How the dots get on the map.
What we choose to watch.Major and independent newsrooms, regional reporting, official ground observations, and a focused group of breaking-news accounts on X. X searches target incident reports from BNO News, Rawsalerts and Faytuks, excluding replies and reposts. The complete source list and connection status are below.
Follow the light.Follow size and light. Small, faint rose points sit lower on the Happening Index; larger red cores and wider, stronger glows mark higher-priority stories. The Index drives most of their visual weight, with estimated gravity refining it. As an event ages or its evidence weakens, its size and glow diminish. This hierarchy stays intact as you zoom; close-up halos spread softly without flooding the map. Pulses mark new or materially changed developments and settle when nothing changes. Up to ten of the strongest visible signals pulse. Reduced motion uses a gentle brightness change without expanding rings.
The Happening Index.Audience relevance contributes 35%, real-world consequence 30%, material novelty 20%, and freshness 15%. We prioritize concrete developments in conflict, critical infrastructure, institutional power, civil liberties, borders, security and economic shocks. Severe disasters can outrank routine politics. Speeches, partisan insults, speculation, entertainment and recycled coverage receive less weight. Each subject distinguishes watch-list coverage, concrete developments and major changes; a topic keyword alone cannot earn a high grade. Identity and ideological agreement do not earn points.
Events, not article volume.Related reports are grouped conservatively into events. Repeated coverage does not brighten a location or restart its pulse. Closures, expanded disruption, official action, major human-impact changes and significant corrections can mark a substantive update. Different incidents in the same place remain separate in the feed and briefing; that place's glow uses the strongest event, not a sum of reports. Event history persists between visits.
Early does not mean confirmed.Evidence is separate from relevance. Early X reports are labeled Developing; explicitly unsupported claims are labeled Unconfirmed and cannot dominate the map. An official record can stand alone. Article counts, syndication and copied claims do not establish independent confirmation. Classification and event matching use available headlines, excerpts and provenance; they are estimates, not editorial verification. Every briefing explains its score and evidence limits.
Time and context.Event time, publication time, first observation and the latest material development are kept separate. Unknown event times remain unknown; when necessary, we use the earliest available report as an explicit timing proxy. A short outage fades faster than an ongoing escalation or consequential ruling. Important context can remain after its pulse settles. An unseen old report with a rewritten headline may evade automatic matching.
Reported places, not invented precision.Lights use source coordinates or named-place matches. Country-level reports remain approximate and are identified in the briefing. Locations are never scattered artificially. Dashed connections show places mentioned in a selected report; official footprints and tracks use source geometry.
Your opening view.On mobile, the map opens to a broad regional view, with room to explore in either direction. On a phone, drag the map with one finger and pinch to zoom. The map stays in your hands. Swipe on the Incoming feed below the map to scroll the page. The up arrow in the feed brings you back. Tap a hotspot for a quick story preview. Open the rundown for sources and details, or use the arrows to browse other events at that location. On desktop, drag to explore and scroll to zoom. The world keeps a consistent orientation. A small ocean margin gives you room to move vertically. Edges resist gently, and touching the map stops its motion immediately. Once you interact, the map stays where you put it. The world-view control always returns to the whole map.
Source transparency.Feeds refresh every two minutes, subject to source availability. Original publication and observation times are preserved. Expired warnings are removed; unavailable feeds retain timestamped cached reports. This is a selective reporting dashboard, not an emergency alert service.
Connected sources Map: Natural Earth via world-atlas. Escape closes a story briefing. Use +/− to zoom, arrow keys to pan, and Home to return to the world view when the map is focused.