In your briefing today:

📣 Concerns about the rapid progress of AI have exploded with new warnings about its rapidly escalating capabilities emerging from within the industry. The CEO of Anthropic, which develops the Claude AI system, warned over the weekend that a swarm of AI agents could take over the internet within six months to a year unless the industry acted. (AP)

📣 First Minister John Swinney will join the leaders of Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein at a summit in Cardiff today, with the trio planning to discuss how they can work together. Constitutional change will figure high up the agenda - although other issues, including funding, will also be discussed. The summit comes at a time when, for the first time since devolution, all three nations have first ministers who want to leave the United Kingdom. (Holyrood)

📣 Russia launched a drone strike on a train shortly after another, carrying Boris Johnson and top European security officials, passed through. No casualties were reported - the train had already been evacuated - but there are concerns the diplomatic service was being targeted as it returned delegates to a conference in Kiev. (BBC)

You don't have to read everything — just the right thing. 1440's daily newsletter distills the day's biggest stories from 100+ sources into one quick, 5-minute read. It's the fastest way to stay sharp, sound informed, and actually understand what's happening in the world. Join 4.5 million readers who start their day the smart way.

Join for free today!

📣 A care home in Aberdeenshire faces closure amid concerns about the health and safety of its residents, sparked by a damning inspectorate report earlier this year. (BBC)

📣 A man has been killed in a suspected shooting in West Lothian. (Daily Record)

📣 CalMac’s ferry to Dunoon carried no passengers on 589 trips - 5% of its sailings - between March 1 2025 and March 31 this year. (Times)

📣 Sweden has gone to the polls - and the results are on a knife-edge this morning. Left-wing parties held a lead of just one seat according to an early, partial tally. (Guardian)

📣 There will be calls to ban “mega-donations” to political parties after Reform UK pocketed £72 million from two crypto billionaires. (Mirror)

📣 Former Scottish Labour leader Lord Sarwar breaks cover with an interview: he says he’s motivated now by supporting Andy Burnham as a successful Prime Minister - and keeping Reform UK out of power. (Times)

📣 A “culture shift” in how the UK does business is needed, Andy Burnham has said ahead of a big meeting with some of Britain’s most senior bosses. (BBC)

📣 Saudi Arabia is facing a nightmare scenario as Houthi rebels threaten the Red Sea shipping routes, drones attack its pipelines, and Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz. (AP)

⚽️ Rangers won a decisive victory in the first Old Firm clash of the season - the League Cup quarter-final at Ibrox. Their win was perhaps not a surprise, but their 3-0 dominance certainly was. The two clubs go again - at Parkhead, this time, this coming Sunday in the league. (Watch the highlights)

⚽️ Rangers will play Aberdeen while Hearts and Hibs will face off in the two League Cup semi-finals, to be played on the weekend of October 31-November 1. (BBC)

⚽️ In England, the Manchester derby was marred by a winner for Manchester City that was called offside by the referee, but ruled onside by VAR… before, hours later, an admission VAR got it wrong. Few neutrals watching will be able to imagine VAR could get it so wrong. (BBC report & highlights)

🏎️ Lando Norris was also left rueing his bad luck after losing what appeared a certain win because of a safety car. (BBC)

🏃 Josh Kerr is happy, though: he won $150,000 for winning the 1500m at the new Ultimate Championship event. (BBC)

🗣️SNP activists think John Swinney missed a big chance in response to Andy Burnham’s independence referendum “lifeline” last week.

They’ve been talking to Rebecca McCurdy in the days after Andy Burnham’s comment to the House of Commons that the rules to bring about a second Scottish referendum should be “exactly the same” as for a Northern Ireland poll. That would require a “clear consensus” that a shift in public opinion has occurred.

She reports the activists think Swinney should have gone in harder. “While Swinney’s team seized on the opportunity to write to Burnham inviting him to meet to set out an ‘agreed legal mechanism’ for a referendum, many activists believed it was a ‘weak’ response,” she reports.

Burnham quickly issued “a familiar ‘no’ for the SNP and pro-independence voters - “and insiders believe that Swinney’s cautious response allowed Burnham to backtrack with minimal political cost”. (Herald)

🗣️ People are getting really, really worried about the speed of development of AI, and the lack of ethical and behavioural guardrails around AI systems. The brief free-to-read primer I did on the debate for Saturday’s Party Line remains a decent place to start, if I say so myself.

Tomorrow’s Early Line, unless events intervene, will take a closer look at why people are worried.

And, in the meantime, if you want to jump down the AI rabbit hole and explore some of the concepts involved, I found this mini-essay, posted on X, an interesting - if not wholly convincing - read (But what do I know? It crossed my radar because it’s done five million views since being posted two days ago).

I’d love to know what you think of it - do hit reply.

🗣️“Change and progress is coming” to Scottish schools, Education Secretary Màiri McAllan has insisted, in the wake of PISA results showing Scottish schoolchildren falling behind their English peers.

Indeed, McAllan doesn’t really accept the PISA figures were that bad: “while being considerate of a declining international picture,” she writes, “PISA 2025 demonstrates Scotland performs significantly above the OECD average in four of the five measured domains.”

She also claims “the attainment gap between the most and least advantaged pupils was smaller in Scotland than England in reading and maths” - although commentators have already said that’s because pupils from better-off backgrounds perform worse than they used to.

But McAllan also says PISA results ignore improving exam results, record levels of literacy and numeracy, record numbers of young people going to “positive destinations” in work and education and record numbers going to University, including from deprived communities. (Scotland on Sunday)

🗣️ Who are the men who donated £36 million each to Reform UK? The Mail on Sunday offered some background: first up is Ben Delo, the “Oxford-educated crypto king” who was expelled from three primary schools and, as an adult, was convicted of failing to implement controls to prevent money laundering at his firm. He was pardoned last year by Donald Trump. Here’s the Observer’s take on him.

And then there’s “Billionaire crypto businessman Christopher Harborne”, who’s worth £18.2 billion and “has a fiercely competitive streak” - which is why he immediately moved to match Delo’s donation, even though he lives in Thailand. Here’s the Guardian’s take on him, from a few months ago.

🗣️ Donald Trump was in Ireland for the weekend and, as Frank McNally in the Irish Times notes dryly, somehow managed to upstage the man (Shane Lowry) who’d just won the Irish Open by an unprecedented 11 strokes as he presented the trophy.

“Trump announced that in response to intense lobbying the night before, he had decided to lift his tariffs ‘on Irish whiskey’,” reports McNally. “But then Shane Lowry was only a golf champion. Whereas the US president had reinvented himself – if only for the weekend – as a champion of all things Irish and repeatedly voiced support for a United Ireland.

“Was he aware of the ‘backlash’ his comments had caused in the UK, an ITV reporter asked. ‘I love my comments,’ said the president, smashing the issue up the middle of the fairway, just as Lowry would shortly do the ball.” (Irish Times)

Sent this by a friend?