• Automakers and aircraft companies around the world are trying determine if they used substandard materials from Kobe Steel of Japan, and if so, whether they present safety hazards.

Shares in the company, a pillar of the Japanese economy, plunged more than 20 percent after officials, above, admitted that data about the quality of its aluminum and copper had been falsified, the latest scandal to dent Japan’s reputation for precision manufacturing.

And a Japanese court ordered the government and the Tepco utility to pay damages of roughly $4.4 million to about 2,900 residents for failing to prevent the nuclear meltdowns at Tepco’s Fukushima complex in 2011.