OVERWATCH.EARTH
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About

Breaking news, pinned where it's happening

Live on the globe now: 1,132 tracked

This layer places breaking world news on the globe — natural disasters, armed conflict, terror attacks, protests and evacuations — using the GDELT Project, which monitors news media worldwide in 65 languages and updates every 15 minutes. Each pin is one recent article: click it for the headline, the outlet, and a link out to the original story (we never rehost article text — every story is read at its source). To keep the layer meaningful we show only event-type news, not the full firehose, and each article stays on the globe for about three hours before fading. An important honesty note: pin locations are approximate. GDELT geocodes the places an article mentions, so a pin marks where the news is about — not where it was written — and we display those coordinates exactly as the source provides them, keeping only city-level matches and discarding vague country-level ones. It is one of around 34 live layers you can stack on the same interactive Earth.

Data source: The GDELT Project

Where does the news come from?

From the GDELT Project, an open research initiative that monitors news media worldwide in 65 languages. We poll its public 15-minute data files and show event-type articles (disasters, conflict, protests). Each pin links out to the original article at its source — nothing is rehosted.

How accurate are the pin locations?

Approximate by nature. GDELT geocodes the places each article mentions, so a pin marks where the story is about, not where it was written. We display coordinates exactly as provided, keep only city-level matches, and discard vague country-level ones — but treat every pin as approximate.

Why don't I see all news?

Deliberate filtering: only event-type themes (natural disasters, armed conflict, terror, protests, evacuations) make the globe. General politics, sport and business would bury the signal in noise.

How fresh is it?

GDELT publishes every 15 minutes and we poll each new file as it lands. An article stays on the globe for about three hours, so the layer always shows roughly the current news cycle.