The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating a multistate outbreak of Salmonella infections linked to powdered dietary supplements. According to the latest update from the agency, the outbreak has sickened almost a dozen people, with three hospitalized.
The outbreak has also sparked multiple product recalls. Here’s what to know:
What’s happened?
On Wednesday, November 12, Brooklyn-based Food to Live voluntarily recalled its “Organic Moringa Leaf Powder” and “Organic Supergreens Powder Mix” products due to a risk of Salmonella contamination.
These products were distributed through retail and wholesale channels nationwide.
The FDA published a recall notice on Thursday, November 13.
Both recalled products contain moringa leaf powder supplied by Vallon Farmdirect PVT LTD of Jodhpur, India. The ingredient, which is sold in multiple dietary supplements, is linked to the Salmonella outbreak.
Earlier in October and November, products containing the same ingredient were also recalled. Those products were branded as Members Mark and Africa Imports.
To date, 11 illnesses across seven states have been reported in connection with products containing moringa leaf powder from the same lot.
Which products are impacted by the recalls?
The Food to Live product recall was initiated after the FDA notified the company that a specific supplier lot of organic moringa powder tested positive for Salmonella.
The following products are included in the most recent recall:
Organic Moringa Leaf Powder: Sold in 8-ounce, 1-pound, 2-pound, 4-pound, 8-pound, 16-pound, and 44-pound bags.
Organic Supergreens Powder Mix: Sold in 8-ounce, 1-pound, 1.5-pound, 3-pound, 6-pound, and 12-pound bags.
The recalled products were sold directly on the Food To Live website and were shipped to customers nationwide.
The products were also sold on third-party e-commerce platforms, including:
Amazon.com
Walmart.com
Target
Etsy
eBay
Bulk quantities from the affected lot were sold to food manufacturers and other businesses.
Other products containing moringa powder were recalled earlier. They were sold at various retailers, both in-store and online, and have been likewise linked to the outbreak.
The following products were recalled earlier:
Africa Imports Organic Moringa Leaf Powder: Sold in a 1-kilogram box on the Africa Imports website after June 5, 2025.
Members Mark Super Greens dietary supplement powder: All packages, regardless of lot codes or best buy/use by dates. The product was sold at Sams Club stores nationwide, in-store and online.
All recalled products were manufactured using a single lot of recalled organic moringa leaf powder supplied by Vallon Farmdirect, a food producer based in Jodhpur, India.
What if I have one of these recalled products?
Consumers who have purchased any of the above recalled products should dispose of them or return them to the place of purchase.
Distributors and retailers that have received recalled moringa leaf powder manufactured by Vallon Farmdirect should not use, sell, or distribute any products or ingredients containing it, the FDA says.
Where has the outbreak spread?
The FDA is currently investigating this Salmonella outbreak. The FDAs Moringa Leaf Powder Salmonella outbreak investigation page was last updated on November 13, 2025. A list of recalled products, product images, and other details about the investigation is available.
The FDA has reported 11 illnesses, with three people hospitalized.
Illnesses have been reported in the following states:
Florida
Kansas
Michigan
New York
North Carolina
South Carolina
Virginia
What symptoms should I look out for?
Salmonella infection is a bacterial disease that affects the gastrointestinal tract. Its commonly spread through contaminated food or water.
According to the Mayo Clinic, most people develop diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps within 8 to 72 hours after exposure.
Most healthy people recover within a few days to one week without needing specific treatment. Some people have no symptoms at all.
If you think you have developed symptoms of Salmonella, contact a healthcare provider.
Lawyers representing OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, branches of the Sackler family that own it, cities, states, counties, Native American tribes, people with addiction and others across the U.S. are expected to deliver a nearly unanimous message for a bankruptcy court judge Friday: Approve a plan to settle thousands of opioid-related lawsuits against the company.If U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane abides, it will close a long chapter and maybe the entire book on a legal odyssey over efforts to hold the company to account for its role in an opioid crisis connected to 900,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999, including deaths from heroin and illicit fentanyl.Closing arguments were expected Friday in the third day of a hearing over a bankruptcy plan for the company, which filed for protection six years ago as it faced lawsuits with claims that grew to trillions of dollars.
