NEW YORK (AP) — Jane Ferguson has won awards for unflinching reporting from dangerous lands including Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. So she was unlikely to be intimidated by seeking financing for a new journalism platform, despite tough times for the news industry.
“It's very high pressure,” said Ferguson, founder of Noosphere. “I'm used to pressure in the field.”
Started this year, Noosphere offers journalists a place to showcase work to consumers who are attracted by a more personal style of reporting than they'd normally see on traditional outlets.
It's similar to Substack, with a twist. Instead of paying for feeds of individual journalists — the Substack model — people who subscribe to Noosphere for $14.99 a month get access to all of its journalists. There are 20 so far, expected to increase to 24 with the site's upcoming British launch.
Noosphere — named to reference a state of consciousness advanced by Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin — arrives at a time of flux in the news industry. Consumers are fleeing newspapers and television news and trying different approaches springing up in a new media world.
Ferguson raised $1 million to get Noosphere off the ground and is about to announce an additional round of investment.
Ferguson, 40, grew up in Northern Ireland, and was attracted to the high-stakes, high-risk world of international reporting. For CNN International and then PBS NewsHour, she worked largely alone, covering stories about famine and war crimes in South Sudan, the conflict in Syria and Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021.
The latter experience left her shell-shocked and heartbroken, wondering if she'd reached the end of that phase of her career. “I had been on the road for 15 years,” she said. “I was exhausted, and in some respects, burnt out.”
She settled in the United States, teaching — and learning — at Princeton. She took classes in entrepreneurship and built contacts in the business world. Ferguson knew how many of her former international colleagues had to hustle to find outlets for their work, and envisioned Noosphere as a landing spot. Her business partner, Seb Walker, worked at Vice Media, known for its strong international reporting before filing for bankruptcy in 2023.
“It's gotten a lot harder to continue making a living doing this,” said Matthew Cassell, an international correspondent whose credits include Vice. A member of Noosphere's inaugural class of journalists, Cassell has posted videos giving his perspectives on the Israel-Iran war, along with recent reporting from the West Bank.
Shrouq Al Aila contributed video from Gaza, showing efforts to distribute aid as the sound of gunfire is heard in the background. Oren Ziv reported from a missile strike in Israel, walking through a hospital's shattered hallways to show the destruction.
“It feels like a really high-quality reporter is Face-Timing you from the field,” Ferguson said, “which is really cool.”
News consumers, particularly young ones, are souring on more stilted, conventional television news reporting, said veteran journalist Kate O'Brian, who is on Noosphere's board of directors. “The stage has been set for an audience who wants to hear directly from the journalist,” O'Brian said.
Ferguson envisions a reporting staff that is roughly half international, half based in the United States. Former CNN journalist Chris Cillizza reports on Washington for Noosphere.
Her biggest signing to date is former “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd. He started a Sunday night show in June, with “War Room” host Steve Bannon and Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council, as his first guests. Todd has hired the former producer for Charlie Rose's PBS talk show, a clue to his ambitions for an eclectic show interviewing interesting people from politics and business.
“Jane's hard to say no to,” Todd said. “Like any smart executive, she knows what she doesn't know, and goes to find smart people who she thinks know more."
Ferguson's bet is that audiences can only afford so many Substack subscriptions to individual journalists, and that Noosphere will offer access to more at a set price. She's also talked to news outlets interested in acquiring some of the reporters' work.
The challenge to getting Noosphere established is an increasingly crowded marketplace, and several of her journalists aren't household names.
Noosphere journalists are paid a percentage of subscription fees, and given a greater amount if a subscriber specifically cites that contributor's work in signing on. Ferguson will not say how many subscribers she has yet.
“Substack created a market that did not exist before and I give them huge kudos for that,” O'Brian said. “This is just a different way of approaching it.”
To succeed, “you have to offer a lot,” Todd said. “You can't just offer one or two things. Every hot spot around the world, Noosphere will have journalists on the ground. They have a reasonable chance to be very successful in their lane. The question is how big the lane can get.”
Todd said Noosphere's advantage is that it has been created by reporters, a distinction from the lack of journalism experience found among executives in the business, he said.
Ferguson, too, has wondered whether journalism can survive the diminishment or death of news organizations. “The solution for the problems of the industry are going to come from journalists and not media executives,” she said.
David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
Jane Ferguson, founder of Noosphere, is photographed in the site's office, in New York, Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Jane Ferguson, founder of Noosphere, and Sebastian Walker, head of content, are photographed in the site's office, in New York, Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The state of Minnesota and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are suing the federal government to stop an enforcement surge by Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE officer.
The state and cities filed a lawsuit in federal court on Monday, along with a request for a temporary restraining order to halt the enforcement action or limit the operation.
