Alongside the morning brief, we track emergencies that affect the destinations we cover — earthquakes, severe weather, outbreaks, advisory changes. This page is how that system works: where alerts come from, what has to be true before one is published, and how it stands down when the event passes. The short version: we never write an alert ourselves. Official sources do, and we relay them with their sourcing attached.
Every alert starts at an official source — geological surveys, health agencies, government advisories. The feeds are checked around the clock, and every report is recorded with its source attached. Nothing enters the system from rumor, social chatter, or our own judgment.
Most events don’t become alerts. Each one passes three gates: the hazard type has to be one we cover, the severity has to clear that hazard’s floor (a minor tremor doesn’t qualify; a major quake does), and it has to genuinely touch a destination in our catalog. Fail any gate and it is quietly recorded, not published.
A qualifying event is matched to the specific destinations it affects — by country, by region, or by proximity for events that arrive as a coordinate. Bigger events reach further; a small one has to be close to matter.
When an alert is active for a destination, its page carries a banner naming the severity (Minor · Moderate · Severe · Extreme), the source, and when it was last confirmed. Readers who follow a destination can also receive an email when an alert fires — and a correction if it is withdrawn.
Every alert carries an expiry matched to its hazard — a tsunami warning clears in days, an outbreak runs longer. Updates extend the clock; silence runs it out. A resolved or expired alert never silently re-fires, and a stale banner never lingers after its source goes quiet.
Every alert names the source it came from, so you can verify it yourself. These are the feeds that can publish an alert today:
The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System — a UN-and-EC-backed platform that scores earthquakes, cyclones, floods, volcanoes, and tsunamis for humanitarian impact.
The U.S. Geological Survey's real-time seismic feed — the canonical public record of significant earthquakes worldwide.
The World Health Organization's Disease Outbreak News — official notices of outbreaks with international relevance.
The U.S. CDC's travel health notices — outbreak and health-risk guidance written specifically for travelers.
Official U.S. travel advisories for every country. We watch for level changes — the change itself is the news.
Every alert is a relay of an official source, and the source is named on the alert itself. Today every published alert is Confirmed— backed by an official feed. Anything we couldn’t confirm that way would be explicitly labeled as developing and unconfirmed, and never presented as fact.
Severity is always a word — Minor · Moderate · Severe · Extreme — never just a colored badge. Every alert also carries when it was last confirmed, in plain time, so you can judge freshness yourself.
A new feed runs in shadow first: it is ingested, scored, and watched for false positives without surfacing anything to a reader. Only a source that proves itself gets promoted. We are also evaluating an experimental corroboration signal drawn from official government accounts on social media — it runs in shadow, is judged server-side against the same rules as everything else, and cannot create or surface an alert on its own.
Coverage is bounded: alerts exist for the destinations in our catalog and the hazard types we monitor, and feeds are checked periodically rather than streamed live. The absence of an alert is never an all-clear. Informational only — not official safety guidance. Confirm details with official sources and local authorities before making travel decisions.