The opposition is much quieter this time around
The saga has been emotional and full of contentious arguments between the many groups that took Purdue to court, often exposing a possible mismatch between the quest for justice and the practical role of bankruptcy court.The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a previous deal because it said it was improper for Sackler family members to receive immunity from lawsuits over opioids. In the new arrangement, entities who don’t opt into the settlement can sue them. Family members are collectively worth billions, but much of their assets are held in trusts in offshore accounts that would be hard to access through lawsuits.This time, the government groups involved have reached an even fuller consensus and there’s been mostly subdued opposition from individuals. Out of more than 54,000 personal injury victims who voted on whether the plan should be accepted. just 218 said no. A larger number of people who are part of that group didn’t vote.A handful of objectors spoke Thursday at the hearing, sometimes interrupting the judge. Some said that only the victims, not the states and other government entities, should receive the funds in the settlement. Others wanted the judge to find the members of the Sackler family criminally liable something Lane said is beyond the scope of the bankruptcy court, but that the settlement doesn’t bar prosecutors from pursuing.A Florida woman whose husband struggled with addiction after being given OxyContin following an accident told the court that the deal isn’t enough.“The natural laws of karma suggest the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma should pay for what they have done,” Pamela Bartz Halaschak said via video.
Deal would be among the biggest opioid settlements
A flood of lawsuits filed by government entities against Purdue and other drugmakers, drug wholesalers and pharmacy chains began about a decade ago.Most of the major ones have already settled for a total of about $50 billion, with most of the money going to fight the opioid crisis.The Purdue deal would rank among the largest of them. Members of the Sackler family would be required to pay up to $7 billion and give up ownership of the company. None have been on its board or received payments since 2018. Unlike a similar hearing four years ago, none were called to testify in this week’s hearing.The company would get a name change and new overseers who would dedicate future profits to battling the opioid crisis.There are also some non-financial provisions. Certain members of the Sackler family would be required to give up involvement in companies that sell opioids in other countries.Family members would also be barred from having their names added to institutions in exchange for charitable contributions. The name has already been removed from museums and universities.And company documents, including many that would normally be subject to lawyer-client privilege, are to be made public.
Some people hurt by Purdue’s opioids would receive some money
Unlike the other major opioid settlements, individuals harmed by Purdue’s products would be in line for some money as part of the settlement. About $850 million would be set aside for them, with more than $100 million of that amount carved out to help children born dealing with opioid withdrawal.About 139,000 people have active claims for the money. Many of them, however, have not shown proof that they were prescribed Purdue’s opioids and will receive nothing. Lawyers expect that those who had prescriptions for at least six months would receive about $16,000 each and those who had them more briefly would get around $8,000. Legal fees would reduce what people actually receive.One woman who had a family member suffer from opioid addiction told the court by video Thursday that the settlement doesn’t help people with substance use disorder.“Tell me how you guys can sleep at night knowing people are going to get so little money they can’t do anything with it,” asked Laureen Ferrante of Staten Island, New York.Most of the money is to go to state and local governments to be used in their efforts to mitigate damage of the opioid epidemic. Overdose death numbers have been dropping in the past few years, a decline experts believe is partly due to the impact of settlement dollars.
Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press
President Donald Trump has worked to blame Democrats for the government shutdown, but a majority of Americans are unconvinced that it’s Democrats’ fault.
Trump’s administration has used the levers of the state to communicate partisan messages during the shutdown, which ended November 13. Ultimately, however, messaging through government channels like web design, out-of-office email replies, and public service announcements weren’t enough.
A 52% majority of Americans blame Trump or Republican lawmakers for the shutdown, according to a poll this week from Stack Data Strategy, a London market research firm.
