Serious situations around the world
Short descriptions taken word for word from each source, with a link to the full story. Nothing here is written or edited by this site.
Breaches, breakthroughs and the worst days
Five running lists from official registries, journals and Wikipedia's daily log. Titles and descriptions are the source's own words. Who is behind an attack is stated only where a government advisory states it.
What the record-keepers couldn't classify
UAP reports as governments count them, seismic events that weren't earthquakes, objects in orbit without a name, asteroids awaiting confirmation, and signals nobody has identified. Counts and wording come from each source; the first card says what "unexplained" does and doesn't mean.
What's unusual right now, and the El Niño behind much of it
Only departures that the source itself measures against its own baseline: NOAA's El Niño index, NOAA's temperature ranking, NSIDC's sea-ice average, NOAA's space-weather scales. Nothing here is scored or predicted by this site.
Who is responding, what they still need, and how to help
Active Red Cross and Red Crescent operations in IFRC's own words and numbers, then a short guide to giving and volunteering well.
How to help
Prices, jobs, debt, and who moved the money
Official statistics with their latest change, country-by-country shifts on the globe, and the largest transactions that must be reported publicly. Every figure is the source's own; the arrows compare its latest value with the prior period, nothing more.
Cost of living, U.S.
Country by country
Big moves on the public record
What's broken right now
Official status feeds first, news second. The lights count active incidents the operators themselves report; nothing here is estimated or written by this site. Carriers and power companies publish no open feeds, so those domains show news only.
The planet's vital signs, and other things worth watching
Numbers that reveal more than they were collected for: a country going dark online, a river rising, a volcano waking up, what the whole world looked up yesterday. Every figure links to its source.
Click a country on the map
What this page's own layers show inside that country right now, with links to the sources. No scores, no rankings: just counts you can check.
Countries you follow
Saved in this browser only. Nothing leaves your device. Email alerts for a watchlist are the planned Supporter feature.
What people are seeing in the wild
Birds, butterflies, whales and more, from the week's community sightings. Counted in 2° cells; threatened species blurred; no observer names.
Watch the planet, not the people
Official cameras pointed at volcanoes, wildlife, the sky and Earth from orbit. Each card opens the owner's own page; nothing is re-streamed or recorded here. Some cams are seasonal or only light up in daylight.
Stories from NASA
Official NASA channels, each paired with the layer it explains. Specific videos can be added as cards here; NASA's own videos are public domain, embedded or linked under YouTube's rules (never behind a paywall, never with ads on the player).
A cam is listed only if
- It's run by or with the owner of the place: a science agency, park, observatory, aquarium or nonprofit
- It points at nature, the sky, space or a science site
- People in view are too small or far away to be identified
- We link to it rather than copy, store or re-stream the video
Never listed
- Street, traffic, city-square and business cams
- Private or unsecured cameras found by scanning the internet
- Beach, campus or venue cams where faces or plates are readable
- Any cam in or near an active conflict zone
If something changes
- A cam whose view changes to show identifiable people is removed
- Owners can ask for removal at any time, no questions asked
- Spotted a problem? Report it on the project's issue tracker
What each layer is, and what you could do with it
Every feed here is free. The tags show whether it can be used in a paid product. Each card ends with one idea it could spark.
Patterns the map can't show
News attention follows the big quake
English-language articles per day mentioning each hazard (GDELT). The M7.0 quake near Nagqu, China, struck late on Oct 22 UTC; earthquake coverage peaked the next day.
Space weather was quiet to unsettled
Planetary K-index every 3 hours (NOAA). Kp 5 or higher is a geomagnetic storm, when aurora can reach New England. This week peaked at .
Who is in orbit
Tracked active satellites by constellation (CelesTrak groups). One company's broadband network outnumbers everything else combined.
Where aircraft data comes from
Airborne aircraft seen by OpenSky's volunteer receivers, by country of registration. The U.S. leads partly because that's where most receivers are. Coverage gaps over oceans and Africa reflect receivers, not empty skies.
Free public data sources
The feeds behind this page, plus others worth knowing. License notes are short summaries; read each source's own terms before reusing its data.
| Source | What it covers | Updates | License | Here |
|---|
Lessons built on live data
Sample lesson plans that use the layers above. Each one works with whatever the data shows on the day you teach it. Full packs with worksheets and answer guides are planned; see Keep it free.
Free for everyone, funded by people who want it to stay that way
Free
- Every map layer, situation, signal and cam on this page
- Theme views
- Open data downloads (below)
- Full source code to run your own copy
Supporter
- Alerts by email for places and topics you choose
- A weekly briefing email
- Saved views and watchlists across your devices
- Higher-volume API access
Classroom
- Full lesson packs with worksheets and answer guides
- A class view that hides news and conflict sections
- Funded by district licences, grants and supporters
Open data
The exact files this page runs on. Each source's own license applies; see the source library.
Built to inform, not to surveil
Dashboards like OSIRIS stack public camera feeds and network scanners next to the science. This one draws the line on purpose.
Places, not people
Aircraft are shown as counts per region, never as individual tracks. The only cameras are official nature, space and science cams where no one can be identified; no street cameras, no license-plate readers.
OSIRIS shows 2,000+ live traffic cameras.
Every number has a source
Each layer names its provider, update rate and license, and links to the original.
Several OSIRIS layers are hand-typed static lists shown as if live.
Show the blind spots
Receiver coverage, sensor limits and news-language bias are stated where they shape what you see.
A map with no caveats looks more complete than the data is.
Read-only, always
Nothing here probes, scans or contacts any system. It only reads published feeds.
OSIRIS ships a port and vulnerability scanner.
Research and education only
You may
- Study patterns, teach, write and research using what's shown here
- Follow the links to the original sources and use their data under their own terms
- Share the page for learning
You may not
- Use anything here to locate, follow, target or harass a person or group
- Treat it as an emergency alert or a basis for tactical, military or safety decisions
- Republish source data in ways its license forbids
How this page handles you
- No sign-up, no tracking scripts, no visitor logs kept by this page
- Notable deaths are listed only with a cited date, an English Wikipedia article and at least 48 hours' delay
- Who is behind a cyber attack is stated only when a government advisory states it; breach lists name the breached organisation, never victims
- Mass shootings are listed as the source lists them, without names of victims or shooters, with a note on how definitions differ
- Spot an error? Follow the source link: corrections belong with the original publisher
From prototype to live site
How the data stays fresh
- On the public site, a scheduled job collects every feed every 10 minutes (slow-changing ones hourly or daily) and publishes the files this page reads. Its run logs are public.
- Earthquakes are fetched straight from USGS by your browser every minute.
- If a source fails, the last good data stays up, with its own timestamp.
- Satellite positions and the day/night line are calculated live in your browser from orbital elements and the sun's position.
- Aircraft and fire counts are grouped into map cells, which keeps the page small and the detail appropriate.
Open source
- The page, the collectors and the publishing workflow are all in one public repository, licensed AGPL-3.0.
- Anyone can run their own copy for free; improvements to a public copy must stay open too.
- Every source is credited, and its own license applies to its data.
Not included, on purpose
- Public CCTV, street and traffic cameras, license-plate readers
- Tracking named people's private jets
- Conflict data with non-commercial licenses (ACLED)
- Network scanning or "recon" tools
- Scraping Google search results (against its terms) and leaked data itself: only the fact of a breach, as catalogued by HIBP