Boeing 787 Dreamliner Brake Problem Scare

A brake problem has forced an All Nippon Airways flight to be cancelled in Japan - the third glitch in as many days involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

It was scheduled to fly from the Yamaguchi prefecture in western Japan to Tokyo's Haneda Airport.

But the domestic flight was grounded by Japan's ANA because brake parts to the rear left undercarriage needed replacing, a spokesman at Yamaguchi Ube Airport said.

An ANA spokeswoman said: "In the cockpit, an error message related to its brake system was displayed.

"The exact nature and the cause of the error message is not clear yet."

All 98 passengers on board were switched to another flight for Tokyo.

On Tuesday, a Japan Airlines jet was grounded at Boston Logan International Airport in the US following a fuel leak, a day after another plane of the same type suffered a fire.

About 40 gallons (150 litres) of fuel spilled from the jet that was supposed to be bound for Tokyo from Boston last night.

On Monday, smoke was spotted in the cabin and cockpit of a JAL Boeing 787

Massachusetts Port Authority spokesman Richard Walsh said the plane had 178 passengers and 11 crew members on board.

The plane was evaluated and departed the same afternoon. JAL said the crew had reported a "mechanical issue."

On Monday, a fire broke out in a battery pack in the belly of a different Boeing 787 operated by JAL at the same airport.

Just minutes after all 173 passengers and 11 crew disembarked, the aircraft's cabin and cockpit filled with smoke.

It had just landed at Boston, following a non-stop flight from Tokyo.

The blaze, which was extinguished within 20 minutes, is being investigated by US aviation officials.

All three episodes have heightened safety concerns about the aircraft, which has been beset with problems.

Electrical faults have affected flights and delayed deliveries of the new jet to operators.

The inside of a Boeing 787 is examined At Boston Logan International.

US manufacturer Boeing has sold 848 of the planes.

The latest episode comes after the Federal Aviation Administration - the US aviation watchdog - had already launched a probe and discovered fuel line assembly errors.

It said that the faults could result in fire risk from leaks dripping on hot engine parts or causing the aircraft to run out of fuel.

Japan Airlines said it had no plans to change placed orders of 38 Boeing 787 Dreamliners following the two incidents.

The company has ordered 45 in total, seven of which it is already operating. A spokesman said six were currently in use, the other at Boston Logan International Airport.

All Nippon Airways, which has placed orders for 66 Dreamliner aircraft, including 17 already in use, also said it had no plans to change its orders.

British Airways has ordered 24 Dreamliners from Boeing and is still expecting its first 787 in May, with a further three due for delivery before the end of 2013.

Virgin Atlantic has 16 jets on order and told Sky News it still expects its first delivery in 2014.

Thomson Airways has also placed orders for the hi-tech long-haul Boeing plane, which has been marketed as being more comfortable and environmentally friendly than other aircraft.

A spokeswoman for Thomson told Sky News: "Our first Thomson Dreamliner is still on track to be delivered early this year. Boeing has reassured us that they are taking action to rectify the issues highlighted to them."

State-owned Air India, on Monday took delivery of the sixth of the 27 Dreamliners it has ordered said precuationary measures were already in place and its planes were flying smoothly.

"It's a new plane, and some minor glitches do happen. It's not a cause of concern," said spokesman G Prasada Rao.

Air China and Hainan Airlines also said they would be keeping their orders for 15 and 10 of the planes.

Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar al Baker, who previously criticised Boeing after its delivery-delayed planes were grounded for five days because of electrical faults, said there were no technical problems with the five currently in use by the Gulf carrier.

Other carriers already flying the Dreamliner are Ethiopian Airlines, LAN Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines and United Airlines.

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Ofcom To Boost Hunt for Nuisance Call Firms

The telecoms watchdog is to boost efforts to hunt down companies behind nuisance calls to householders.

The move was prompted after Ofcom said a study found almost half of all adults were subjected to silent or abandoned calls within a six-month period.

The regulator announced a plan to tackle the growing problem after its own research suggested the number of those affected had increased from 24% in 2011 to 47% in 2012.

An abandoned call is one that ends when it is picked up while a silent call is where the receiver hears nothing and has no way of knowing whether there is anyone at the other end of the line.

The figures, released in the regulator's annual Consumer Experience Report, also reveal that 71% of landline customers received a live marketing call, while 63% received a recorded marketing message over the same six-month period.

