diff --git a/src/gateway/server-v2.ts b/src/gateway/server-v2.ts
index a6cdb6c..da38b1a 100644
--- a/src/gateway/server-v2.ts
+++ b/src/gateway/server-v2.ts
@@ -7446,7 +7446,7 @@ RULES:
         ? /^browser_/i
         : desktopAutomationRequest
         ? /^desktop_/i
-        : /^(web_search|web_fetch|weather_|ollama_web_)/i;
+        : /^(web_search|web_fetch|weather_|ollama_web_|news_search)/i;
       const hasGroundingToolCall = allToolResults.some((r) => groundingToolPattern.test(String(r?.name || '')));
       if (((queryNeedsTools && (looksLikeReasoning || looksLikeRefusal)) || liveDataRequest) && !hasGroundingToolCall) {
         toolSkipForcedRetries++;
diff --git a/src/tools/news.ts b/src/tools/news.ts
index f4d2e59..6a0530f 100644
--- a/src/tools/news.ts
+++ b/src/tools/news.ts
@@ -43,16 +43,16 @@ export const newsSearchTool = {
   description: 'Get real news headlines from the last 48 hours via NewsData.io — use this instead of web_search for any "오늘 뉴스"/"today\'s news"/breaking news request. Returns real articles with actual publish dates and sources, not generic web pages.',
   schema: {
     query:    'Optional keyword/topic to filter by (e.g. "economy", "South America"). Omit for general top headlines.',
-    country:  'Optional ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g. "kr" for Korea, "us" for USA, "br" for Brazil). Omit for worldwide.',
-    language: 'Optional ISO 639-1 language code (e.g. "ko", "en"). Defaults to "en" if country isn\'t Korea-related, "ko" otherwise — pass explicitly to override.',
-    category: 'Optional: business, entertainment, environment, food, health, politics, science, sports, technology, top, tourism, or world.',
+    country:  'Optional ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g. "kr" for Korea, "us" for USA, "br" for Brazil). Accepts a comma-separated list for multiple countries in one call, MAX 5 (e.g. "de,fr,gb,it,es" — verified working, each result tagged with its source country; a 6th+ country errors with "Number of country cannot exceeded 5"). There is NO code for continents/regions ("eu"/"europe" will error with "country does not exist") — for a "European news" request, pass up to 5 major European country codes instead (e.g. "de,fr,gb,it,es"). Omit country entirely for worldwide.',
+    language: 'Optional ISO 639-1 language code (e.g. "ko", "en"). IGNORED whenever country is also set — NewsData.io silently drops the country filter and returns irrelevant results when language doesn\'t match the country\'s dominant language (e.g. country="de"+language="en" returns US news, not German). Only pass language when country is omitted.',
+    category: 'Optional: business, entertainment, environment, food, health, politics, science, sports, technology, top, tourism, or world. "world" is IGNORED when country is also set (NewsData.io silently drops the country filter for that combo) — for a specific country\'s news, omit category or use "top"/"politics"/etc. instead.',
   },
   jsonSchema: {
     type: 'object',
     properties: {
       query:    { type: 'string', description: 'Optional keyword/topic filter. Omit for general top headlines.' },
-      country:  { type: 'string', description: 'Optional ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, e.g. "kr", "us", "br", "jp".' },
-      language: { type: 'string', description: 'Optional ISO 639-1 language code, e.g. "ko", "en".' },
+      country:  { type: 'string', description: 'Optional ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, e.g. "kr", "us", "br", "jp". Comma-separated list for multiple countries, MAX 5 (e.g. "de,fr,gb,it,es"). No continent code exists — for "European news" pass up to 5 country codes (e.g. "de,fr,gb,it,es"), not "eu".' },
+      language: { type: 'string', description: 'Optional ISO 639-1 language code, e.g. "ko", "en". Ignored when country is set (see country field) — only pass one or the other.' },
       category: { type: 'string', description: '"business"|"entertainment"|"environment"|"food"|"health"|"politics"|"science"|"sports"|"technology"|"top"|"tourism"|"world"' },
     },
     additionalProperties: false,
@@ -63,8 +63,20 @@ export const newsSearchTool = {
 