The Department of Homeland Security says it’s surging more than 2,000 immigration officers into Minnesota, and that it has made more than 2,000 arrests in the city since the push began last month. ICE has called the Minnesota surge its largest enforcement operation ever.
The lawsuit alleges that the operation violates federal law because it’s arbitrary and capricious, since it says other states aren’t seeing commensurate crackdowns. And while the Trump administration says it’s about fighting fraud, the lawsuit says ICE agents have no expertise in combating fraud in government programs.
Here's the latest:
North Korea accused the United States of trying “to imagine, fabricate and propagate” a “cyber threat” as the U.S. held a meeting Monday at the U.N. urging all countries to work to prevent the North’s illegal actions.
The country’s U.N. mission also called a U.S.-led group that monitors sanctions against Pyongyang “an illegal ghost organization” cooked up by some Western nations.
The 11-nation Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team issued a report in October detailing how North Korean hackers pilfered about $1.6 billion in the first nine months of 2025 by breaking into cryptocurrency exchanges and creating fake identities to get remote tech jobs at foreign companies.
Jonathan Fritz, U.S. principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told U.N. reporters Monday that since the report’s release, the U.S. thinks the North Koreans got over $2 billion during 2025 and are using the money to buy weapons.
Archbishop Paul Coakley, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, met with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday.
Chieko Noguchi, spokesperson for the bishops’ conference, confirmed Coakley also met with Vice President JD Vance and other officials to discuss “areas of mutual concern, as well as areas for further dialogue.” She said the archbishop “is grateful for the engagement and looks forward to ongoing discussions.”
The meeting comes as Catholic leaders have criticized the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics and mass deportations. Pope Leo and the Catholic Church hierarchy strongly support the rights of migrants, even as they acknowledge the rights of nations to control borders.
Republicans’ already narrow House majority has shrunk since the start of the year following the resignation of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa. The margin is expected to tighten further this week, with Rep. Jim Baird still recovering from injuries sustained in a car crash and Rep. Derrick Van Orden planning to be out beginning Monday as his wife undergoes a scheduled surgical procedure.
As long as Baird and Van Orden remain sidelined, House Republicans can afford to lose only a single vote on their side if Democrats have full attendance and are unified against a bill.
U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations Tammy Bruce told an emergency meeting of the Security Council that the U.S. deplores “the staggering number of casualties” in the nearly four-year war and condemns Russia’s continuing and intensifying attacks on energy and other infrastructure.
“At a moment of tremendous potential, due only to President (Donald) Trump’s unparalleled commitment to peace around the world, both sides should be seeking ways to de-escalate,” she said. “Yet Russia’s action risks expanding and intensifying the war.”
Bruce reminded Russia that nearly a year ago it voted in favor of a Security Council resolution calling for an end to the conflict in Ukraine
“It would be nice if Russia matched their words with deeds,” she told Monday’s council meeting called by Ukraine. “In the spirit of that resolution, Russia, Ukraine, and Europe must pursue peace seriously and bring this nightmare to an end.”
Republican Sen. Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania objects to the Justice Department’s investigation of Powell.
“I think the Federal Reserve renovation may well have wasted taxpayer dollars, but the proper place to fix this is through Congressional oversight,” McCormick said in a statement.
He said he believes strongly in an independent Fed, and he also agrees with Trump that Powell “has been slow to cut interest rates.”
But he said, “I do not think Chairman Powell is guilty of criminal activity.”
American oil companies agree that Venezuela must reform its contract laws before they can have confidence investing a significant amount of money to revitalize crude oil production there.
The head of the American Petroleum Institute trade group, CEO Mike Sommers, said it’s too soon to predict when oil companies will move back into Venezuela because it has to be clear that country won’t just seize companies’ assets and kick them out of the country again in the future, and more needs to be done to ensure the security and safety of oil workers.
“There are going to have to be these key prerequisites if investment is going to flow,” Sommers said.
But he said the industry believes Trump understands that and is committed to addressing those concerns.
Over the weekend, Trump suggested that ExxonMobil should be left out of Venezuela after that company’s CEO said Friday that Venezuela is uninvestible right now. But Sommers said oil companies are unified in the view that some things have to change before they will invest.
The state of Illinois and its largest city are suing the Trump administration over a “menacing, violent, and unlawful” immigration crackdown.
More than 4,300 people were arrested in “Operation Midway Blitz” last year. Roving patrols of masked and armed agents hit Chicago neighborhoods and many suburbs.
Among other things, the lawsuit filed Monday in federal court alleges the crackdown had a chilling effect, making residents afraid to venture out or use public services.
“We have watched in horror as unchecked federal agents have aggressively assaulted and terrorized our communities and neighborhoods in Illinois, undermining Constitutional rights and threatening public safety,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement.
