WorldPulse is a lightweight, responsive dashboard that serves as a single-entry search portal for countries and cities. By aggregating data from three independent public API services (REST Countries, Open-Meteo, and NewsAPI), the application displays a unified view of location metadata, current weather, and localized breaking news.

Key Features & Architecture:

Secure API Proxy Server: Built with Node.js and Express to securely proxy all external API calls. This architecture prevents client-side exposure of API keys (such as NewsAPI keys) and completely avoids CORS issues.

Premium Glassmorphism Design: Uses semantic HTML and premium dark-mode CSS styling. While data is being retrieved, custom skeleton shimmer loaders provide immediate visual feedback.

Graceful Degradation: Powered by `Promise.allSettled()` on the client-side, the dashboard isolates API failures. If the news API is rate-limited or the weather service is unreachable, the remaining sections render normally with inline error callouts.

Robust Error & Timeout Handling: Features built-in AbortController timeouts to terminate hung API requests after 8 seconds, query validation middleware to prevent empty/blank searches, and automatic geocoding fallback when precise country coordinates are unavailable.