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Ten years ago Dennis Sorensen was setting off fireworks to celebrate New Year's Eve with his family in Denmark when something terrible happened.

"Unfortunately one of the rockets we had this evening was not good and when we light it then it just blew up and, yeah, my hand was, was not that good anymore," says Sorensen.

Doctors had to amputate what remained of his left hand. Since then Sorensen has been getting by with a standard prosthetic hand, which simply opens and closes so he can do basic things.

Aston Martin, James Bond's conveyance of choice, has recalled more than 5,000 vehicles because of problems with fake plastics from China.

In a letter last month to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, Aston Martin said it had received reports that throttle pedal arms broke during installation, and discovered that "initial tests on the failed pedal arm have shown that the Tier Three Supplier used counterfeit material."

Here's more from Bloomberg Businessweek, which first reported the story:

"The luxury sports cars' throttle pedals are assembled in Swindon, England, by a company known as Precision Varionic International, which in turn gets its parts from Fast Forward Tooling in Hong Kong. In this case, Fast Forward Tooling subcontracted the molding of pedal arms to Shenzhen Kexiang Mould Tool Co., which bought its allegedly 'counterfeit material' from Synthetic Plastic Raw Material Co. in the Chinese factory town of Dongguan."

The Salt

Was Your Chicken Nugget Made In China? It'll Soon Be Hard To Know

Anyone who invests in the stock market knows share prices can go up — and down. That's why they call it a market.

Still, this year, price movements have been fast and furious — shocking investors and prompting many to fear "volatility."

The Chicago Board of Options Exchange tracks the speed of price movements using its Volatility Index (VIX). The new year has sent the VIX soaring, in contrast to last year's unusually smooth performance.

"People talk about the VIX as the 'Worry Index,' " said Jonathan Lewis, chief investment officer at Samson Capital Advisors. "Volatility rises when people get surprised" and decide they suddenly must change their investment decisions, he said.

"Volatility is the market's way of expressing concern that the data and policy pronouncements aren't coming in the way everyone had been expecting," Lewis said.