Use case · Travel briefing
Travel briefing in a country whose language you don't speak: a live Sri Lanka example.
Local news is the first place a problem shows up, and it is written in Sinhala and Tamil. feedql reads it, finds the place each story is about, gives you the gist in English and lets you ask for what is near a town. Below is a real channel, read from our running instance.
By the feedql team · Read live from a feedql channel; places preview
Updated
Ask feedql for near:"Colombo" 30km in a channel that follows Sri Lankan news and you get the stories that are about a place within 30 km of Colombo, in Sinhala, Tamil or English, each with the original link and, when it is not in English, a one-line English gist.
What does it look like right now?
This list is the newest items of a read-only channel owned by the feedql house account, filtered to stories with a place. It is read on the server when you open the page and kept for ten minutes. If the channel cannot be read, or has nothing from the last two days, the page shows a saved snapshot and says so.
Live from a feedql channel, read
An automatic reading of public news, not an official warning. For safety, follow the authorities of the country you are in.
English gist United Nations Environment Programme announce Emissions Gap Report 2026 warning of global warming exceeding previous estimates
Original එක්සත් ජාතීන්ගෙන් මුළු ලෝකයටම දැවැන්ත රතු එළියක් - ගෝලීය උණුසුම අංශක 2.8කින් ඉහළ යන ලකුණු
English gist increase rainfall
Original மழைவீழ்ச்சியில் அதிகரிப்பு ஏற்படும்
English gist Namal Rajapaksa announce the start of Gamin Gamata constituency meetings next week
Original නාමල් යළි ගමින් ගමට - ලබන සතියේ සිට සියල්ල යළි අරඹන බවට දැනුම්දීමක්
English gist Sectoral Oversight Committee on Governance, Justice and Civil Security approve two bills amending the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance
Original මත්ද්‍රව්‍ය සම්බන්ධ පනත් කෙටුම්පත් දෙකකට ආංශික අධීක්ෂණ කාරක සභාවේ අනුමැතිය
English gist kill a landslide at a construction site
Original Update – පස් කන්දක් කඩා වැටී සිදු වූ අනතුරෙන් එක් අයෙක් ජීවිතක්ෂයට
English gist fine a supermarket for selling imported keeri samba rice above the government's maximum retail price
Original රජය නියම කර ඇති උපරිම සිල්ලර මිල ඉක්මවා සහල් අලෙවි කළොත් වැඩ වරදී - දැඩි වූ නීතිය
English gist Department of Census and Statistics announce national consumer inflation rate of 8.1% for September 2026
Original මුළු ලංකාවටම අසුබ ආරංචියක් - මෙහෙම ගියොත් මුළු රටම වලපල්ලට
English gist Attorney General announce review of a request to lift Gotabaya Rajapaksa's travel ban on humanitarian grounds
Original ගෝඨාභයගේ විදෙස් ගමන් තහනම අවශ්‍ය නම් ඉවත් කරන ලෙස නීතිපති අධිකරණයට දන්වයි
English gist Norochcholai Power Station resume electricity generation
Original நுரைச்சோலை மின் நிலையம் நாளை மீண்டும் செயல்படத் தொடங்கும்
English gist Rajanganaya Reservoir release water through six spillway gates into Kala Oya
Fitch Ratings Overhauls Sri Lanka's National Rating Scale After Sovereign Credit Upgrade
English gist collapse a soil heap onto three workers digging a base pit at a construction site
Original පස් කණ්ඩියක් කඩා වැටී කම්කරුවන් තිදෙනෙක් යට වෙයි - දෙදෙනෙක් රෝහලට - තවත් අයෙක් සොයා මෙහෙයුම්
How is it built?
- Sources found by search. feedql looked for Sri Lankan outlets in English, Sinhala and Tamil, read each one live and kept only those that gave an item in the last 7 days. The channel follows 8 of them.
- The place is read from the story. One small-model call per item names the places the story is about, not places it only mentions: a minister born in Kandy who speaks in Colombo about the budget is Colombo. National politics is the country, never its capital unless the text names it.
- Coordinates never come from a model. A GeoNames table of about 117,000 places, with names in English, Sinhala, Tamil, Georgian, Russian, Vietnamese and Ukrainian, turns the name into a point. An alert from an official feed (a road closure, a weather alert) carries its own point or county.
- You ask by distance.
near:"Kandy" 30kmornear:7.29,80.63 30kmin the channel's search, on the REST API or over MCP. Every item also carriesgeo: name, country, region, coordinates, confidence.
How well does it find the place?
We measured on 359 items from the news sources of three places (Sri Lanka, Georgia, the US), labelled by two independent reviewers who did not see the extractor's answers.
- 0.94of the cities it named were the right place, on the part used for tuning (47 of 50)
- 0.93on a part it never saw (13 of 14, too few to be sure of)
- 0.66of the stories about a city were found (it names a place only when the text does)
The two reviewers are language models, not people, and we left out the stories they disagreed on, which flatters the figure. Until a person has settled those, near: is a preview. Set and method: backend/testdata/geo, dated 21 October 2026.
What does it not do?
- It is not a warning service. It reads public news automatically. For safety, follow the authorities of the country you are in.
- Buckets are not live yet. Sorting stories into safety, roads and events is being built; today the list is by time and place.
- A village may have no point. Outside Sri Lanka, Georgia, Vietnam and the US only cities of 15,000 people or more are in the table; a smaller place keeps its country.
- Titles in Sinhala and Tamil stay in the original. The English line is a short gist of who did what, not a translation; the original page is one tap away.
Build your own
wayfeed.app is a travel-briefing app built only on the public feedql API and "Sign in with feedql". It is powered by feedql: you can build the same on your channels.
Can I ask for news near a place without knowing its language?
Yes. Use near:"Colombo" 30km or a point such as near:7.29,80.63 30km. The place names work in English, Sinhala, Tamil, Georgian and Russian, and each story is found by where it is, not by the words it uses.
Is this an official safety warning?
No. It is an automatic reading of public news. For safety, follow the authorities of the country you are in.
Where do the coordinates come from?
From the GeoNames gazetteer, or from the coordinates an official feed such as a state road service publishes. A language model only chooses which place a story is about; it never supplies a coordinate.
How accurate is the place?
On our test set of 359 news items, 47 of the 50 cities it named on the tuning part and 13 of 14 on a part it never saw were the right place. The labels come from two models, so the near: filter is a preview.
Place data: GeoNames, licensed CC BY 4.0.