World Desk · Global situation
– stories in the last 7 days
Tracking 35 sources across six regions and ten themes.
- Change on previous week
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- Sources working
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- New sanctions listings, 30 days
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Most covered this week
Daily brief
World Desk
Swell warnings
Early warning: countries whose Depth Index has climbed unusually fast for several days, before they reach High.
World Desk
Currents
Top developments in the last 48 hours, as events rather than articles: the same story from many outlets counts once, and specialist sources count for more.
Home Desk
Home Desk at a glance
Signals
Unusual spikes: coverage in the last 24 hours compared with the daily average of the 13 days before.
World Desk
Risk monitor
The Fathom Depth Index scores each country against its own normal, weighs escalation in the coverage, adds sanctions exposure and says how confident it is. Select a country to open its dossier.
Who appears together
Countries named in the same stories this week. Thicker links mean more shared stories.
Soundings
Six-part risk profiles: each country's score in six areas, 0 to 100, for the 15 highest-rated countries. Select a row to open its dossier.
Logbook
The track record. Does a High or Severe rating come before trouble? Fathom checks every stored day against the week that followed.
Chokepoint watch
Stories in the last 7 days mentioning each maritime chokepoint, with the 14-day trend.
Theme pulse
Daily story counts over 14 days. The darker bars are the last 7 days.
Region and theme, this week
Select a square to see those stories.
World Desk
News
World Desk
Sanctions
New listings and sanctioned vessels from US, UK, EU and other lists, via OpenSanctions.
New listings, last 30 days
By sanctioning authority
By type
Sanctioned vessels
Most common flags
Flag states of sanctioned vessels.
World Desk
Energy prices
Daily spot prices from the US EIA. Hover for exact values.
Home Desk
How the UK is responding
How Whitehall and Westminster are responding to what the World Desk is tracking. From GOV.UK, legislation.gov.uk and Hansard, tagged with the same countries and themes as the news.
Global story against Westminster attention
- Share of global coverage
- Share of Westminster attention
Response timeline
- Stories per day naming the country
- UK action
Whitehall feed
New sanctions law
In Parliament
Home Desk
Politics and elections
The state of the parties, every upcoming council election and by-election, what Westminster is arguing about, and what the public is petitioning for.
House of Commons
Seats held by each party today.
Party attention
How often each party is named in political coverage over the last 7 days. Party-aligned sites are excluded so they don't inflate their own side.
What Westminster is talking about
Election calendar
Upcoming council elections and by-elections, from Democracy Club.
Top petitions
The most-signed open petitions to Parliament. Government responds at 10,000 signatures; Parliament considers a debate at 100,000.
Westminster feed
New from the Commons Library
Home Desk
Tax and the economy
Budget timing, the headline numbers the Chancellor is working with, and every new tax announcement and analysis.
Tax and fiscal feed
Tax issues in play
Taxes named in political, economic and fiscal coverage over the last 14 days.
Coming up
Fathom weekly
The week in risk
World Desk
Around the world
Home Desk
At home
Headlines of the week
One story per source from each desk, for a quick read.
About Fathom
Method
How Fathom collects, tags and scores the data.
World Desk
- 35 news and research feeds
- OpenSanctions and US EIA
Home Desk
- GOV.UK, legislation.gov.uk, Hansard
- Commons seats, petitions, Democracy Club
- 15 politics, tax and economy feeds; ONS and Bank of England
Collection
Every three hours the collector reads 35 news and research feeds, trying a backup address if a publisher blocks the main one. It removes duplicate stories by link and by headline, and keeps 14 days of history. Sanctions and energy data refresh once a day.
Home Desk
Once a day the Home Desk reads the latest GOV.UK publications from eight departments, this year's sanctions and export control laws, and Hansard. For each of the week's most covered countries it counts spoken contributions in Parliament over the last 30 days. Comparing that share with the country's share of global coverage shows where Westminster is ahead of the news, and where it is quiet.
Tagging
Each story is matched against more than 250 theme keywords and 500 country, capital and leader names. Headline matches count double. Short acronyms such as US, UK and EU only match in capitals, so the word “us” is never read as the United States.
Signals
For every theme, region and country, Fathom compares the last 24 hours with the average day over the previous 13. A signal needs at least 3 stories and is ranked by the ratio (24-hour count + 1) ÷ (baseline + 1), which stops tiny numbers from producing huge ratios.
Fathom Depth Index
A 0–100 score for each country, built from four parts. Each part is scored 0 to 1, then weighted:
Bands: Low under 25, Guarded 25–44, Elevated 45–64, High 65–79, Severe 80 and over.
The Surface Index, Fathom's original score, is kept for comparison. It reads only how much coverage a country gets. Soundings break each country into six areas, Swell warnings flag scores climbing fast for three days, Currents group the same story from many outlets into one event, and the Logbook tests ratings against what happened next.
Confidence is High when at least 10 independent sources cover the country and a month of baseline exists, Medium with fewer sources or a shorter baseline, and Low otherwise. Fathom stores a daily history of up to 120 days, so baselines strengthen over time. The index measures risk signals in open sources. It is not a forecast.