February 11, 2026 • The people of Gaza have faced the threat of hunger since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas. February 11, 2026 • Syria’s Jewish community fled the country’s repressive Assad regime. The Syrian government transferred control of Jewish sites in December to Hamra’s Jewish heritage organization. February 12, 2026 • Behind every Ilia Malinin or Alysa Liu, there is an army of elite figure skating coaches and choreographers who have been with them from the beginning. February 12, 2026 • Months after the killing of Charlie Kirk, a growing number of lawsuits by people claim they were illegally punished, fired and even arrested for making negative comments about Kirk.
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Economists had forecast a monthly payroll gain of 75,000, according to polling from financial data company FactSet. Diagnoses in people younger than 55 have nearly doubled since 1995. Email to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our “Letters Page” blog The largest site in the US remained The New York Times (482.7 million visits), followed by CNN (398.8 million) and Fox News (270.2 million). The Independent’s chief executive Christian Broughton told Press Gazette last year that US expansion, along with e-commerce, Independent TV, reader revenues and AI, are the main drivers of growth for the publisher. Ranked 42nd in this month’s top 50, the site was launched by founder and CEO of the sports media outlet Bleacher Report Dave Finocchio and Anna Robertson, an ABC and Yahoo News executive, and purports to be the “first mainstream climate brand” in the US.
In terms of annual growth Athlon Sports and The Cooldown again topped the charts, with both seeing greater than 300% year-on-year growth. The New York Times extended its lead over CNN has the most popular news website in the US according to Press Gazette’s latest top-50 ranking. The US Sun has been affected by Google’s algorithm changes and reduced the size of its newsroom in September to target fewer key content areas. A third of the top 50 lost traffic year-over-year, with the largest decline seen at the US version of the UK’s un-paywalled Sun tabloid (23 million, down 63.8% year-over-year).
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- It was followed by USA Today (185.3 million, up 41.6% year-on-year) and the website of People magazine (157.4 million, up 32.3%), which were the only other top-ten sites to see double-digit growth compared with 2023.
- Similarweb generates its traffic data by applying machine learning and modelling to the statistically representative datasets that the company collects.
- Most of the ten most-visited news sites in the US benefitted from the November surge, with The New York Times (528.6 million, up 11% month-on-month), USA Today (203.5 million, up 9.8%) and CNN (460 million, up 8.2%) all notching notable gains.
- The only site to see a larger rise in visits compared with August was CBS News, where traffic rose 20.7% to 92.5 million, translating to a five-place rise on the charts.
- Press Gazette’s top-50 ranking of US news shows the New York Times hold its lead versus CNN in top spot with 479.3 million visits in the month.
The US Sun followed on both growth metrics, up 52% year on year and 59% month on month to 34.9 million visits. In contrast to the annual figures, however, all of the ten biggest sites saw month-on-month growth of at least 3% in January. It was followed by People (161.4 million visits, up 16% year-on-year) and both were the only large sites to see year-on-year growth for the second month in a row. The Independent also featured among the fastest-growing websites year-on-year coming in fifth place having seen visits up 40% compared to last January. It was followed by independently run consumer-focused science news site sciencealert.com (24.4 million visits, up 66% month-on-month). Month-on-month, both Newsweek (up 31% compared to February) and The Cool Down were beaten by publishing group Advance Local’s Alabama-focused site al.com (22.6 million visits, up 67% month-on-month).
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The BBC visits the Iranian capital for the first time since authorities used unprecedented force to put down protests last month. Visits to the Gannett-owned site were up by 32% year-on-year to 151.4 million – echoing its year-on-year growth rate last month. The Independent is one of several UK newsbrands along with The Sun, Promoting agricultural entrepreneurship- Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Express and the BBC that have recently put focus on expansion in the US. The Daily Mail remained the best-ranked British newsbrand in the ranking (107.7 million visits) in tenth, one place ahead of the BBC (101 million).
Further down the rankings The Daily Beast was the highest debuting publication, entering the top 50 at 39th place after seeing traffic rise 22% month-on-month to 30 million. Mail Online remained steady at ninth place with 122.2 million visits while Google News (120.8 million) jumped three places to tenth despite losing 4% of traffic month-on-month, displacing Newsweek (115.7 million) from the top ten. But in August People.com (162.6 million visits) and Yahoo Finance (162.8 million) were the only top ten sites to continue growing their traffic, by 3% and 2% respectively.
Visits to the popular magazine’s website were up 18% month-on-month to 165.3 million, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb. Climate news site The Cooldown saw the second most year-on-year growth, with visits rising 152% to 21.9 million. The fastest year-on-year growth came at Athlon Sports, which attracted 28.5 million visits in June, up 484% from the prior year. In addition Newsweek saw visits rise 144% compared to June the prior year, but it did not see the most year-on-year growth among the top 50.
