Current Events

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers who had their wages garnished or bank accounts frozen in a surreptitious debt-collection scheme will receive $59 million in a class-action settlement that also bars a major network of collectors from continuing the practice.

The settlement, which was filed late on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, deals a significant blow to an industry that in recent years fed off a recessionary rise in consumer debt actions as companies bought up charged-off debt at low rates and then sought to recover the full debt for themselves.

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Toyota and Nissan have joined Honda in no longer using Japan's troubled Takata as an air bag supplier because its ammonium-nitrate based inflators can explode and injure passengers.

The action comes days after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would fine Takata for supplying faulty airbag inflators to more than 10 automakers.

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When Charles Thompson of Greenville, S.C., checked into the hospital one July morning in 2011, he expected a standard colonoscopy.

He never anticipated how wrong things would go.

Partway through, a doctor emerged from the operating room to tell Thompson’s wife, Ann, that there had been complications: His colon may have been punctured. He needed emergency surgery.

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Two influential U.S. senators, worried about Takata Corp's ability to complete its recall of potentially deadly air bag inflators, sought regulatory guidance on how to hold the Japanese company accountable if its U.S. subsidiary goes bankrupt.

"We have concerns about Takata's financial solvency, which is now at risk ... and that as a result, consumers could be left with defective airbags that no one will be forced to fix," Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal and Edward Markey said in a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday.

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Mercedes-Benz has joined the ranks of automakers troubled by airbag malfunctions, recalling about 126,000 vehicles in the United States, according to a report from the automaker posted this week on the website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The automaker said a control unit in the airbag could malfunction in one of two ways: The airbags might not deploy in a crash, or they might deploy without being in a crash. The action covers 2008-9 C300, C350 and C63 AMG models, as well as the 2010 GLK350.

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Major foodborne outbreaks in the United States have more than tripled in the last 20 years, and the germs most frequently implicated are familiar to most Americans: Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria.

In the most recent five-year period -- from 2010 to 2014 -- these multistate outbreaks were bigger and deadlier than in years past, causing more than half of all deaths related to contaminated food outbreaks, public health officials said Tuesday. A wide variety of foods were involved, ranging from vegetables and fresh fruits to beef and chicken. Some had never before been linked to outbreaks, such as the caramel apples, tainted with Listeria, that led to an outbreak in which seven people died and 34 were hospitalized in late 2014.

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The Japanese maker of air bags linked to the deaths or injuries of dozens of motorists has agreed to pay a record U.S. civil penalty of up to $200 million and have an independent monitor oversee the nation’s largest-ever automotive safety recall.

Under a five-year consent decree reached with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and announced Tuesday, Takata Corp. agreed to pay $70 million and as much as $130 million more in fines if it doesn’t adhere to terms of the settlement, a U.S. regulator said Tuesday.

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Volkswagen’s pollution problems took a costly new turn on Tuesday when the company said it had understated emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, for about 800,000 of its vehicles sold in Europe, and overstated the cars’ fuel economy.

A limited number of gasoline-powered cars are affected, said Eric Felber, a company spokesman, expanding the focus of Volkswagen’s crisis beyond its diesel engines.

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An Omaha, Neb., company is recalling nearly 84 tons of ground beef after federal inspectors traced E. coli to the company on Friday.

All 167,427 pounds were produced by All American Meats, Inc., on Oct. 16 for sale in 60- and 80-pound boxes and shipped to retailers nationwide. No deaths or illnesses have been linked to the contaminated batch.

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Health officials in two states aren’t yet reporting how many people have been sickened in an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning that shuttered Chipotle restaurants in Washington and Oregon, saying more investigation and testing need to be done.

At least 22 people have fallen ill since Oct. 14 in the outbreak tied to the popular Mexican fast-food chain. That includes 19 confirmed cases in Washington and three in Oregon, though officials there say another case is suspected.

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The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday levied additional charges against Volkswagen, pulling its subsidiary Porsche into the global emissions-cheating scandal.

The agency also added a new engine -- the 3.0-liter diesel six-cylinder -- and several more models to the list of vehicles it says were illegally equipped. The models include the 2014 VW Touareg, the 2015 Porsche Cayenne and the 2016 Audi A6 Quattro, A7 Quattro, A8, A8L and Q5.

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