Toyota's (TM) recall of 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus models is the Japanese car maker's largest U.S. recall and ranks among the top 10 of all U.S. vehicle recalls. The recall addresses stuck accelerators caused by jammed floor mats. Since 2004, at least 30 crashes and 20 injuries involving uncontrolled acceleration in Toyota vehicles have been reported to federal officials. The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration warned owners to remove the floor mats and not to install new ones.

But whether it will cost Toyota Motor Co. dearly or lead to mandated design changes of mats or other components is still unknown. The problem is a pretty simple fix that won't likely exact a huge toll on Toyota's bottom line, an analyst told the Associated Press. "It's making big headlines because of the big numbers, but in terms of the company's profits, it is not likely to have a big impact," said Mamoru Katou, an auto analyst with Tokai Tokyo Research.

Uber-investor Warren Buffett has always seemed more accessible than your typical CEO. That's thanks in no small part to his widely read -- and plainly written -- annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) shareholders. But he's plenty interesting speaking off the cuff as well, as he demonstrates in a series of quick online videos posted today by Fortune.

In the videos, Buffett fields questions on interest rates, investing in China, the future of energy and the Obama administration's efforts to revamp financial regulation. It's tempting to say Buffett didn't make news -- except, well, practically everything the man says is newsworthy to his legions of followers.

Cleatech is back in vogue, and financiers are jumping to get back into the green game. The latest quarterly cleantech funding numbers, released Tuesday by consultancies the Cleantech Group and Deloitte, show that preliminary results for the third quarter -- tallying clean technology venture investments in North America, Europe, China and India -- totaled $1.59 billion going to 134 companies. That's a 10 percent increase over the second quarter.

The improvement was fueled by a wave of big venture capital financings, and the successful IPO of battery company A123 Systems (AONE) helped the cleantech sector continue to rebound in the most recent quarter. The U.S. stimulus package also helped VCs make up their minds when placing big bets.

Think that young people don't mind having their behavior tracked across web sites? Think again. According to a new study, more than half of 18- to 24-year olds don't want ads tailored to their behavior.

The study, written by five professors from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley, found that two-thirds of Americans, regardless of age, object to marketers tailoring ads to their interests. And while there's a belief that young consumers are more open to marketers using behavioral targeting -- the use of information gathered from a consumer's web-browsing and even offline activity -- that's simply not true, the study found.

Sanofi-Aventis (SNY), the maker of diabetes drug Lantus, said Tuesday it will launch a massive research program to probe a possible link between cancer and insulin. Such a link has been the subject of extensive debate in the scientific and medical communities.

The most recent uproar was in June when European studies published in Diabetologica suggested just that -- an association between cancer and Sanofi-Aventis' diabetes treatment Lantus. But the results were inconclusive and Sanofi said it "stands behind the safety of Lantus."

The global recession may turn out to be a boon for Kohl's Corp. (KSS), the nation's fourth-largest department store chain.

Kohl's opened 37 stores Wednesday, mostly in California, bringing its 2009 total to 56 new locations. Expansion might seem like an odd strategy for a retailer right now, with consumer confidence flat and Halloween sales expected to be down. But the Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin-based company, is one of several American corporations fattening up during the downturn.

Call it an ATM for cyber-crooks -- and the cash could come out of your account.

Web security sleuths have found a new type of "Trojan horse" that steals your bank log-in name and password, then proceeds to drain money from your account -- while you're logged in.

The new Trojan, called URLZone, features a number of innovations not widely seen in Internet crime. For example, the Trojan can estimate precisely how much money to steal based on how much dough you have in your account, and can even siphon money in small increments to evade detection.

Last year, Vivian Schiller was a well-regarded executive in charge of the digital operations of the New York Times Co. (NYT). She was so happy with her job that she welled up with emotion when she told her boss Arthur Sulzberger that she was leaving to become the chief executive of National Public Radio.

Her stress had only begun. Her predecessor, Ken Stern, who had pushed NPR into new areas of media including satellite radio, was fired because, an NPR story on the matter explained, he had not convinced local stations "that he saw a clear and healthy role for them in the digital future."

Big news on Tuesday from the Jon and Kate Gosselin newswire: Jon's name is coming off the show's title. Oh, and maybe he doesn't want a divorce after all -- Jon asked for a 90-day delay. Money is at the heart of this matter, and anyone who doesn't think so may as well be living life on a TV show.

It's curious that both items were announced on the same day: Jon gets demoted in TV-land, and he says he may want to be invited back into the house that has all those cameras rolling, in the name of love and family. The plan to turn the show into single-mom-raises-eight-kids may get kiboshed by Jon, who supposedly wants to reapply for full-time dad and high-income TV-star status.

Remember that monstrous old television that sat in your living room and was almost as thick as it was tall and wide? Those old-school TVs were bad for the brain -- and not just due to the programming. No, the big TVs of yesteryear were also huge containers of toxic lead. Their cathode ray tubes (CRTs) and leaded glass carried as much as five pounds of the heavy metal, which has been linked to brain damage in children, reduced IQs, tremors and cancer. Unfortunately, those boxy old TVs never really went away.

The EPA estimates that of the 704.9 million CRT televisions sold in the U.S. since 1980, roughly 42.4 percent are still in use, reports Popular Mechanics. But as U.S. owners replace them with newer, sleeker models, only 10 percent of these discarded CRTs are recycled. Disposing of those toxic TVs has been a huge problem in the U.S. and abroad. And in the developing world, sales of cheaply made CRT televisions have remained strong despite the environmental concerns. Now, CRT sales are plunging fast and it finally appears that the end of the CRT era is close at hand. Soon, we will mark the passing of one of the worst contributors of lead contamination to the environment in the age of consumer electronics.