Current Events

The Ford Explorer is the best-selling midsize SUV in the country, with around one million on the road. But hundreds of customers say the vehicles might be making them sick.

Hundreds of people who own Explorers describe it as a sulfur or rotten egg smell coming into the car while they are driving, reports CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave. It’s exhaust, from the rear of the vehicle, and they worry it could be toxic. One police officer we spoke with said it nearly killed him.
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Hyundai Motor America is recalling the 2017 Hyundai Elantra to fix a potentially serious problem with the car's brake booster. The recall affects 33,803 Elantra vehicles registered in the U.S.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Elantra's brake booster was supplied by Mando America Corporation, based in Hogansville, Georgia. Unfortunately, some of them were improperly manufactured, and as a result, "the diaphragm in the brake booster may unseat, resulting in a vacuum leak and reduction or loss in power brake assist".
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General Motors has announced plans to recall some 91,007 Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky Roadsters built for the 2006-2010 model years. Documents from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reveal that one the airbags in those vehicles may be disabled, increasing the risk of injury to occupants during crashes.

The problem affects the front passenger-side airbag and is linked to the passenger airbag suppression (PPS) system, which was manufactured by IEE Sensing Inc. That system determines whether an adult is sitting in the passenger's seat and turns on or off the airbags accordingly.

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Abbott Laboratories, which acquired Minnesota medical device maker St. Jude Medical last month, is halting use of a commercially promising blood pump in the U.S. and Europe following a patient death and several malfunctions.

The device at issue, the HeartMate PHP catheter, consists of a propeller inside a thin wire cage that is inserted in the heart to keep blood flowing at a predictable rate during a procedure to unblock clogged blood vessels.
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More than 300,000 BMW owners will soon be eligible to claim their portion of a $478 million settlement over allegations that a design defect resulted in water damage to electrical components in vehicles’ trunks.

Reuters reports that the settlement, filed in U.S. District Court in New York last week, resolves a class-action lawsuit that claimed the carmaker knew for years about an issue in the affected vehicles that could cause water damage, interferring with the vehicle’s electrical components including lights, speedometer, and wipers, but did nothing to address the problem.

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General Motors is recalling more than 17,000 Cruze vehicles from the 2016 and 2017 model years. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the seats in some of those vehicles may have been improperly manufactured.

The problem is limited to the Cruze's driver and front passenger seats. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a bracket on those seats "may have been incorrectly welded to the seat-back frame." If that's the case, it's possible that the head-restraints won't work as intended, increasing the risk of injury during collisions.
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Doctors and hospitals failed to tell the Food and Drug Administration about cases in which cancer was spread around inside women’s bodies by a surgical tool used to operate on the uterus, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office.

Scattering cancer cells worsens the disease and decreases a patient’s chances of long-term survival.

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According to court documents, Vaginal Mesh Injury lawsuit claims continue to be filed nationwide. Many thousands of women who had a vaginal mesh or bladder sling implanted to treat pelvic organ prolapse (POP) or stress urinary incontinence (SUI) have experienced serious injuries, devastating urinary incontinence, recurrent bladder infections and other major side effects from the commonly used popular plastic medical devices.

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A Texas physician has been awarded $11.4 million in a federal whistleblower lawsuit against a major U.S. hospital service provider.

Dr.
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German automaker BMW AG (BMWG.DE) has agreed to pay up to $477.7 million to settle a class-action lawsuit covering about 318,000 U.S. luxury car owners who may have suffered water damage harming electrical components in vehicle trunks.
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Japan's Takata Corp is set to plead guilty Feb. 27 in federal court in Detroit to a single felony count of wire fraud to resolve a U.S. Justice Department investigation into ruptures of its air bag inflators linked to at least 16 deaths worldwide, according to a court filing Tuesday.

Last month, the auto parts firm agreed to the guilty plea as part of a $1 billion settlement in the world's largest ever recall.
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