday, September 17 on NBC…(continued in the YouTube show notes)📰 Full episode with sources: https://youtu.be/BtAv5O6H3pk