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Emerging like a mirage in the desert outskirts of Dubai, a sight unfamiliar to those in the Middle East and Asia has risen up like a dream in the exact dimensions of the field at Yankee Stadium in New York. Now that it’s built, though, one question remains: Will the fans come? That’s the challenge for the inaugural season of Baseball United, a four-team, monthlong contest that will begin Friday at the new Barry Larkin Field, artificially turfed for the broiling sun of the United Arab Emirates and named for an investor who is a former Cincinnati Reds shortstop. The professional league seeks to draw on the sporting rivalry between India and Pakistan with two of its teams, as the Mumbai Cobras on Friday will face the Karachi Monarchs. Each team has Indian and Pakistani players seeking to break into the broadcast market saturated by soccer and cricket in this part of the world. And while having no big-name players from Major League Baseball, the league has created some of its own novel rules to speed up games and put more runs on the board and potentially generate interest for U.S. fans as the regular season there has ended. People here got to learn the rules anyway so were like if we get to start at a blank canvas then why dont we introduce some new rules that we believe are going to excite them from the onset,” Baseball United CEO and co-owner Kash Shaikh told The Associated Press. The dune of dreams All the games in the season, which ends mid-December, will be played at Baseball United’s stadium out in the reaches of Dubai’s desert in an area known as Ud al-Bayda, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. The stadium sits alongside The Sevens Stadium, which hosts an annual rugby sevens tournament known for hard-partying fans drinking alcohol and wearing costumes. As journalists met Baseball United officials on Thursday, two fighter jets and a military cargo plane came in for landings at the nearby Al Minhad Air Base, flying over a landfill. The field seats some 3,000 fans and will host games mostly at night, though the weather is starting to cool in the Emirates as the season changes. But environmental concerns have been kept in mind Baseball United decided to go for an artificial field to avoid the challenge of using more than 45 million liters (12 million gallons) of water a year to maintain a natural grass field, said John P. Miedreich, a co-founder and executive vice president at the league. We had to airlift clay in from the United States, airlift clay from Pakistan for the pitcher’s mound, he added. There will be four teams competing in the inaugural season. Joining the Cobras and the Monarchs will be the Arabia Wolves, Dubai’s team, and the Mideast Falcons of Abu Dhabi. There are changes to the traditional game in Baseball United, putting a different spin on the game similar to how the Twenty20 format drastically sped up traditional cricket. The baseball league has introduced a golden moneyball,” which gives managers three chances in a game to use at bat to double the runs scored off a home run. Teams can call in designated runners three times during a game. And if a game is tied after nine innings, the teams face off in a home run derby to decide the winner. Its entertainment, and its exciting, and its helping get new fans and young fans more engaged in the game,” Shaikh said. America’s pastime has limited success Baseball in the Middle East has had mixed success, to put a positive spin on the ball. A group of American supporters launched the professional Israel Baseball League in 2007, comprised almost entirely of foreign players. However, it folded after just one season. Americans spread the game in prerevolution Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE over the decades, though it has been dwarfed by soccer. Saudi Arabia, through the Americans at its oil company Aramco, has sent teams to the Little League World Series in the past. But soccer remains a favorite in the Mideast, which hosted the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Then there’s cricket, which remains a passion in both India and Pakistan. The International Cricket Council, the world’s governing body for the sport, has its headquarters in Dubai near the city’s cricket stadium. Organizers know they have their work cut out for them. At one point during a news conference Thursday they went over baseball basics home runs, organ music and where center field sits. The most important part is the experience for fans to come out, eat a hot dog, see mascots running around, to see what baseball traditions that we all grew up with back home in the U.S. and start to fall in love with the game because we know that once they start to learn those, they will become big fans,” Shaikh said. Jon Gambrell, Associated Press
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Every year, American taxpayers are eligible to put a certain amount of money into their retirement accounts, including 401(k)s and IRAs. But each year, the upper allowable threshold for these accounts tends to rise. This is done in order for the limits to keep up with the rate of inflation. And now, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced its new limits for 2026. Heres what you need to know. What is the IRS 2026 401(k) limit? According to a notice published by the IRS on November 13, the limit on individual contributions to various retirement accounts in 2026 is rising. If you have a 401(k), 403(b), governmental 457 plan, or the federal governments Thrift Savings Plan, youll now be able to contribute up to $24,500 for the 2026 year. This represents an increase of $1,000 from the $23,500 limit in place for the 2025 year. But the IRS has also announced new catch-up contribution limits for 401(k), 403(b), governmental 457 plans, and the federal governments Thrift Savings Plan for 2026. The agency says that if you are 50 or older, your catch-up contribution limit will increase by $500 in 2026 to a total of $8,000. Therefore, participants in most 401(k), 403(b), governmental 457 plans and the federal governments Thrift Savings Plan who are 50 and older generally can contribute up to $32,500 each year, starting in 2026, the agency noted. Catch-up contribution limits for employees aged 60 to 63 will remain at $11,250, the same level they were in 2025. What is the IRS 2026 IRA limit? If you have an individual retirement account (IRA), the IRS has announced that the limit for that type of account is rising in 2026, too. In 2026, the new IRA contribution limit will be $7,500. Thats a rise of $500 over the 2025 limit. Additionally, the IRA catchup contribution limit for those aged 50 or over is also rising in 2026. In 2025, that limit was $1,000. But in 2026, that limit is rising by $100 to $1,100. In addition to the 401(k) and IRA contribution limits for 2026, the IRS announced additional changes for Roth IRAs, the Savers Credit, and SIMPLE retirement accounts for 2026. You can find details of all the changes in the IRSs notice here.