Ofcom said its plan to help tackle nuisance calls would include a new study to build a clearer picture of the problems consumers experience.

It has also pledged to work closely with the industry to identify ways to trace companies behind nuisance calls when they try to hide their identity.

Ofcom issued fines totalling more than £800,000 within the last year to HomeServe and npower over silent or abandoned calls. TalkTalk is currently under investigation.

The watchdog has also received numerous complaints from consumers who have been pestered by callers acting on behalf of firms looking to payment protection insurance mis-selling compensation claim firms.

Ofcom's consumer group director Claudio Pollack said: "Nuisance calls can cause annoyance, inconvenience and anxiety to consumers.

"This is a complex and challenging area, but Ofcom is determined to work with industry and other regulators to help protect consumers. Our new research will help to understand the root cause of the problem."

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'Dream Job' Put Up For Grabs By First Choice

A holiday operator is looking for a thrillseeker with adrenaline in spades and who is happy to get wet at work.

Pitched as the "dream job" for "a fun-loving water park enthusiast", First Choice is hunting for a "slide tester" for its SplashWorld resorts this summer.

Applicants are required to have a good sense of humour, a passion for water parks, and good written skills to promote the experience through social media.

Luke Gaskins, from the company, said: "This is an amazing job for one lucky person who'll get to escape the 9-5 and instead spend their days rating slides and pools in the sun this summer."

The successful candidate will be given a six-month contract to test the flumes, slides and pools at destinations across Europe and North Africa including Majorca, Turkey and Egypt.

In addition to a salary of £20,000 per annum (pro rata), all overseas travel will be paid and the posting will end with a free seven-night holiday for two at an all-inclusive resort.

Those keen to take the plunge and don their swimwear for a living must apply by pitching their credentials in a 30-second video clip.

A shortlist of five will be whisked off to a water park to battle it out for the job in a series of challenges.

It is not the first time an organisation has drawn attention to itself by embarking on a very public search for a new recruit.

In 2009, the Tourism Office of Queensland advertised for a caretaker for Hamilton island on the Great Barrier Reef for six months.

Billed as the "best job in the world", the move aimed to promote and boost visitor numbers. The post was eventually filled by British man Ben Southall.

Mark Borkowski, a PR and brand expert, said travel firms were competing for attention in a "very aggressive market".

He said: "It is one of those 'money can't buy' jobs. It will certainly be talked about on the web."

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CES 2013: Tech Giants Unveil Bigger, Smarter TVs

By Niall Paterson, Media And Technology Correspondent, in Las Vegas

Two giants of the technology industry faced off at the international Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas when they separately unveiled their prototype, top of the range TVs.

The day after Sony unveiled its 56" Ultra HD OLED TV to a suitably excited crowd, Panasonic president Kazuhiro Tsuga used his keynote state of the industry address to reveal his company's 4k set, also 56".

Neither company gave details of price, and very little in terms of technical specifications, but if open mouths and dropped jaws are any indication both products will do well when they finally make it to market - which, most likely, is not in the immediate future.

However, both companies described their sets as "the world's largest OLED panel" although Sony described theirs as the "world's first" - with 24 hours justification.

A Sony X-Reality PRO 4K Ultra HD television

Panasonic revealed that its screen, just half an inch thick, was manufactured through 3D printing, using a technique they collaborated on with Sony in fact.

The next step is 4k, as electronics manufacturers try to improve on the HD format and keep consumers keen on upgrading their sets.

With twice the vertical and horizontal resolution of ordinary HD, and four times the pixels, the picture quality is, without hyperbole, incredible.

Detail which might be seen on ordinary HD if viewed up close can be seen from a distance on these TVs, bringing as true a representation of what was filmed as seems imaginable.

OLED stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diode. The screen is made of films of organic molecules which emit light when a current is applied.

Both Sony and Panasonic's 4k prototypes are not yet ready for mass manufacturing.

But a spokesman for Sony said "We have the expertise ...we feel this is close to production-level technology."

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Sainsbury's Reveals Record-Breaking Xmas

Supermarket chain Sainsbury's has revealed a record-breaking Christmas trading period, with total sales (excluding fuel) up 3.3% in the third quarter.

The retailer, which sits in third position behind Tesco and Asda, said Christmas was the 32nd consecutive quarter of like-for-like sales growth.

