“House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., rejected an emergency moratorium on artificial intelligence development Sunday during CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ warning that slowing American innovation could allow China to pull ahead as tech executives and lawmakers intensify calls for new AI safety measures. ‘We have to resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium,’ Johnson said. ‘Here’s what I’m proposing: I think the leaders and providers of these platforms need to come together in a meeting with us and figure out what the right balance is. We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us.’ … Humans First, a grassroots conservative [sic] movement against new data centers, is pushing a policy framework that opposes blanket data-center moratoriums while calling for local control and rejecting eminent domain for projects.” (09/13/26)
“A federal appeals court on Friday ruled against a Trump administration order that forced a coal plant in Michigan to stay open beyond its scheduled closure. The J.H. Campbell coal plant in West Olive was slated to close in May 2025, but has remained open under an emergency order by Secretary Chris Wright’s Energy Department. … The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled the government’s actions went beyond its authority. … The lawsuit was filed by the states of Michigan and Illinois and a number of environmental groups.” (09/11/26)
“A federal judge sided with the Sierra Club and other groups Sept. 1 to halt a controversial data center project outside Boulder City, Nevada, southeast of Las Vegas. Backed by the Trump administration, the project had come from Townsite Solar 2 LLC, a Houston-based company that had previously received approval for a solar farm in the same location. The legal setback marks a high-profile failure for what would have been the first data center on federal land. Though both the Trump administration and the tech industry seek to build more data centers to support generative artificial intelligence technology like ChatGPT, public sentiment has largely turned against them, particularly in areas plagued by drought, and where people worry about rising energy bills and access to public land.” (09/11/26)
“British MPs threw out a bill legalizing assisted dying for terminally ill adults in England and Wales Friday. In a narrow vote, MPs rejected the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill’s second reading by 286 to 270. The decision was a marked contrast to a near identical bill by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, which received two votes of support from MPs in 2024 and 2025. The legislation failed to become law after running out of time in the unelected House of Lords earlier this year.” (09/11/26)
“Yemen’s Houthis have seized Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandab Strait, tightening their grip on the strategic waterway, a local government official and eyewitnesses told AFP on Friday, September 11. Boats carrying armed Houthi fighters reached Perim, also known as Mayyun, after [Saudi puppet regime] forces withdrew from the island on Thursday, the official said. Reuters separately reported that Houthi forces had reached Dhubab, a coastal town on the strait directly opposite Perim, strengthening their position around the waterway. The advance follows the Houthis’ capture of the Red Sea port city of Mocha on Thursday, September 10, as their forces pushed south along Yemen’s western coast towards Bab el-Mandab. Perim sits inside the strait and divides the waterway into two shipping channels.” (09/11/26)
“The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked an order that told Missouri to keep implementing Republicans’ favored 7-1 congressional map, which sparked confusion about what boundaries would be used in the November election. By lifting that federal judge’s directive, it leaves in place a state court directive that tells elections officials to return to the existing map with a 6-2 split. The GOP had pushed for a pickup opportunity as part of the mid-decade redistricting war. Missouri state leaders have said reverting would cause chaos, as they already conducted their primaries using the new map. The Supreme Court did not publicly explain its decision, and no justice publicly noted a dissent.” (09/10/26)
“At least two people were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Tula region, while eight people were injured in Russian air strikes which caused a fire in a nine-storey apartment building in Kyiv on Friday morning, the authorities said. … Russia returned to its near-constant air attacks on Kyiv this week after a brief halt during the visit to Moscow and Kyiv of U.S. President Donald Trump’s negotiators seeking to end the war which the Kremlin started by invading Ukraine in 2022.” (09/11/26)
“Leaders of the BRICS nations will meet in New Delhi this weekend as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and U.S.-China tensions test the group’s ability to act together. Host India will seek to balance its ties with China and Russia against its growing partnerships with the United States and other Western powers. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian are among the leaders expected to attend. BRICS is a grouping of major emerging markets and developing countries, named after an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It has expanded from its original membership to include 11 countries that together represent about half the world’s population and a large share of its energy, resources and economic output.” (09/11/26)
“A longtime ally of Donald Trump resigned from his post leading a Department of Justice investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against the Republican president. ‘Sometimes people want things done faster and that’s all you can do,’ Joe diGenova said on Thursday. He appeared to be referring to concerns among other Trump loyalists that the president’s retribution cases were not moving quickly enough. … DiGenova had previously asked the then US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to appoint him to the job and had openly and repeatedly claimed Trump was the victim of an intelligence community conspiracy. But five months later, no charges have been brought, and it remains unclear whether any will be, or what information has been gathered to support any basis for the idea of a plot against Trump by the government officials who investigated him.” (09/10/26)
“Algeria decided to sever diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after what it described as the ‘exhaustion of all means to preserve bilateral ties’, Algerian state media said on Thursday. Algeria accused the UAE of ‘provocative and hostile acts’, without providing details in a statement released by the foreign ministry. … Shortly after Algeria’s announcement, Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, said on X that diplomatic relations should be based on ‘rationality, communication and clarity of interests’, rather than ‘riddles and signals that require decoding’.” (09/10/26)