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A London judge ruled Friday that global mining company BHP Group is liable in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster when a dam collapse a decade ago unleashed tons of toxic waste into a major river, killing 19 people and devastating villages downstream.High Court Justice Finola O’Farrell said that Australia-based BHP was responsible, despite not owning the dam at the time, finding its negligence, carelessness or lack of skill led to the collapse.Anglo-Australian BHP owns 50% of Samarco, the Brazilian company that operates the iron ore mine where the tailings dam ruptured on Nov. 5, 2015.Sludge from the burst dam destroyed the once-bustling village of Bento Rodrigues in Minas Gerais state and badly damaged other towns. Enough mine waste to fill 13,000 Olympic-size swimming pools poured into the Doce River in southeastern Brazil, damaging 600 kilometers (370 miles) of the waterway and killing 14 tons of freshwater fish, according to a study by the University of Ulster in the U.K. The river, which the Krenak Indigenous people revere as a deity, has yet to recover.A decade later, legal disputes have prolonged reconstruction and reparations and the river is still contaminated with heavy metals. Even as Brazil tries to define itself as a global environmental leader while hosting the U.N. COP30 climate summit, advocacy groups say the dam collapse is a reminder of industry-friendly policies that have ecological protection.Victims of the disaster called the ruling a historic victory in seeking justice.“We had to cross the Atlantic Ocean and go to England to finally see a mining company held to account,” said Mônica dos Santos of the Commission for Those Affected by the Fundo Dam.Gelvana Rodrigues, whose 7-year-old son, Thiago, was killed in a mudslide, celebrated the step forward and said she wouldn’t rest until those responsible are punished.“The judge’s decision shows what we have been saying for the last 10 years: it was not an accident, and BHP must take responsibility for its actions,” Rodrigues said.The judge agreed with lawyers representing 600,000 Brazilians and 31 communities in the class-action case who argued that BHP was heavily involved in the Samarco operation and could have prevented the disaster, but instead encouraged raising the dam to allow more production.“The risk of collapse of the dam was foreseeable,” O’Farrell wrote in the 222-page decision. “It is inconceivable that a decision would have been taken to continue raising the height of the dam in those circumstances and the collapse could have been averted.”BHP said that it plans to appeal.The claimants are seeking 36 billion pounds ($47 billion) in compensation, though the ruling only addressed liability. A second phase of the trial will determine damages.The case was filed in Britain because one of BHP’s two main legal entities was based in London at the time.The trial began in October 2024, just days before the federal government in the South American country reached a multibillion-dollar settlement with the mining companies.Under the agreement, Samarco which is also half owned by Brazilian mining giant Vale agreed to pay 132 billion reais ($23 billion) over 20 years. The payments were meant to compensate for human, environmental and infrastructure damage.BHP had said the U.K. legal action was unnecessary, because it duplicated matters covered by legal proceedings in Brazil.The judge ruled that those who were compensated in the settlement in Brazil could still bring claims, though they might be limited by any waivers they signed.Brandon Craig, BHP’s president of Minerals Americas, said that nearly half of the claimants could be eliminated from the group because of settlement agreements they signed in Brazil.BHP shares fell more than 2% on the London market after the ruling and the company said that it would update its financial provisions. Brian Melley, Associated Press
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