That’s in line with an NBC News poll last month that found 52% blamed Trump and Republican lawmakers. And a YouGov poll released last week found more voters rate how Democrats in Congress handled the shutdown slightly better than Trump or Republicans in Congress. These are slim majorities, but they also show the limits of Trump’s influence over public opinion when it comes to the shutdown.
“Nobody wins in a shutdown,” Kenneth Cosgrove, a professor in the department of political science and legal studies at Suffolk University, tells Fast Company in an email. “The question is which party gets more of the blame? Traditionally it’s been Congress just because of the media and marketing advantages the executive branch has.”
But Trump himself hasn’t been fully engaged with ending the shutdown as his attention has been split between other efforts, including trips abroad to the Middle East and Asia, and overseeing his White House renovation project.
Trump “wasn’t very visible,” during the shutdown, Cosgrove says. “Plus, how many people look at government websites on a regular basis? Probably not that many.”
Most people aren’t browsing the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) website, where a bright red banner for the duration of the shutdown said “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government.” And because major airports refused to air a video filmed with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for the shutdown, many travelers didn’t see it even as they spent extra hours at the airport due to delays and cancellations.
With any political messaging, there are two important questions: “How many people actually saw or heard the message, and what else were they seeing or hearing?” says Yana Krupnikov, a professor of communications and media at the University of Michigan.
“The information environment around us is so fullyes, we have messages on websites and out-of-office emails, but we also have news coverage from various sources, and we have people on social media. People also talk to each other,” Krupnikov says.
It’s also not as if Democrats come out of the shutdown unscathed. The deal to reopen the government came from a handful of Senate Democrats who crossed party lines. The resulting deal doesn’t include Affordable Care Act subsidies, meaning millions of Americans’ health insurance premiums are expected to go up. The deal to reopen the government is unpopular with many Democratic lawmakers, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
Still, it turns out tearing down the East Wing draws more attention than a Department of Education OOO message ever could, and SNAP cuts and canceled flights resonate more deeply with the public than a White House website shutdown countdown clock blaming Democrats. In a busy news environment, it’s hard to break through, even for Trump.
A team of researchers has uncovered what they say is the first reported use of artificial intelligence to direct a hacking campaign in a largely automated fashion.
The AI company Anthropic said this week that it disrupted a cyber operation that its researchers linked to the Chinese government. The operation involved the use of an artificial intelligence system to direct the hacking campaigns, which researchers called a disturbing development that could greatly expand the reach of AI-equipped hackers.
While concerns about the use of AI to drive cyber operations are not new, what is concerning about the new operation is the degree to which AI was able to automate some of the work, the researchers said.
While we predicted these capabilities would continue to evolve, what has stood out to us is how quickly they have done so at scale,” they wrote in their report.
The operation was modest in scope and only targeted about 30 individuals who worked at tech companies, financial institutions, chemical companies, and government agencies. Anthropic noticed the operation in September and took steps to shut it down and notify the affected parties.
The hackers only succeeded in a small number of cases, according to Anthropic, which noted that while AI systems are increasingly being used in a variety of settings for work and leisure, they can also be weaponized by hacking groups working for foreign adversaries. Anthropic, maker of the generative AI chatbot Claude, is one of many tech companies pitching AI agents that go beyond a chatbot’s capability to access computer tools and take actions on a person’s behalf.
Agents are valuable for everyday work and productivity but in the wrong hands, they can substantially increase the viability of large-scale cyberattacks, the researchers concluded. These attacks are likely to only grow in their effectiveness.
A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the report.
Microsoft warned earlier this year that foreign adversaries were increasingly embracing AI to make their cyber campaigns more efficient and less labor-intensive.
Americas adversaries, as well as criminal gangs and hacking companies, have exploited AIs potential, using it to automate and improve cyberattacks, to spread inflammatory disinformation, and to penetrate sensitive systems. AI can translate poorly worded phishing emails into fluent English, for example, as well as generate digital clones of senior government officials.
Americans have done a shoddy job of teaching reading and math to the majority of our students. Our scores, when compared to other nationsmost with fewer resourcesare plummeting.
