diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 9091c9283..f6530661f 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@
 
 - Director timeline seeks cross the dateline along the short longitude arc.
 
-- Reject impossible FIRMS acquisition calendar days in the CSV parser before trailing-24-hour filtering.
+- Regional articles retain unknown publication times when compact source dates do not identify a real calendar instant.
 
 - Treat explicitly current, complete empty vessel coverage as a successful update,
   clearing obsolete contacts while retaining stale or incomplete snapshots.
diff --git a/docs/CURRENT-STATE.md b/docs/CURRENT-STATE.md
index dbf5e9b05..c6c2c4ede 100644
--- a/docs/CURRENT-STATE.md
+++ b/docs/CURRENT-STATE.md
@@ -1177,7 +1177,9 @@ stalled downloads are cancelled. Development and preview use the same handler.
 Overpass query validation, geometry simplification, disk caching and upstream
 transport now have separate modules; military-installation search reuses that
 transport. Regional briefing combines separate place, news and weather sources,
-while weather effects uses only the weather source. Existing process-scoped
+while weather effects uses only the weather source.
+GDELT compact dates that do not name a real calendar instant keep the article
+with an unknown publication time. Existing process-scoped
 caches, rate limits, stale fallbacks and route ordering are preserved.
 
 Local voice has separate HUD-summary, debug-log and Realtime-token handlers,
diff --git a/src/data/regional-calendar-evidence.test.mjs b/src/data/regional-calendar-evidence.test.mjs
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a442a9feb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/data/regional-calendar-evidence.test.mjs
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+import test from 'node:test';
+import assert from 'node:assert/strict';
+import { normalizeRegionalArticles } from './regionalModel.js';
+test('compact source dates must denote an actual calendar instant', () => {
+  for (const date of [
+    '20260230T120000Z',
+    '20260431T120000Z',
+    '20261301T120000Z',
+    '20260716T240000Z',
+    '20260716T126000Z',
+    '20260716T120060Z',
+  ]) {
+    const [article] = normalizeRegionalArticles({
+      articles: [
+        {
+          title: 'Fixture',
+          url: 'https://fixture.example/news',
+          seendate: date,
+        },
+      ],
+    });
+    assert.equal(article.publishedAt, null, date);
+    assert.equal(article.title, 'Fixture');
+  }
+  for (const [input, expected] of [
+    ['20240229T004500Z', '2024-02-29T00:45:00Z'],
+    ['20260716T000000Z', '2026-07-16T00:00:00Z'],
+    ['2026-07-16T12:00:00Z', '2026-07-16T12:00:00.000Z'],
+  ]) {
+    assert.equal(
+      normalizeRegionalArticles({
+        articles: [
+          {
+            title: 'Fixture',
+            url: 'https://fixture.example/news',
+            seendate: input,
+          },
+        ],
+      })[0].publishedAt,
+      expected,
+    );
+  }
+});
diff --git a/src/data/regionalModel.js b/src/data/regionalModel.js
index 3a6d79f14..fca473994 100644
--- a/src/data/regionalModel.js
+++ b/src/data/regionalModel.js
@@ -67,11 +67,20 @@ export function normalizeRegionalArticles(payload, limit = MAX_ARTICLES) {
     seen.add(signature);
     const rawDate = cleanText(row?.seendate, 32);
     const compactDate = /^(\d{8})T(\d{6})Z$/.exec(rawDate);
-    const publishedAt = compactDate
+    const candidateDate = compactDate
       ? `${compactDate[1].slice(0, 4)}-${compactDate[1].slice(4, 6)}-${compactDate[1].slice(6, 8)}T${compactDate[2].slice(0, 2)}:${compactDate[2].slice(2, 4)}:${compactDate[2].slice(4, 6)}Z`
-      : Number.isNaN(Date.parse(rawDate))
-        ? null
-        : new Date(rawDate).toISOString();
+      : rawDate;
+    const parsedMs = Date.parse(candidateDate);
+    const validDate =
+      Number.isFinite(parsedMs) &&
+      (!compactDate ||
+        new Date(parsedMs).toISOString().slice(0, 19) ===
+          candidateDate.slice(0, 19));
+    const publishedAt = validDate
+      ? compactDate
+        ? candidateDate
+        : new Date(parsedMs).toISOString()
+      : null;
     articles.push({
       title,
       url,