Friday 4 September

Days run midnight to midnight, UTC — the Overnight always covers the last complete UTC day. Counts are de-duplicated press articles from the Compass corpus of 140+ sources. A story counts for a topic when the topic is named in the story's headline or summary — a name buried in the body alone doesn't count. One story counts once, translated or syndicated copies of the same story are folded into it, and every count sits beside the topic's own baseline — its usual pace, the topic's typical daily count over its own trailing four weeks. A surge is at least three times that pace; "also busier than usual" rows cleared a lower bar and are labeled as such; "4-week high" marks a topic's highest single day of its trailing four weeks, and "across N sources" counts the distinct outlets behind the day. Firsts & returns read the trailing week, each item stamped with its own day. The week board admits only topics whose last seven days run at least half again ahead of their own previous seven, ranked by that margin — and only when both weeks carry real counts, so a thin week can never manufacture a giant multiple. Unusually-quiet calls need a healthy usual pace. Every card names an established topic — one the record already measures across multiple outlets; a brand-new name appears only when many outlets cover it on its first day. Dated events appear once extracted, typically within a day.