As a scientist, I try to stay solution oriented. To ensure that we bend the curve and change the future, we must first concede that we have failed our students. We’re at the dawn of a new educational erathe age of artificial intelligence. And there is no way we will get it right in this new era if we are still struggling with the previous one.
As a congenital optimist, I am hopeful that when it comes to teaching AII mean this in its broadest sense, well beyond the practice of codingthat we will learn from our mistakes and get it right this time.
My genetic positivity is reinforced by two recent developments that are important milestones in building a national consensus for assuring that we create generational AI skills and wisdom.
The White Houses executive order
Trump’s executive order speaks directly to the existential need for our country to cultivate the skills and understanding to use and create the next generation of AI technology. Upon its issuance, I wrote a column commending its intention. But I also noted, speaking as president and CEO of the Center of Science and Industry (COSI), a board member of the National Academies of Sciences, and a lifelong STEM advocate, that the EO was insufficient: We cannot teach AI without also teaching critical thinking, ethics, and wisdom.
Since then, I was asked to participate in the White House Task Force on AI Education that is guiding the implementation of the EO, and is also establishing public-private partnerships with leading stakeholders in AI. COSI is part of this group and we have signed on to President Trump’s pledge to invest in AI education.
I recently attended a meeting of the White House Task Force on AI Education, where the inexorable link between national security, economic prosperity, and AI proficiency was the dominant theme. I would summarize it as: We need to winand we must be the global leader in AI capabilities to keep America on top.
Yesbut how?
The state of Ohio creates a new state of tomorrow
After the meeting, I returned to Ohio, which has joined the AI conversation in a big way. Ohio is the first state to require that every school district adopt formal policies to govern AI use in schools.
To put it simply, the EO urges the mustthat AI education needs to be a priority. The Ohio regulation, by contrast, insists on the how. It proceeds from the recognition that our schools will be teaching the technology of the future, and demands that the complex nuances of how be determined and agreed to.
Chris Woolard, the chief integration officer at the Ohio Department of Education, described the challenge as creating new guardrails that include ground rules for privacy, data quality, ethical use, and academic honesty. And, importantly, What are the critical thinking skills that are needed for students.
Beyond just governed, to taught
I commend what Ohio has done. But there is a long way to go. To build foundational pedagogical techniques for the teaching of AI, with no baseline, no historical data, and no trials, is far from trivial. In fact, it is enormously complicated, as we have seen from our inability to effectively teach STEM. Ohios regulatory framework, which other states should follow, will involve the creation of new practices and metrics and will require vast sensitivity and nuance, given that every single aspect of education can be weaponized in our undeniably fraught world of culture wars.
But we can learn from our mistakes. For example, so-called whole languageversus phonicsis ineffective for the 20% of children with dyslexia. We need to bring all children into the future, and to do that we need to assure that AI literacy becomes a core marker of educational success. Interestingly enough, AI can help with this
Teaching AI is like developing AI. Sort of
The rapid evolution of AI comes from the process of training the model; it is how the large language models (LLMs) learn and improve in an iterative and focused manner. But it is also a black box in many ways, which cannot be the case with how we teach AI in our schools. Only transparency and continual improvement will ensure that our K-12 students develop the skills necessary to succeed in a changing workforce.
None of this will be easy. AI represents a profound turning point; the EO is broad and conceptual, while our Constitution assigns the responsibility of education to the states. But nothing can be more important, and I call upon educators everywhere to come together and work together.
What makes their mission even more challenging is that AI is changing all the time, and with such speed. So those teaching it must also be capable of commensurate change. But educational standards tend to be fixed. It is hard enough to set them, let alone to build in agility and responsiveness.
I look forward to working with educators, continuing to participate with the AI Task Force, to help develop standards and guardrails that are as responsive and dynamic as artificial intelligence itself. Indeed, the time is now.
AI was supposed to make our lives easier: automating tedious tasks, streamlining communication, and freeing up time for creative thinking. But what if the very tool meant to increase efficiency is fueling cognitive decline and burnout instead?
