Current Events

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.

Read More

A few months before he took a toxic mix of drugs and died on a stranger’s couch, Nicklaus Ellison wrote a letter to his little sister.

He asked for Jolly Ranchers, Starburst and Silly Bandz bracelets, some of the treats permitted at the substance abuse program he attended in Florida. Then, almost as an aside, Mr. Ellison wrote about how the Christian-run program that was supposed to cure his drug and alcohol problem had instead “de-gayed” him.

Read More

WASHINGTON — A case about false information on the Internet gave rise to a vivid and occasionally personal argument on Monday at the Supreme Court.
Stories from Our Advertisers

The question in the case was whether companies that say false but seemingly benign things about consumers may be sued under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that many sorts of apparently harmless misinformation could cause damage.

Read More

On Page 5 of a credit card contract used by American Express, beneath an explainer on interest rates and late fees, past the details about annual membership, is a clause that most customers probably miss. If cardholders have a problem with their account, American Express explains, the company “may elect to resolve any claim by individual arbitration.”

Read More

Honda Motor Co. is recalling 2016 models of its popular CR-V small sport-utility vehicle because of a new, potentially deadly Takata Corp. air-bag defect.

The Honda recall, posted to its website late Friday, involves a manufacturing defect in a metal housing surrounding the driver’s air-bag inflator. In the event of a crash triggering an air-bag deployment, “the inflator could rupture, with metal fragments striking the driver or other occupants, resulting in serious injury or death,” Honda said in documents posted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website Saturday.

Read More

A new study showing the potential for children in rear-facing car seats to hit their heads during rear-end crashes worries some safety experts, who say they’re concerned it will wrongly discourage parents from keeping children in the safest rear-facing position.

The study, published in the October issue of the Journal of Traffic Injury Prevention, found that an infant-sized crash-test dummy registered serious head injuries when its rear-facing car seat pitched forward — toward the back of the vehicle — in rear-end crash tests. Test videos show the top of the car seat and the dummy’s exposed head being thrown into the back of the vehicle seat in which the car seat was attached. The estimated head injuries were more severe, the study found, when the car seat was attached via the vehicle seat’s lower “LATCH” anchors compared with seat belts.

Read More

Even though they haven't been at fault, self-driving test cars are involved in crashes at five times the rate of conventional cars, a new study finds.

Even when the figures are adjusted to take into account that many accidents involving conventional cars go unreported, the study from the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute found that the rate is still twice as high.

Read More

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — All five Gulf of Mexico states have reached a settlement with the owner of the offshore drilling rig involved in the 2010 BP oil spill.

A filing from Transocean and attorneys for Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas says all of the states have entered a settlement agreement. The filing was dated Tuesday. Alabama's governor announced that state's settlement with Transocean last week.

Read More

WASHINGTON—The tire registration and recall process is broken, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, and the agency has 11 sweeping recommendations to fix it.

Mandatory point-of-sale tire registration, electronic means of capturing registration information, full tire identification numbers on both sidewalls and easy-to-use safety recall lookup sites are among the major recommendations made by the NTSB in the special investigation report on passenger vehicle tire safety it approved 4-0 at a public meeting Oct. 27.

Read More

After an investigation by federal regulators, Honda said on Thursday that it would recall more than 300,000 2008-9 Accords because the side airbags could deploy without the vehicle being in a crash. Honda said it was aware of 19 minor injuries.

The automaker said if the ignition was on and the door was “forcefully slammed” the side airbags could deploy. Honda blamed the problem on a sensor being improperly calibrated, and said it could be corrected with a software update. The action also includes about 20,000 vehicles in Canada and about 10,600 in Mexico.

Read More

Volkswagen executives on Wednesday signaled that the cost of the automaker's emissions scandal will mushroom but indicated that the company can absorb the blow.

New Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller, speaking to American reporters in a conference call, pledged to overhaul the company's operations, expose wrongdoers and chart a new global strategy.

Read more.