Current Events

The U.S. Justice Department charged 243 people, including 46 doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, with defrauding the Medicare system of $712 million through false billing.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the charges Thursday in Washington, calling the case the largest sweep of individuals in the history of task forces that target such fraud.

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Honda Motor confirmed on Friday that an airbag rupture killed the driver of a rented 2001 Civic in September 2014, making it the eighth death linked to faulty airbags made by the Japanese supplier Takata.

Jewel Brangman, 26, died after the driver-side airbag inflater in her rental car ruptured in a crash on Sept. 7 in Los Angeles, Honda said in a statement.

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Automatic braking systems, a relatively new safety feature in some vehicles and a critical part of autonomous cars of the future, are facing complaints from drivers who say some are activating for no apparent reason.

U.S. safety investigators recently started looking at complaints from 2014 model year Jeep Grand Cherokees drivers who said their automatic brakes deployed even though there was no evidence of danger. That follows a May recall by Honda Motor Co. for 2014 and 2015 Acura sport-utility vehicles that could unexpectedly brake hard if they were driving next to an iron fence while a car in front of them simultaneously accelerates.

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Toyota added 1.36 million cars Tuesday to its list of those needing repairs due to the government's expansion of the Takata air bag recalls.

Toyota's action comes a day after Honda said it will recall another 1.39 million cars to replace the same component, the front passenger air bag inflators.

These recalls were expected as part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's expanded recall of the faulty airbags, to which it says it added 33.8 million cars. Since the announcement, 11 affected automakers have been trying to figure out which of their models need to be included.

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(Updates with Honda statement from the fifth paragraph.)

The statement comes just days after the mother of Kylan Langlinais filed a lawsuit claiming that when her daughter’s Honda Civic hit a utility pole in April the air bag deployed with too much force and sprayed shrapnel that ultimately led to her death.

“After examination of the vehicle and other evidence, NHTSA has concluded that a ruptured Takata air-bag inflator is likely to have been involved,” Mark Rosekind, the agency’s administrator, said in an e-mailed statement Friday without commenting on the lawsuit.

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You can add racketeering charges to the problems facing General Motors. Lawyers representing consumers who are suing GM over faulty ignition switches have added racketeering allegations to their suit, claiming the company conspired to conceal the safety defect that has been blamed for more than 100 deaths.

The government has not brought any criminal charges against GM, although the automaker did pay a $35 million fine for not alerting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to the defective switches quickly enough.

GM has recalled 2.6 million vehicles equipped with ignition switches that can upexpectedly shut off the engine. That, in turn, cuts power to the airbags, power steering, brakes and other onboard equipment.

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Washington — A seventh death may be linked to a defective Takata air bag that’s part of the largest-ever auto safety recall in U.S. history.

The family of a Louisiana woman killed in a crash in a 2005 Honda Civic in April filed suit in U.S. District Court citing that the crash may have been caused by a defective Takata air bag sending metal fragments into the driver.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has reached out to Honda and Takata to gather more information.

NHTSA spokesman Gordon Trowbride said the agency "is aware of this crash, and we are working to gather information from Honda and from the attorney in the case."

The defect is linked to at least 95 incidents of improper deployments and more than 100 injuries.

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As the drumbeat for adding collision avoidance technology as standard equipment on new vehicles gets louder, Acura’s recall of two models due to a problem with similar technology shows it is not infallible.

The brand recalled nearly 48,000 MDX and RLX models from 2014 and 2015 because the automatic emergency braking systems can malfunction. Acura’s “Collision Mitigation Braking System” can misinterpret the data it receives causing the vehicle to brake unnecessarily causing a rear-end collision.

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It started with a hunch about malfunctioning highway guardrails. It led to the biggest known whistle-blower award in U.S. history.

Joshua Harman, a Virginian with two small highway safety companies, made a discovery in late 2011 that perhaps only a guardrail maker could: A big competitor had changed the dimensions of its roadside safety device by as much as an inch here and there, he said, without telling federal regulators.

As designed, Trinity Industries Inc.’s ET-Plus system was meant to turn the end of a guardrail into a de facto shock absorber. The altered units, as Harman saw it, were locking up when hit, spearing cars and their occupants.

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A Texas lawyer representing plaintiffs who are suing General Motors Co. over its ignition switch has filed a motion accusing the Detroit automaker and its outside law firm King & Spalding of conspiring to cover up the defect.

Lawyer Bob Hilliard filed a motion Thursday in the class-action lawsuits consolidated in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeking additional documents from GM and Atlanta-based King & Spalding, accusing them of “burying what they knew” and settling cases that could have shed light on the deadly defect.

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Washington — The General Motors Co. ignition switch compensation fund said Monday that two more death claims were approved last week, hiking the total to 111.

The fund run by lawyer Ken Feinberg said it has also approved 12 new injury claims, bringing the total number of approved claims for injuries to 220. Of that total, 12 are for serious injuries and 179 are for less severe injuries.

GM is paying at least $1 million in each death claim and has set aside $550 million to pay claims.

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