The Workflation Effect
Since AI entered the workplace, managers expect teams to produce more work in less time. They see tasks completed in two hours instead of two weeks, without understanding the process behind it. Yet, AI still makes too many mistakes for high-quality output, forcing workers to adjust, edit, and review everything it producescreating workflation, which adds more work to already overloaded plates. AI has accelerated expectations because managers know that teams using it can work faster, but quality work still requires time, focus, and expertise.
“We are seeing that it can lead to a lot of churn and work sloppoor quality output, in particular when it’s being used by junior team members,” says Carey Bentley, CEO of Lifehack Method, a productivity coaching company. When team members lack the expertise to audit AI output, they take it at face value, which can lead to multimillion-dollar errors.
The percentage of companies using AI in at least one business function is rising every year, and one of the most popular uses is in marketing. However, many brands flood social media with formulaic, off-putting content that prioritizes speed over emotional connection, sacrificing creativity and differentiation.
The consequences of using AI without proper quality review aren’t just about brand reputation or lost dealsthey also add stress while eroding workers’ creativity, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking.
Cognitive Decline and Burnout with AI
Research from MIT shows that relying on AI tools to think for us, rather than with us, leads to cognitive offloadingoutsourcing mental effort in ways that gradually weaken memory, problem-solving, and critical thinking.
The study found that participants using GPT-based tools showed measurable declines in these areas compared to control groups. Just as GPS impairs spatial memory, relying on AI for thinking may weaken our capacity for original thought, because the brain needs practice to maintain cognitive functions.
When we layer that cognitive debt on top of the relentless pace that AI enables, we aren’t just doing more work; we’re doing it with diminished mental capacity. Workers are reviewing AI outputs without having the time to thoroughly evaluate the quality, making decisions without space for reflection, and producing content without engaging the creative processes that generate real insight.
In the long term, the overwhelm leads to small mistakes, such as forgetting to add a document, not finishing an edit, or missing a deadline; these are the first signs of burnout. It really starts small, and that’s why it gets missed so often,” explains Naomi Carmen, a business consultant specializing in leadership and company culture.
These minor errors arent signs of laziness, distraction, or disengagement, and when managers respond with performance reviews instead of support, the cycle only accelerates.
The Training Gap
Most people using AI haven’t been adequately trained, confusing its confidence for truth. Neuroscientist David Eagleman refers to this as the “intelligence echo illusion”the perception that AI is intelligent because it responds with apparent insight, when in reality it merely reflects stored human knowledge.
Without understanding how AI works, leadership develops unrealistic expectations that cascade through organizations, requiring faster and higher-quality work that’s nearly impossible to sustain.
“Expecting your team to use AI without proper training is like handing them a Ferrari and expecting them to win races right away,” Bentley explains. Carmen adds, “The input is going to directly affect the output.”
Warning Signs AI Is Fueling Burnout
According to a 2024 study by The Upwork Research Institute, 77% of employees believe their workload has increased since they started using AI. Key warning signs include:
Errors and delays: mistakes slip through because workers rush to meet unrealistic deadlines.
Not feeling time savings: employees work harder than ever despite using “time-saving” tools.
Always-on culture: leadership sets expectations at AI-speed, resulting in an always-on culture that multiplies workload and stress.
How to Use AI Without Burning People Out
The solution isn’t abandoning AI, but implementing it thoughtfully. Here are four ways to do it:
Proper training: hire experts to audit existing workflows and provide recommendations, then show team members how to produce high-quality output.
Clear goals: connect AI use to specific KPIs instead of chasing trends. Companies should remain rooted in their core mission and values, rather than adopting every new AI tool.
Treat AI as a low-level assistant: use it for research, initial drafts, and data organization, but keep creative problem-solving and critical thinking in the hands of humans.
Support your team: life events, stress, and fatigue mean employees cant deliver at a constant, AI-driven pace. Leadership should keep the human element at the center of decisions, recognizing that policies and expectations must account for the complexity of real lives, not just the output.
