By taking a step back, Franz Beckenbauer put himself a step ahead.

The “libero” — taken from the Italian word for “free” and describing a player who had a covering role behind a defensive line — was not an entirely new concept to soccer by the late 1960s and early 1970s.

It was just that nobody who’d played in that rare position had ever done so with the vision, grace and ability on the ball demonstrated by Beckenbauer, the soccer revolutionary

NEW YORK (AP) — Prominent Muslim journalist Mehdi Hasan has decided to quit MSNBC rather than accept a demotion that saw him lose a regular Sunday night program on the network.

Hasan announced at the end of Sunday show that “I’ve decided to look for a new challenge. This is not just my final episode of ‘The Mehdi Hasan Show,’ it’s my last day at MSNBC.”

The network had announced in November that Hasan would lose his weekly show after three years but would remain as

TORONTO — Some of the most active companies traded Monday on the Toronto Stock Exchange:

Toronto Stock Exchange (21,074.91, up 137.36 points):

Toronto-Dominion Bank. (TSX:TD). Finance. Up 81 cents, or 0.94 per cent, to $86.89 on 13.6 million shares.

TC Energy Corp. (TSX:TRP). Energy. Up 26 cents, or 0

After Indigenous remains were discovered at a construction site in Riverdale on Friday, work is now being done to determine what steps will be taken next.

Philip Cote of Moose Deer Point First Nation, a well-known Indigenous artist, activist and historian in Toronto, tells CityNews the Riverdale Neighbourhood is rich with Indigenous history.

“Those people, they have been here a long time, and they are coming to the surface, and they want us to tell their story.”

The remains were discovered by a construction crew installing

BAGHDAD (AP) — A fire erupted Monday evening at a hospital in southern Iraq, sending smoke through a maternity ward and killing four babies who had been born prematurely, health officials said.

The fire started at a pile of debris belonging to a construction company working on renovations at Women and Children’s Hospital in Diwaniyiah, Iraqi Health Minister Saleh al-Hasnawi told journalists at the scene.

The hospital building did not burn but it was filled with smoke, and the four infants died of chest problems as a result

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Five companies have agreed to pay the federal government more than $7.2 million overall to resolve claims stemming from longstanding pollution in two adjacent creeks in the Maumee River watershed in northwestern Ohio.

The settlement with Ohio Refining Co., Chevron USA, Energy Transfer LLC, Pilkington North America and Chemtrade Logistics was announced Monday by the U.S. Department of Justice. Officials said a federal judge must approve the deal before it takes effect.

According to a complaint, the companies are

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A crash between a minibus transporting tourists and a truck in Brazil’s northeastern Bahia state left 25 dead, the state’s firefighters corps said Monday on its official Instagram account.

The accident occurred Sunday night around 10:30 p.m. local time on a highway near the city of Sao Jose do Jacuipe. Another six people were injured.

Newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that the minibus was heading back to the city of Jacobina after a trip to

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A campaign to save Benito the giraffe from extreme temperatures and a small enclosure in Mexico’s arid northern border city of Ciudad Juarez has finally paid off, with officials promising to move him to a more spacious animal park 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) to the south.

Benito arrived in Ciudad Juarez, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas, in May 2023 as a 3-year-old, and since then

UPPER DARBY, Pa. (AP) — Federal investigators say they have been unable to determine what caused a medical flight to go haywire before without losing any lives nearly two years ago.

The pilot somehow avoided a web of power lines and buildings as it came out of a nose-dive, slamming sideways to the ground next to a church in suburban Philadelphia.

The National Transportation Safety Board said in its final report dated Jan. 4 that the Eurocopter EC135 was flying from Chambersburg toward a Philadelphia hospital at