Vox Sentences: 34 million cars have airbags that can explode and fling metal at your face

The biggest recall in American history

Stephanie Erdman, who was injured by a defective Takata airbag (as seen in the photo next to her), testifies before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on November 20, 2014. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

• The Japanese airbag manufacturer Takata is recalling 33.8 million vehicles due to defective airbags.

  [ABC News / Michelle Manzione]

• The basic problem is that in humid regions, the propellant used to generate nitrogen gas for inflating the airbags degrades due to manufacturing problems. That makes the propellant burn too strongly, causing the inflater to rupture and hurtling metal fragments which can hit the driver or passengers.

  [NYT / Danielle Ivory and Hiroko Tabuchi]

• The recall was issued at the insistence of the Department of Transportation, and expands an earlier recall of 17 million vehicles in the US.

  [Washignton Post / Drew Harwell]

• Already, the airbags hvae been linked to six deaths in the US and over 100 injuries; Takata still hasn't figured out what led to the defect.

  [BBC]

• Basically everyone buys airbags from Takata, and the recall includes vehicles from Honda, Toyota, Ford, BMW, Fiat/Chrysler, General Motors, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru and Daimler Trucks.

  [Detroit Free Press / Alisa Priddle, Todd Spangler, Brent Snavely, and Greg Gardner]

• However, all six of the deaths so far have been in Honda cars.

  [BBC]

• This is believed to be the biggest recall of a consumer product in American history, exceeding the 31 million bottles of Tylenol recalled in 1982.

  [Detroit News / David Shepardson]

Fifteen dollars and whaddaya get

SEIU members march for a minimum wage increase, among other things, on May Day, 2015 in Los Angeles. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

• The Los Angeles City Council passed a measure raising the city's minimum wage to $15.

  [NYT / Jennifer Medina]

• That doesn't mean it's law yet — city attorney Mike Feuer still has to draft an ordinance to implement the change, and the council has to pass it in a final vote — but the 14-1 vote makes passage all but certain.

  [The Guardian / Jana Kasperkevic]

• The current base wage of $9 will be gradually raised until hitting the $15 mark in 2020 (2021 for businesses with 25 or fewer employees).

  [NPR / Krishnadev Calamur]

• The city joins San Francisco and Seattle, which have both already passed $15-an-hour minimum wage laws.

  [Huffington Post / Alexander Kaufman and Jenny Che]

• According to a report underwritten by LA unions, 46 percent of wage and salary workers in Los Angeles make less than $15, meaning nearly half the workforce would be affected by the change (for good or ill).

  [Economic Roundtable / Los Angeles County Federation of Labor]

• Another study looking at a proposal for a $15.25 minimum found that 39 percent of people working in LA would get a raise.

  [Economic Roundtable / UCLA Labor Center / UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment]

• In general, there's a divide among economists between those who argue that minimum wage laws cause employers to cut jobs, and those who argue the effect is minimal or nonexistent.

  [The Atlantic / Jordan Weissmann]

• Proponents argue that the increased costs to employers are absorbed through lower profits, higher worker productivity through reduced turnover, and increased consumer prices (which advocates claim is mild).

  [Washington Post / Jared Bernstein]

• But $15 is really unprecedented; in 2013, I asked Arindrajit Dube, the best pro-minimum wage researcher there is, about the idea, and he told me, "We just do not know what a $15-an-hour minimum wage would do."

  [Washington Post / Dylan Matthews]

• Then again, Seattle, San Francisco, and LA's $15-an-hour experiments could provide serve as a valuable experiment on the topic.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

Here we go, once again, with the email

Hillary Clinton visits Laree's The Shoppe of Favorites store on May 19, 2015 in Independence, Iowa, makes the world's most amazing face. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

• US district judge Rudolph Contreras has ordered the State Department to come up with a timetable by next week for a rolling release of Hillary Clinton's 55,000 pages of emails from her time as Secretary.

  [Reuters / Mark Hosenball]

• That, in the words of Reuters' Mark Hosenball, "raises the prospect of months of drip-by-drip disclosures that could plague her presidential campaign."

• The State Department has said in court filings that it needs until January 15, 2016 to sort through and release the emails — two weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

  [Politico / Josh Gerstein]

• The Department is prioritizing review of emails related to the Benghazi attack.

  [CNN / Jethro Mullen]

• State has assigned 12 staffers to work, full-time, on sorting through the emails.

  [Politico / Josh Gerstein and Gabriel Debenedetti]

• Clinton has insisted she wants to get the emails out as soon as possible.

  [NYT / Amy Chozick]

Misc.

• Mad Men was never the most popular show on TV. But it was insanely popular with people who read writing about TV.

  [Vox / Todd VanDerWerff]

• It wasn't inevitable that American slavery would be based upon race. Here's how it happened.

  [Slate / Peter Wood]

• Bernie Sanders' plan to fund free college tuition with a tax on stock trades is the most Bernie Sanders thing that's ever Bernie Sanders-ed.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• Bill Backer, the guy who actually thought up "I'd like to buy the world a coke," tells Slate's Laura Bennett how he feels about Don Draper coopting his greatest advertising triumph.

  [Slate / Laura Bennett]

Verbatim

• "If you think BuzzFeed invented the listicle, you haven’t spent enough time with 19th-century newspapers, because they’re everywhere."

  [Ryan Cordell to Nieman Labs / Joseph Lichterman]

• "If we were given a billion dollars, we would put it into robotic hearts."

  [Zoltan Istvan to Popular Science / Sarah Fecht]

• "Brettler does not deny that his client said he would serve tennis balls down my colleague’s throat, but says, 'There is nothing sexual or inappropriate about that statement.'"

  [BuzzFeed / Susan Cheng]

• "Nerd culture is the product of a late capitalist conspiracy, designed to infantalize the consumer as a means of non-aggressive control."

  [Simon Pegg]

• "It has been said that a rolling stone gathers no moss. I would add that sometimes a rolling stone also gathers no verifiable facts or even the tiniest morsels of journalistic integrity."

  [Ed Helms via Huffington Post / Nick Visser]

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