Honda announces global recall

Honda announces global recall

TOKYO

Honda Motor Co. is recalling 304,000 vehicles globally for air bags that may inflate with too much pressure in a crash, send metal and plastic pieces flying and cause injuries or deaths.

Honda said there have been 20 accidents so far related to the problem, including two deaths in the U.S. in 2009.

The Japanese automaker announced the recall Friday, which affects the Accord, Civic, Odyssey, Pilot, CR-V and other models manufactured in 2001 and 2002.

The recall spans 273,000 vehicles in the U.S., some 27,000 in Canada, nearly 2,000 vehicles in Japan and another 2,000 in other countries.

McGovern falls, is hospitalized

SIOUX FALLS, S.D.

Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern has been hospitalized after falling and hitting his head while getting ready for a live interview on C-SPAN.

McGovern’s daughter, Ann McGovern, tells The Associated Press that her father fell in Mitchell, S.D., and was being transported by helicopter to a Sioux Falls hospital. The former South Dakota senator was getting set to take part in a live program called “The Contenders,” focusing on failed presidential candidates who changed the landscape of American politics.

McGovern, 89, fell outside of the Dakota Wesleyan University’s McGovern Library in Mitchell, which is across the street from one of his homes. Witnesses say he was bleeding profusely but was conscious and talking.

Official: Bombing targeted Iraq PM

BAGHDAD

An explosion earlier this week in the Green Zone, a protected area in the center of the Iraqi capital, was an assassination attempt against the Iraqi prime minister, an Iraqi spokesman said. That assailants were able to get a bomb inside what is supposed to be the most heavily fortified area in the country raises serious doubts about the abilities of Iraq’s security forces at a crucial time when American troops are leaving the country.

Stealthy cellphone software stirs outcry

SAN FRANCISCO

Technology bloggers are asking if our cellphones are spying on us after a security researcher said a piece of software hidden on millions of phones was recording virtually everything people do with them.

Amid a broad outcry, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is calling for an investigation. A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the software’s maker, Carrier IQ Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.

The software, which Carrier IQ says is used on some 150 million mobile devices, appears relatively innocuous. It does watch what owners of Sprint Nextel Corp. and AT&T Inc. smartphones do with them, including what people type and the numbers they dial. But it doesn’t seem to transmit every keystroke to the company. Instead, it kicks into action when there’s a problem, such as a call that doesn’t go through, and it lets the phone company know.

‘Laugh-In’ regular Alan Sues dies at 85

LOS ANGELES

Alan Sues, the actor best known as a flamboyantly campy regular on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” in the late 1960s and early ’70s, has died. He was 85.

Sues died Thursday night while watching television at his home in West Hollywood, said Michael Gregg Michaud, a longtime friend.

As a cast member of “Laugh-In,” the overnight sensation that debuted on NBC in 1968, Sues joined performers including Judy Carne, Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi, Jo Anne Worley, Arte Johnson and Henry Gibson in the weekly hour of wildly wacky, fast-paced comedy.

Combined dispatches