What if something really important happened?

You'd glance it in the "In The News" section of Wikipedia on your way to learning actually useful knowledge. :P

Seriously, even that small chunk of world news is more than enough. If something important happens, your friends will tell you. If it's something in a domain that is important for other reasons, like AGI, then you should have seen it via more specific channels already. It's not like knowing who the president is actually matters, and you only get embarrassed once when you find out for the first time.