Do you tell your players about things happening outside their characters' PoV?

[prometheous100]

The few times I've DM'd games, I have a town flyer in any town over about 20 people. So the players may not know "that's the frog we let go" but stories of a frog fighting local sheep would show up in a town, then the next in game week it might be fighting cows, or teenagers or whatever.

It brings it back into the players perspective if they care. One game I ran, the players never read the flyers. Another game I ran, it was the first thing the party did. That's how my level 2 party took down a 'green dragon' (crocodile) that was bothering a neighboring town. That second party probably would have taken an interest and gone to investigate a cow killing frog.

A word of caution: if you ever try the 'local news' or 'town flyer' approach... sometimes players are idiots. I usually included 2 local items and one major item on each one... and level 4'ish party decided that THEY were the correct people to halt the appearance of an evil necromancer that the king, his army, his wizards and clerics... had all failed to control. I even mentioned hordes of dangerous uncontrolled undead outside the tower, lured there by the ambient negative energy that killed almost everything that approached. It was a good group, and all of their replacements were very careful to avoid necromancy in all forms (the party once fled from a town because a cleric cast "speak with dead" to clarify last wishes).

[jj_wolven]

Even right now in my TT game the players have heard rumors of a "massive orcish assault at an elvish town"

The party consist of two orcs and a few other "monster races".
In reality, the players were picked on and fought their way out and the rumors are about them just gossip'd up a lot.

-me