Japan's Takata pleads guilty, to pay $1 bn in airbag scandal with US

Japan's Takata Corporation, one of the world's biggest suppliers of auto safety equipment, agreed to plead guilty to fraud and pay $1 billion to settle its faulty airbag scandal, US officials announced Friday. The United States also has indicted three former Takata executives in the case, bringing the first criminal charges in a scandal over exploding airbags that caused the largest US auto safety recall. The individuals, who left the company in 2015, were charged with fraud for hiding the flaws in the airbags, so far blamed for 16 deaths and 100 injuries worldwide, according to documents filed in federal court in Michigan and made public on Friday.