Moving Forward with AI
In an era defined by AI, sustainable performance comes from empathy, connection, and space for creativity. A healthy workplacewhere employees can rest, express themselves, and even have unboosts engagement, problem-solving, innovation, and efficiency. AI can support this, but only when implemented thoughtfully, with the human element at its core.
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
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.
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
In the late 2010s, at the height of the direct-to-consumer boom, Framebridge founder Susan Tynan was green with envy. Many other venture-backed startups from the eralike Casper, Away, and Glossierwere growing much faster than her custom framing business.
While these other buzzy brands focused on acquiring customers and growing revenue, Tynan was using her $81 million in venture funding to tackle more arduous operational issues, like building factories and hiring hundreds of craftspeople to make frames by hand.
Eleven years into the business, Tynan’s slow, steady approach to growth is paying off. Framebridge now has 750 employees, 500 of whom work at the company’s four factories in Kentucky, Virginia, and Nevada. Meanwhile, its brick-and-mortar footprint is growing rapidly, with 10 new stores opening last year (it now operates 40 physical stores) and more planned.
Tynan says that by investing in Framebridge’s infrastructure early on, she built a moat around the business that has allowed it to ward off competitors. And now the company is in a position to scale rapidly, actively looking to expand its network of brick-and-mortar locations, possibly into the hundreds.
Meanwhile, many DTC startups that Tynan once envied are fending off challengers that have created similar products, from mattresses-in-a-box to design-forward luggage. “Framebridge was a hard business to build, but that’s why it’s impossible to replicate,” says Tynan. “We’re now reaping the benefits.”
The DTC Boom and Bust
Today you’ll find a custom framing shop in most towns: By one estimate, there are more than 15,000 in the United States. But custom framing is notoriously expensive and takes a long time, which turns off many consumers who are happy to settle for a cheaper prefabricated frame they can buy from Michaels or Amazon.
As Tynan studied the framing business model, she found the industry laden with inefficiencies. Most frame shops are owned by a single person. Since the store can’t afford to keep hundreds of mats and frame options in stock, it will order the components only once the customer has made their selection. Buying in such small quantities is expensive; its also time-consuming to send out for these pieces and construct the frame in-store. Tynan, who started her career as a tech executive, decided to launch Framebridge because she believed she could make framing cheaper, faster, and more convenient.
Like many other VC-backed DTC startups, Framebridge was meant to disrupt a dusty industry. But Tynans business model was far more complex than those of peer brands of the 2010s. Startups like Casper and Away, which redesigned common consumer products, worked with overseas factories to make them, then sold the products online.
Framebridge, by comparison, needed to build out a complex logistical operation to create custom frames at scale. This would involve setting up factories in the States and hiring artisans to build custom frames. In 2020, Graham Holdings Co. (GHC) acquired Framebridge for an undisclosed amount, giving Framebridge’s investors a payout. The sale meant that Framebridge had a deep-pocketed holding company that would allow Tynan to keep investing in factories and other infrastructure at a time when many other DTC operations were seeking out ever-larger sums of VC capital or exploring an IPO.
Taryn Jones Laeben, who served as the chief commercial officer of Casper until 2018 before founding the VC firm IRL Ventures, believes Framebridge owes its success largely to one unique factor. “What makes Framebridge special is its supply chain,” she says. “Businesses that survived the DTC era are the ones that are truly differentiated. But investing in factories is complex because it is capital intensive and prevents you from being nimble. For Framebridge, it has clearly paid off.”
While GHC, which generated $4.7 billion last year, does not break out revenue for individual companies, its annual report noted that “Framebridge posted real growth in 2024.” That said, the report described Framebridge as an “investment stage business” that is not profitable yet.
The upshot is that its much harder to copy Framebridge’s business. Over the past five years, many DTC brands have struggled to acquire new customers, partly because a wave of competitors have popped up. Away is now competing with Monos, July, and Antler. The beauty and mattress industries have hundreds of direct-to-consumer players. To gain market share under these conditions, brands must continue pumping money into marketing and advertising. But no other companies have yet been able to replicate what Framebridge is doing.
