The U.S. government’s highway safety agency is investigating complaints that engines can fail on as many as 1.4 million Honda and Acura vehicles.
The probe by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration covers the 2016 through 2020 Honda Pilot and Acura MDX, as well as the 2018 through 2020 Honda Odyssey and Acura TLX. Also included is the 2017 through 2019 Honda Ridgeline.
The agency says in documents posted on its website Monday that connecting rod bearings on vehicles with 3.5-liter V6 engines can fail, leading to complete engine failure. Connecting rods link the pistons to the crankshaft and convert vertical motion to move the wheels.
Honda recalled about 250,000 vehicles in November 2023 to fix the same problem. But the agency says it has 173 complaints from owners who reported connecting rod bearing failures, yet their vehicles weren’t included in the recall. One owner reported a crash with no injuries.
The agency said it’s opening a recall query to determine the severity of the problem in vehicles not included in the 2023 recall.
Honda said it will cooperate with NHTSA on the investigation.
FTX sues Binance Holdings and former CEO Zhao, seeking almost $1.8 billion
FTX filed a lawsuit against Binance Holdings Ltd. and its former Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao, seeking to claw back almost $1.8 billion whose assets were fraudulently transferred by Sam Bankman-Fried.
Binance, Zhao and other Binance executives received the funds as part of a July 2021 share repurchase deal with Bankman-Fried, the FTX co-founder who is now in prison. In that transaction, they sold stakes of about 20% in FTX’s international unit and 18.4% in its US-based entity, according to a legal filing from the FTX estate on Sunday.
Bankman-Fried paid for the stock repurchase using a mix of FTX’s exchange token FTT and Binance-branded coins BNB and BUSD valued at $1.76 billion at the time, according to the filing.
FTX and its sister trading house Alameda Research “may have been insolvent since inception and certainly were balance-sheet insolvent by early 2021,” the estate said in the filing. As a result, the share repurchase deal was made fraudulently, it alleged.
FTX also accused Zhao of posting a series of “false, misleading, and fraudulent tweets” shortly before FTX’s collapse, the content of which was “maliciously calculated to destroy its rival.” On Nov. 6, 2022 tweet by Zhao stated that Binance intended to sell its FTT tokens, worth some $529 million at the time, causing withdrawals from the exchange to skyrocket.
The lawsuit is one of many filed by FTX against its former investors, affiliates and clients in the bankruptcy court of Delaware. Other defendants include former White House communications officer Anthony Scaramucci, digital-asset exchange Crypto.com and political groups such as the Mark Zuckerberg-founded FWD.US, according to court documents.
Chipotle names COO Boatwright as CEO
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. said its board selected Scott Boatwright as its permanent chief executive officer, effective immediately.
Boatwright had been serving as interim CEO since Brian Niccol vacated the role to go to Starbucks Corp.
He was chief operating officer before that. The burrito chain said the decision was made “after a robust and thorough process.”
Chipotle shares rose less than 1% at 12:35 p.m. in New York trading. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the appointment.