Current Events

Honest Co, co-founded by actress Jessica Alba, voluntarily recalled all bottles of its organic baby powder in the United States due to concerns of eye and skin infections.

The Santa Monica, California-based company said that during recent tests conducted on the product, possible contaminations from microorganisms that could cause skin or eye infections were found.

"With the full knowledge and under the guidance of the FDA, we've decided to voluntarily recall this product out of an abundance of caution," Christopher Gavigan, co-founder, said in a video posted on the company's website on Wednesday.

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Honda is adding 772,000 more cars to the Takata airbag recalls as the troubled Japanese supplier announced new repair schedules for several million inflators currently under recall. No new models or model years are part of the latest Honda recall in the U.S., which specifically covers front-passenger airbags. A total of 1.
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Federal regulators told pacemaker patients with certain implantable cardiac devices on Monday to follow instructions needed to fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities found in products made by St. Jude Medical. The St. Paul, Minn.-based company issued security updates for its Merlin remote monitoring system Monday designed to fix flaws identified in a safety warning put out this week by the U.
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Volkswagen is on the verge of pleading guilty to criminal charges and paying $4.3 billion in fines, in a deal that would resolve a federal criminal investigation into its cheating on vehicle emissions tests, the automaker said on Tuesday.

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Drivers like Norma Caplan of Boynton Beach are growing impatient that dealers say they still do not have enough replacement parts to fix recalled Takata airbags as 2017 gets underway.

“Get it done,” Caplan urged Monday. “To be injured or killed by flying metal pieces is terrible. They’re supposed to protect you.”

Abbott Laboratories (ABT.N) moved to protect patients with its St. Jude heart implants against possible cyber attacks, releasing a software patch on Monday that the firm said will reduce the "extremely low" chance of them being hacked.

The F.B.I. has arrested a Volkswagen executive in Florida, accusing him of playing a central role in a broad conspiracy to keep United States regulators from discovering that diesel vehicles made by the company were programmed to cheat on emissions tests.

By David Shepardson and Joel Schectman | WASHINGTON

Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) and the U.S. Justice Department are nearing an agreement to resolve the government's civil and criminal investigations that would require the German automaker to pay a penalty of more than $3 billion, sources briefed on the talks said on Friday.

The agreement is not final and could top $4 billion or fall apart but a deal could be announced as early as next week, said the sources on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential.
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By ADAM GOLDMAN and HIROKO TABUCHI

JANUARY 9, 2017

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested a Volkswagen executive who faces charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, two people with knowledge of the arrest said on Sunday, marking an escalation of the criminal investigation into the automaker’s diesel emissions cheating scandal.

Oliver Schmidt, who led Volkswagen’s regulatory compliance office in the United States from 2014 to March 2015, was arrested on Saturday by investigators in Florida and is expected to be arraigned on Monday in Detroit, said the two people, a law enforcement official and someone familiar with the case.

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By Dena Aubin

Insurance giant American International Group has been hit with a racketeering lawsuit accusing it of unlawfully charging successful personal injury and workers' compensation claimants thousands of dollars in undisclosed brokers' commissions.

By Dena Aubin

Insurance giant American International Group has been hit with a racketeering lawsuit accusing it of unlawfully charging successful personal injury and workers' compensation claimants thousands of dollars in undisclosed brokers' commissions.

Filed on Tuesday in Boston federal court, the proposed class action said AIG has reaped millions of dollars of improper profits through an alleged scheme involving so-called structured settlement annuities.

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A Long Island Rail Road train that crashed in Brooklyn on Wednesday was going more than twice the speed limit when it slammed into a train station, injuring more than 100 people, federal investigators said on Thursday.

The train was traveling at more than 10 miles per hour when it hit the end of the tracks at Atlantic Terminal, where the speed limit is 5 m.p.h., said Ted Turpin, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.
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