How to track sanctions news in real time via API

Sanctions and export-control headlines move markets and trigger compliance work — often within minutes. Here's how to build a real-time monitor that catches them as they break, without drowning in noise.

The problem: speed and noise

Sanctions news has two awkward properties. It's fast — OFAC designations, EU packages, and retaliatory measures often surface on official Telegram channels and wires before mainstream coverage. And it's noisy — for every real designation there are dozens of opinion pieces, recaps, and speculation. A useful monitor has to be both early and selective.

Step 1 — Filter to the topic

Start by narrowing the firehose to sanctions-relevant articles with the topic filter. You can combine it with language and country:

GET /v1/feed?topic=sanctions&language=ru&country=ru&days=7

Because tagging happens server-side, you don't maintain a keyword list — new phrasings are caught automatically.

Step 2 — Cut the noise with urgency

Layer an min_score threshold so only high-signal items pass. The urgency engine weights source authority, casualty/impact language, and cross-source corroboration, so an official designation scores higher than a column about it:

GET /v1/breaking?topic=sanctions&min_score=7

Step 3 — Separate official from commentary

Use political_lean to distinguish a ministry or treasury announcement (official) from state-media framing (state) or independent analysis (opposition, centrist). For compliance, you usually want official first; for market read-through, you want all sides:

GET /v1/feed?topic=sanctions&political_lean=official

Step 4 — Push, don't poll

For real-time alerting, register a webhook instead of polling. Every article scoring ≥ 7 is delivered to your endpoint within ~60 seconds, HMAC-signed:

# Standard tier and above
POST /v1/webhook?url=https://your.app/sanctions-hook&secret=YOUR_SECRET

Your handler verifies the X-Signature header, checks topic_tags includes sanctions, and routes to Slack, a trading model, or a compliance queue.

Putting it together

A production sanctions monitor is: webhook for push, a topic=sanctions&min_score=7 filter, and a political_lean split between official announcements and commentary. Because the data is bilingual, you catch the Russian-language official channel and the Western wire in the same stream.