world fresh news: Honda recalls 2.5 million vehicles

Honda Motor Co Ltd will recall 2.49 million cars, small SUVs and minivans worldwide, including its popular Accord sedan, to repair a software problem that could damage the automatic transmission.The recall includes 1.5 million vehicles in the United States, about 760,000 in China and 135,142 in Canada.This week, Consumer Reports said it was not recommending the 2012 Honda Civic. This led some industry analysts to ask if that was a symptom of larger problems at the automaker.The company has said it disagreed with the influential U.S. consumer advocate's assessment.Chris Martin, Honda spokesman at the company's U.S. headquarters in California, said the recall was not a sign of deeper difficulties, but instead stemmed from "extremely unusual circumstances.""The far majority of our consumers would never really encounter this," he said. "It's software programing. It's not a weakness in the transmission per se."