—From Charleston, WV.

Sound Recall!: With a shove from the Federal government, the Japanese airbag company Takata has doubled its recall to 34 million vehicles in the US for airbags that explode and spray shrapnel when they deploy. It’s the biggest auto recall in US history … about one out of seven vehicles on American roads.

Takata had fought the recall demanded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. At least six deaths and about 100 serious injuries have been blamed on Takata’s faulty airbags.

Nation: The Los Angeles city council has voted to raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 an hour by the year 2020. It’s $9 an hour now. San Francisco, Seattle, and Oakland, among other cities, have already raised their minimum wage in what’s becoming a national movement. The Los Angeles vote is a big win for advocates of a higher minimum wage.

Small Screen: Tonight, after 33 years as a fixture on late night television, David Letterman signs off as host of “The Late Show” on CBS. He’s been one of the most successful failures in show business. After being turned down to replace Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show,” an enormous disappointment to him, Letterman went to CBS where his Stupid Pet Tricks and Top 10 list became embedded in American culture.

HillaryMail: The NY Times has reported that former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had a second secret email address on her private server. She previously admitted having only one.

In a related development, a federal judge has ordered Mrs. Clinton’s work emails from her server to be released publicly in batches as they are vetted by the State Department rather than all at once sometime in 2016.

The Football Page: New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said at the NFL owners meeting that he will not appeal the $1 million fine and loss of two draft picks levied by Commissioner Roger Goodell for the deflated football scandal. He said, “I’m going to accept reluctantly what he has given to us and not continue this dialogue and rhetoric.”

But quarterback Tom Brady has filed an appeal to the decision to suspend him from four games next season, keeping the ball in the air, so to speak.

>The NFL voted yesterday to increase the distance for extra point kicks to 32 yards. There’s been a push in recent years to make the extra point more difficult to score because almost no one ever misses. Even New England coach Bill Belichick was for the change, calling the extra point a “non play.”

The Playoff Page: The Golden State Warriors beat the Houston Rockets 110-106 last night in the first game of the NBA West semi-finals. Atlanta meets Cleveland tonight to open the East series.

On ice, Chicago beat the Ducks last night in the second game of their National Hockey League semi-finals. They are now tied 1-1.

In the NHL’s other series Tampa Bay and the NY Rangers are tied 1-1 going into tonight’s game.

The Obit Page: “Happy” Rockefeller, widow of the late New York governor and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, has died at age 88. Both had been divorced and their marriage at a time when people frowned on such things may have cost him the 1964 Republican presidential nomination.

Country Roads: The line of lawn jockeys in brightly painted silks at the Keeneland racetrack in Lexington are all white. Sometime in the 1960s the black jockeys objected to black lawn jockeys, a marker of racism, and they were removed. Now the black and Latino jockeys who race here are not represented at all among the little jockey statues.

Keeneland is a sprawling horse racing paradise of green lawns, black, fences, black barns, and elegance. It has a library. It’s the embodiment of Southern gentility, although the clothes in the gift shop have an awful lot of pinks and purples.

Moving east, Kentucky turns into the steep choppy mountains of West Virginia, a beauty of a different kind. But there’s gas and oil in there and a rush to get it.

Charleston is a pleasant surprise, an old town that has kept itself mostly intact and can be hoppin’ at night. Buy the musicians a beer at the Bluegrass Kitchen and they’ll come to your table to drink it.

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