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US Will Look at Sudden Acceleration Complaints Involving 500,000 Tesla Vehicles

Report on Alleged Chinese Corruption in Maldives Due by June: Minister

NEW DELHI—A report on alleged Chinese corruption in the Maldives will be completed by June, the Maldives’ Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid said on Jan. 16, as the current government investigates a surge of investments by China in recent years. The tropical archipelago grew closer to Beijing under the rule of former president, Abdulla Yameen, with China funding an airport, bridge and social housing as part of its “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR, also known as Belt and Road) initiative. Critics of Yameen, who was voted out in 2018 after five years in office, say government contracts were awarded at inflated prices, and that the spending threatened to sink the islands’ tiny economy. Incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih announced a commission in November 2018 to look into deals made during Yameen’s…

US Will Look at Sudden Acceleration Complaints Involving 500,000 Tesla Vehicles

WASHINGTON—The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Friday it will review a petition asking the agency to formally investigate 500,000 Tesla Inc vehicles over sudden unintended acceleration reports.

The petition covers 2012 through 2019 model year Tesla Model S, 2016 through 2019 Tesla Model X, and 2018 through 2019 Tesla Model 3 vehicles, the agency said. The petition cites “127 consumer complaints to NHTSA involving 123 unique vehicles. The reports include 110 crashes and 52 injuries,” the agency added.

Tesla did not immediately comment Friday.

Many of the complaints report sudden acceleration incidents when attempting to park vehicles in a garage or at a curb. Others claimed the sudden acceleration happened while in traffic or when using driver assistance systems and led to crashes.

In one complaint, a driver said a 2015 Tesla Model S 85D in California was closed and locked when he claimed: “a few moments later the vehicle started accelerating forward towards the street and crashed into a parked car.”

A Tesla driver in Avondale, Pennsylvania, was pulling into a parking spot at an elementary school when the vehicle accelerated on its own, the complaint said adding: “It went over a curb and into a chain-link fence.”

Another complaint said a Tesla driver in Andover, Massachusetts was approaching her garage door “when the car suddenly lurched forward: and “went through the garage door destroying two garage doors.” The Tesla stopped when it hit the garage’s concrete wall.

In October, the agency said it was reviewing whether Tesla should have recalled 2,000 of its electric cars in May instead of issuing a software upgrade to fix a potential defect that could have resulted in battery fires in Model S and Model X vehicles from the 2012-2019 model years.

The 2,000 vehicles covered by the September petition to the NHTSA received a battery management software upgrade in May in response to a potential flaw that could trigger non-crash-related fires. A lawyer who filed the petition, Edward Chen, told Reuters in October that he strongly believes “this number is much larger than 2,000.” The review is ongoing.

Last week, NHTSA said it was probing the Dec. 29 crash of a Tesla Model 3 that left a passenger dead after the vehicle collided with a parked fire truck in Indiana.

The crash is the 14th involving Tesla that NHTSA’s special crash investigation program has taken up in which it suspects the company’s so-called Autopilot or other advanced driver assistance system was in use.

By David Shepardson

This article is from the Internet:US Will Look at Sudden Acceleration Complaints Involving 500,000 Tesla Vehicles

As China’s Xi Visits Burma, Ethnic Groups Rue ‘Disrespectful’ Dam Investment

MYITKYINA, Burma—The streets of Burma’s capital Naypyitaw were festooned with banners celebrating 70 years of Burma-China relations ahead of the arrival of Xi Jinping on Jan. 17 for his first visit to the Southeast Asian nation as China’s leader. But for thousands of villagers living in northern Burma (also known as Myanmar) close to the Chinese border, there is another anniversary that nobody can celebrate. It is 10 years since they were kicked off their land for a $3.6 billion dam, an unfinished project backed by Beijing that dogs relations between the two neighbors. The Myitsone hydropower dam in Kachin state is one many multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects that form part of Xi’s flagship “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR, also known as Belt and Road) initiative. The Chinese leader intends…