A computer categorizes a news article by an activity and an associated activity phase, includes receiving, by a computer, at least one news article from an article source. The computer assigns for each news article, an activity of focus selected from a list of target activities, using a first machine learning model. The computer identifies, for each news article, at least one activity phase candidate selected from a list of activity phases associated with the activity of focus, using a second machine learning model. The computer determines, for each of new article, an activity phase of focus from among the activity phase candidates. The determination is based, at least in part on a confirmation attribute associated with the article. The computer categorizes each of the articles by said activity of focus and said activity phase of focus.