The Problem
Most news apps show you a list of headlines. You still have to do the work of understanding which of these are the same story, whether it's still happening, and how significant it is. Global Event Tracker does that work for you by first clustering related coverage from multiple outlets into a single event, then scoring each event by recency-weighted article volume, and finally using AI (Claude Haiku) to summarize the headlines in the cluster.
The result is a situational-awareness tool that answers, at a glance: what's happening, where, and how active is it right now?
How It Works
Every 6 hours, the system pulls in fresh articles from major international news outlets such as AP New, BBC World, Al Jazeera, DW World and NPR World. It also ingests the latest GDELT conflict export, a massive open dataset that tracks global events using over 65,000 news sources across 100+ countries.
Each article is first checked for geopolitical relevance, then analyzed by locally running AI model that distills its meaning into compact signature, a way of representing what the article is about in a form that computers can compare. When a new article arrives, its signature is measured against every active event in the database. If it's a close enough match, it joins that event's cluster. If nothing fits, a new world event is created.
Claude then reads the most covered articles for each event and writes a clean headline and plain language summary. If a story is still developing, it revisits and rewrites after 24 hours. The map reflects all of this in reasonable time frame, with pins sized and colored by how much press coverage that event is currently receiving.
Key Features
Semantic event clustering : Articles are grouped by semantic similarity, not keyword matching. Two articles from different outlets covering the same airstrike get merged into one event. Two articles that share a country name but cover different stories stay separate.
Live activity scoring : Every event has a score that decays in real time, halving every 24 hours as coverage fades. A breaking story blazes red on the map. A ceasefire from two days ago has cooled to yellow.
Lifecycle awareness : Events are classified as Emerging, Active, Cooling, or Resolved based on how coverage is changing, so you can tell at a glance whether a situation is escalating or winding down.
Time-window exploration : Switch between the last 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days to see how the geopolitical landscape has shifted.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Global Event Tracker?
A real-time geopolitical intelligence platform that automatically clusters world news into distinct events using semantic AI. It ingests articles from major international outlets every 6 hours and surfaces live situational awareness on an interactive map.
How is this different from a news aggregator?
Unlike traditional news aggregators that show lists of headlines, the Global Event Tracker uses semantic AI to group related coverage from multiple outlets into a single event. It scores each event by recency-weighted coverage volume and uses AI to generate plain-language summaries, giving you situational awareness rather than just a feed.
What technologies power this system?
Locally-running AI models for semantic embedding and event clustering, Claude AI for headline and summary generation, the GDELT dataset for global conflict data, and RSS feeds from AP News, BBC World, Al Jazeera, DW World, and NPR World. The entire pipeline runs autonomously every 6 hours.