How the Live News Engine Works.
Every minute, our server checks the news feeds of dozens of news organisations and official bodies. Here is what it does with them, and what it does not do.
The live news page, the live news block on our home page and the “Verified” lines in our ticker are put together by software we call the live news engine. Our reporters and editors write the stories in our news sections; the engine shows you, as it happens, what other news organisations are reporting, and how many of them are reporting it.
What it reads
The engine reads the public news feeds (RSS) that news organisations and official bodies publish for exactly this purpose: their headlines, the links to their reports and the time of publication. It checks for news every minute, but it reads each feed at that feed’s own pace, every 5 to 30 minutes, more often when the feed is busy. Each time, it asks the publisher’s server whether anything has changed since its last visit, so that no publisher is burdened. A new source is tried first and switched on only if its feed works.
How a story becomes “Verified”
Headlines from different organisations that share their key words are grouped together as one story. A story is marked Verified when at least two independent news organisations have reported it. Two feeds of the same newspaper, or of newspapers owned by the same media group, count as one. An official body, such as the Press Information Bureau, the Reserve Bank of India or the World Health Organization, counts as one source. A story that only official bodies have published is marked Official source, and a story that only one organisation has reported so far is marked Developing.
What it does not do
- It does not copy anyone’s reporting. We show each headline with the name of the organisation that wrote it, and link to its own report.
- It does not decide what is true. Several reports are a strong signal, not proof: newsrooms sometimes repeat the same news-agency copy, and early reports can be wrong.
- It does not write news stories. The short summary on each story page says who reported the story and when. If we switch it on, a short summary written by AI from the reports’ headlines and feed descriptions may also appear, always labelled as such.
When it gets something wrong
Grouping by key words is automatic, so now and then two different stories are grouped together, or one story is split in two. Our editors can take any story off the page with one click. If you spot a mistake, please tell us through our help centre.
The engine sits alongside the other automatic pages described in how our automatic news works.
Last updated 3 Nov 2026