The Moat
In 2014, the Framebridge website went live. It allowed customers to send in art or upload digital photographs to be framed and delivered back to them.
It seemed like a simple service. But Tynan had spent the previous two yearsand $3 million in seed fundingto build out a factory in Richmond, Virginia. She hired a team of expert framers as well as some people from other creative professions who enjoy the work of framing. “I found someone who sold mantles on Etsy,” she recalls. “He loves using his hands.”
Framebridge orders large volumes of framing materials, which allows the company to charge less per frame than the average neighborhood framer. Small frames start at $50; larger pieces, like an 18-by-24-inch frame, cost $155. (This is roughly half of what my local frame shop in Boston charges.)
Framebridge’s concept resonated with customers, especially digital-native millennials who were already ordering everything from mattresses to house plants on the internet. Within three years of launch, the company had generated $58 million in revenue.
Laeben, the VC investor, says Tynan was smart about how her startup used its $81 million in VC capital. While many brands of the era were investing in customer acquisition, Framebridge was focused on infrastructure that would give it longevity. “They spent their money on durable, defensible strategies as opposed to acquiring customers on social media who might not even purchase from the company again,” she says. “Looking back, customer acquisition was basically like lighting money on fire.”
Many investors would not have been satisfied with Framebridge’s pace of growth, Laeben points out. “DTC is a very broad category. There are many sectors wher it makes sense to grow slowly and profitably, but this means being aligned with your investors on what your goals are, she explains.
As Framebridge grew, Tynan recognized the many benefits of having physical stores. While its possible to visualize frames on the companys website, some customers simply want to see what the materials look like in person. More crucially, there are people who want to do business at a physical location where they can bring their expensive art and irreplaceable, precious keepsakes in person, rather than sending them through the mail, where they could be damaged or lost. So in 2019 Framebridge opened its first two stores in the Washington, D.C., area, and quickly began opening others in major cities such as New York and Boston.
Tynan also decided to buy a fleet of trucks to transport people’s items from the stores to the factory in Virginia. This is another complex, expensive part of the businessbut one that Tynan believes strengthen’s her company’s “moat,” making it even less likely that a competitor will spring up. “If [customers] were going to send in their baby blanket or an antique family photograph, they needed to know it wouldn’t get lost,” Tynan says. “It was important to customers that their things remained in our chain of custody throughout the whole process.”
The Framebridge store footprint is much smaller than a traditional frame shop, since no actual framing happens on-site. The stores sometimes serve simply as a way to introduce people to the brand. Framebridge often hosts in-store events, offering free portrait sessions or photos with Santa during the holidays.
While some DTC brands saw retail stores primarily as a marketing engine, Tynan thought it was crucial that Framebridge learn how to run these stores profitably. “This wasn’t a pop-up strategy,” she says. “As a startup, you want to test a lot of things, but if you test them halfway, you don’t know if they’re actually going to work. So we put our best foot forward with these stores.”
The Future of Framing
Today, Framebridge still doesn’t have a major competitor that does what it can do. Instead, its biggest source of competition is the traditional, neighborhood frame shop. But Tynan says her goal isn’t to put these places out of business.
She points out that Framebridge has a particularly modern, millennial-oriented aesthetic that isn’t necessarily for everyone. And store associates are trained to point customers to other framing shops nearby if Framebridge doesn’t have what theyre looking for. “We have a curated assortment of frames,” Tynan says. “We have a point of view.”
Still, she believes there’s a lot of room to grow. Given how expensive custom framing has been in the past, few consumers create bespoke frames for their art. Most just buy premade frames. By offering less-expensive options and offering customers the ability to make selections online, Tynan hopes that Framebridge will appeal to people who might never have thought to custom frame their keepsakes or art before. “In many ways, she says, we’re only just starting to scale.”