One man was killed in the crackdown.
The lawsuit names the Department of Homeland Security and two of its immigration agencies. DHS didn’t immediately return a message Monday.
Just under half, 45%, of U.S. adults now identify as independents, a new Gallup survey found. That’s a substantial shift from 20 years ago, when closer to one-third of Americans identified as independent.
Younger people, in particular, are rejecting the parties at much higher rates than older generations. More than half of Generation Z and Millennials say they are political independents. Independent identity is softer in older generations, where only about 4 in 10 in Gen X currently call themselves independents and roughly 3 in 10 older adults do.
▶ Read more about the Gallup poll
Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered a brief but stern response Monday as he arrived at the U.S. Capitol, reacting to news that the Trump administration has opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
“I haven’t seen the case or whatever the allegations or charges are, but I would say they better, they better be real and they better be serious,” said Thune.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., had just given a speech calling on Trump to use his leverage to address high prices — and in an unusual move, he gave her a phone call.
While on the phone, she said she gave him advice about his recent push to cap credit card rates and lower housing costs. “No more delays. It’s time to deliver relief for American families.”
The White House did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.
Earlier in the day, Warren accused Trump of raising costs for American families and doing little to address affordability. “He sure knows how to get on the phone,” regarding Venezuela and the Epstein files, Warren said during her speech. “But is he on the phone to say, ‘Move that housing bill so that we can start right now?’”
That prompted Trump to call the Democratic senator he has goaded for years.
He plans to tour a Dearborn factory that is boosting hiring to make more Ford F-150 trucks. Trump also will give a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday.
Trump is under pressure to show his economic policies are helping voters ahead of the midterm elections later this year. Leavitt said Trump will be “talking about all of the great economic news,” including mortgage rates falling below 6%.
House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to “let the investigation play out” when it comes to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
After opening the House on Monday, Johnson was asked by reporters if he was concerned about the ramifications of the DOJ’s investigation.
He said there have been “concerns about cost overruns and whatever the allegations are. I don’t know what’s involved in that.”
“I think you have to let the process play out. If Chairman Powell is innocent, then he can prove that and it will all come out,” Johnson said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump is “keeping all of his options on the table” but that “airstrikes would be one of the many, many options” that he’s considering.
“Diplomacy is always the first option for the president,” Leavitt said.
Trump on Sunday evening told reporters as he made his way back from Florida that Iranian officials have reached out to his administration for talks. Trump has threatened to take military action against the Islamic Republic for its brutal crackdown against protests that started more than two weeks ago and have spread across the country.
“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” Leavitt said. “However, with that said, the president has shown he’s unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary, and nobody knows that better than Iran.”
Venezuela’s powerful interior minister said Monday that his government is taking steps to reestablish diplomatic relations with the United States and wants to open a consulate that will look out for the interests of Venezuela’s captured leader, Nicolás Maduro.
“We are advancing in reopening a Venezuelan embassy in the United States and an American embassy in Venezuela,” Cabello said in a press conference. “This will enable us to have a consulate that can look out for the safety and the tranquility of our President Nicolás Maduro.”
Venezuela and the United States cut diplomatic ties and shut down embassies in 2019 after the first Trump administration backed an effort to remove Maduro from office. But after Maduro’s capture on Jan. 3, both countries' governments have been looking into reestablishing diplomatic ties with a U.S. delegation that visited Caracas last week.
Cabello has described Maduro’s capture as a “kidnapping” and is one of the officials who has demanded his return to Venezuela.
Maria Corina Machado is scheduled to make her highly anticipated White House visit on Thursday, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Trump has expressed skepticism since the ouster of Nicolás Maduro that Machado could ever be the South American country’s leader, saying she “doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country.”
Machado, for her part, has offered unending praise for the American president, including dedicating her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump and backing his administration’s campaigns to deport Venezuelan migrants and attack alleged drug traffickers in international waters.
Machado rose to become Maduro’s strongest opponent in recent years, but his government barred her from running for office to prevent her from challenging — and likely beating — him in the 2024 presidential election. She chose retired ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia to represent her on the ballot.
Officials loyal to the ruling party declared Maduro the winner mere hours after the polls closed, but Machado’s well-organized campaign stunned the nation by collecting detailed tally sheets showing González had defeated Maduro by a 2-to-1 margin.
▶ Read more about the Venezuelan opposition
The president had a stark warning in a social media Monday morning that it would be “be a complete mess, and almost impossible for our Country to pay” back the money the U.S. has collected from his sweeping tariffs if the high court rules he doesn’t have the unilateral ability to impose many of them.
Trump has increasingly posted warnings on social media about the court’s looming decision, including similar posts many days last week about how complicated it would be for the government to issue refunds.