     const query    = String(args?.query || '').trim();
     const country  = String(args?.country || '').trim().toLowerCase();
-    const language = String(args?.language || '').trim().toLowerCase();
-    const category = String(args?.category || '').trim().toLowerCase();
+    // NewsData.io silently drops the country filter (falling back to a generic English-language
+    // world-news pool instead of erroring) in two independently-confirmed cases — verified
+    // 2026-07-16 against the live API:
+    //   1. language doesn't match the country's dominant language (country=de+language=en
+    //      returned US Congress/FDA-recall articles, not German news; country=de alone or
+    //      country=de+language=de both returned real German news)
+    //   2. category is "world" (country=de+category=world broke the same way; country=de with
+    //      any other category like "politics"/"top" returned real German news). "world" scoped
+    //      to a single country is a contradictory combination anyway.
+    // Dropping both whenever country is set is a strict improvement: a no-op when they'd have
+    // been compatible, and prevents the silent-wrong-country fallback when they aren't.
+    const language = country ? '' : String(args?.language || '').trim().toLowerCase();
+    let category = String(args?.category || '').trim().toLowerCase();
+    if (country && category === 'world') category = '';
 
     const params = new URLSearchParams({ apikey: apiKey });
     if (query) params.set('q', query);
diff --git a/src/tools/web.ts b/src/tools/web.ts
index a9eec3e..b536241 100644
--- a/src/tools/web.ts
+++ b/src/tools/web.ts
@@ -586,16 +586,34 @@ async function searchBrave(query: string, limit: number, apiKey: string): Promis
   };
 }
 
+// Hangul-presence is a cheap, reliable enough signal for which language SearXNG's engines
+// should be told to prefer — matches the existing bilingual query-crafting convention
+// (Korean text for domestic queries, English for international) documented alongside
+// isNewsSeekingQuery, just expressed as an explicit API param instead of only query wording.
+function detectQueryLanguage(query: string): 'ko' | 'en' {
+  return /[가-힣]/.test(query) ? 'ko' : 'en';
+}
+
 // ── SearXNG (self-hosted/public metasearch, no key) ──────────────────────────
-async function searchSearXNG(query: string, limit: number, baseUrl: string, category?: string): Promise<ToolResult> {
+async function searchSearXNG(
+  query: string,
+  limit: number,
+  baseUrl: string,
+  opts?: { category?: string; timeRange?: 'day' | 'week' | 'month' | 'year' },
+): Promise<ToolResult> {
   const base = baseUrl.replace(/\/+$/, '');
   // Default (no categories param) hits SearXNG's "general" category, which includes engines
   // like Wikipedia — fine for most queries, but Wikipedia's static reference pages (e.g. a
   // "2026" year-overview article) are not news and shouldn't compete with actual dated
   // articles for a news-seeking query. Restricting to categories=news routes to the engines
   // actually tagged "news" (daum news, yahoo news, presearch's news variant) instead.
-  const categoryParam = category ? `&categories=${encodeURIComponent(category)}` : '';
-  const url = `${base}/search?q=${encodeURIComponent(query)}&format=json${categoryParam}`;
+  const categoryParam = opts?.category ? `&categories=${encodeURIComponent(opts.category)}` : '';
+  // time_range narrows results to engines' own recency metadata — a stronger filter than
+  // categories=news alone against stale-but-still-"news-tagged" pages. 'week' rather than
+  // 'day' to leave margin for engines with indexing lag instead of returning nothing.
+  const timeRangeParam = opts?.timeRange ? `&time_range=${encodeURIComponent(opts.timeRange)}` : '';
+  const languageParam = `&language=${encodeURIComponent(detectQueryLanguage(query))}`;
+  const url = `${base}/search?q=${encodeURIComponent(query)}&format=json${categoryParam}${timeRangeParam}${languageParam}`;
   const res = await fetch(url, {
     headers: { 'Accept': 'application/json', 'User-Agent': 'SmallClaw/1.0' },
     signal: AbortSignal.timeout(15_000),
@@ -848,7 +866,7 @@ export async function executeWebSearch(args: { query: string; max_results?: numb
   const runProvider = (provider: SearchProvider): Promise<ToolResult> => {
     switch (provider) {
       case 'tavily':       return searchTavily(args.query, limit, cfg.tavilyKey as string);
-      case 'searxng':      return searchSearXNG(args.query, limit, cfg.searxngUrl as string, isNewsSeekingQuery(args.query) ? 'news' : undefined);
+      case 'searxng':      return searchSearXNG(args.query, limit, cfg.searxngUrl as string, isNewsSeekingQuery(args.query) ? { category: 'news', timeRange: 'week' } : undefined);
       case 'google':       return searchGoogle(args.query, limit, cfg.googleKey as string, cfg.googleCx as string);
       case 'brave':        return searchBrave(args.query, limit, cfg.braveKey as string);
       case 'ollama_cloud': return searchOllamaCloud(args.query, limit, cfg.ollamaApiKey as string);