“It may not be possible,” Trump said in his Monday post about repaying the tariffs. But, “if it were, it would be Dollars that would be so large that it would take many years to figure out what number we are talking about and even, who, when, and where, to pay.”
The department said Monday that the revocations, a 150% increase over 2024, have targeted foreign nationals “charged or convicted with crimes” ranging from assault and theft to driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It did not offer a breakdown of those who had been actually convicted of crimes or had only been charged with offenses.
It comes as the Trump administration has stepped up efforts to deport or otherwise remove foreigners it believes are a threat to the United States or U.S. citizens.
“The Trump administration will continue to put America first and protect our nation from foreign nationals who pose a risk to public safety or national security,” the department said, adding that it had stood up a “Continuous Vetting Center” to look at all visa holders and evaluate them for potential non-compliance with U.S. laws.
The department last offered an update on visa revocations in early December when it said more than 85,000 visas had been pulled.
The former Justice Department special counsel who investigated Trump and secured two grand jury indictments has opened a law practice with former colleagues.
The firm is called Heaphy, Smith, Harbach & Windom LLP.
Besides Smith, it includes David Harbach and Thomas Windom, two former federal prosecutors who also served on the special counsel team investigating Trump, as well as Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney and chief investigative counsel to a special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The firm says it will represent individuals, businesses, universities, municipalities and state agencies.
Another Republican is speaking out against the Justice Department’s investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska says that if the DOJ believes an investigation into Powell is warrants based on project cost overruns, which she says are not unusual, then Congress needs to investigate the DOJ.
“The stakes are too high to look the other way: if the Federal Reserve loses its independence, the stability of our markets and the broader economy will suffer,” Murkowski wrote on X.
She also notes that she spoke with Powell on Monday morning, adding “it’s clear the administration’s investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion.”
London’s murder rate fell in 2025 to its lowest level in decades, officials said Monday. Mayor Sadiq Khan said the figures disprove claims spread by Trump and others on the political right that crime is out of control in Britain’s capital.
Police recorded 97 homicides in London in 2025, down from 109 in 2024 and the fewest since 2014. The Metropolitan Police force says the rate by population is the lowest since comparable records began in 1997, at 1.1 homicides for every 100,000 people.
That compares to 1.6 per 100,000 in Paris, 2.8 in New York and 3.2 in Berlin, the force said.
“There are some politicians and commentators who’ve been spamming social media with an endless stream of distortions and untruths, painting an image of a dystopian London,” Khan told The Associated Press. “And nothing could be further from the truth.”
▶ Read more about crime in London
The Democratic Party regained the partisanship edge when independents were asked whether they lean more toward the Democratic or Republican Party in a new Gallup poll.
Nearly half, 47%, of U.S. adults now identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 42% are Republicans or lean Republican.
This is an indication of how Americans are feeling about their political affiliations, and it may not be reflected in voters’ actual registration.
Independents appear to be driven by their unhappiness with the party in power. That’s a dynamic that could be good for Democrats for now, but it doesn’t promise lasting loyalty. Attitudes toward the party haven’t gotten warmer, suggesting the Democrats’ gains are probably more related to independents’ sour views of Trump.
That comes a day after Trump threatened the Caribbean island in the wake of the U.S. attack on Venezuela.
Díaz-Canel posted a flurry of brief statements on X after Trump suggested Cuba “make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” He did not say what kind of deal.
Díaz-Canel wrote that for “relations between the U.S. and Cuba to progress, they must be based on international law rather than hostility, threats, and economic coercion.”
The island’s communist government has said U.S. sanctions cost the country more than $7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025.
Díaz-Canel added: “We have always been willing to hold a serious and responsible dialogue with the various US governments, including the current one, on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual respect, principles of International Law, and mutual benefit without interference in internal affairs and with full respect for our independence.”
Cuba’s president stressed on X that “there are no talks with the U.S. government, except for technical contacts in the area of migration.”
About 8 in 10 U.S. adults said the Federal Reserve Board should be independent of political control, according to Marquette/SSRS polling from September, while roughly 2 in 10 said the president should have more influence over setting interest rates and monetary policy. There was bipartisan consensus that the Fed should remain independent. About 9 in 10 Democrats and about two-thirds of Republicans said the Fed should not be subjected to political control.
That poll found about 3 in 10 Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in The Federal Reserve Board. Nearly half — 45% — had some confidence, and roughly one-quarter had “very little” confidence or “none at all.”
Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.
Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in Trump’s feud with the Fed.
▶ Read more about the financial markets
She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”
Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.
Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.
A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.
The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.
Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”
▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China
The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.
Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
▶ Read more about the U.S. and Greenland
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