It said stores open over a year saw sales rise 0.9% (excluding fuel), in the 14 weeks to January 5.

Sainsbury's said it served a record number of customers over the festive period, with the week before December 25 its busiest ever.

£16m of sales were achieved in one hour alone, between 12pm and 1pm on Sunday, December 23.

In total it said rang up more than £100m in sales on Christmas Eve.

However sales growth slowed on the 1.9% reported the previous quarter and against last year's 2.1% rise over the Christmas period.

But the performance confirms the pressure on smaller rival Morrisons, which disclosed a 2.5% slide in Christmas sales earlier this week.

Sainsbury's was the only one of the so-called big four players to increase its market share in the run up to Christmas, to 17.1% from 17% a year earlier, while Morrisons saw its share slip to 12%, according to Kantar Worldpanel.

Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury's, said the group delivered good sales growth in "challenging" conditions.

"We expect the challenging economic backdrop to persist, with customers looking to re-balance their household budget after the festivities and so spending cautiously in the first few months of 2013," he said.

But the group said plans to continue its money-off coupon Brand Match scheme would help ensure it was "positioned to perform well over the next quarter".

Meanwhile, it saw its online business grow by over 15% in the three months and small electricals grew by 25%.

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Pensions 'Plunge Over £3,000 In Five Years'

People planning to retire this year expect to be living off the lowest average incomes recorded in six years, it is claimed.

This year's retirees expect to have a typical annual income of £15,300, making them around £3,400 a year worse off than workers who retired in 2008, according to the Prudential.

The gap becomes much worse when taking into account the effects of inflation's erosion of people's household budgets.

Someone who retired last year would have needed an annual income of £21,400 to have the same spending power as an average person who entered retirement in 2008 on a typical income of £18,700, the Prudential said.

However, the average amount private employees retired on last year was £15,500, leaving them £5,900 worse off in real terms than workers who retired in 2008.

Across Britain there is also a £5,700-a-year difference between the regions with the highest and the lowest anticipated incomes for people retiring this year.

Londoners expect to retire on an annual income of around £18,200 this year, while retirees in the West Midlands have the lowest anticipated incomes, at £12,500.

Post-financial crash, annuity rates have dropped 33% and wiped thousands of pounds off retirees' incomes in recent years, while pensioners have faced a perfect storm of high living costs and low returns on their savings.

Pensioners face high living costs and low returns on their savings

Experts also warned that possible changes to the way that Retail Price Index (RPI) is worked out could lead to more people being forced to put their retirement on hold due to the squeeze on their incomes.

Tom McPhail, head of pensions research at financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "For people approaching retirement, that is a huge blow to their expectations at a time when it is probably too late for them to do anything about it."

Hargreaves Lansdown said that a 65-year-old man with a £100,000 pension pot could have secured an annual income of £7,855 by buying an annuity in the summer of 2008 but if he was doing so in December 2012, that figure would have fallen to £5,338.

Quantitative easing (QE) has been blamed for pushing down annuity rates which set the size of someone's retirement income for life.

QE makes it cheaper for companies to borrow by pushing down the yield on government bonds, but annuity incomes are also based on these yields, meaning that new pensioners see their incomes reduced.

The Office for National Statistics has also been consulting on changes to the RPI and the recommendations from this will be announced on Thursday.

This trend downward is set to continue as baby boomers pass the age of 65, with 55% of 55 to 64-year-olds drawing a salary, compared with 41% in February 2010, Aviva has said.

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Jobseeker Aims To Take On 52 Posts In 52 Weeks

A 29-year-old has decided to take on 52 different jobs in as many weeks in the hope of finding his dream role.

A life-changing accident forced Matt Frost, from Liskeard, in Cornwall, to reassess his circumstances while at home.

Matt Frost hopes to find a job he will love

Mr Frost, who previously worked as a retail manager at a shop in London, is to follow in the footsteps of Canadian Sean Aiken who completed a similar challenge in his home country.

"An email and a chat later" - Mr Frost was inspired by Mr Aiken to embark on his own job adventure across the UK.

He will blog about any role he lands, donating any earnings he makes from each week-long job to youth charity, The Prince's Trust.

And he is prepared for all manners of work and job offers - from farming, to working for The Prince's Trust itself, as well even trying his hand as a stuntman.

Mr Frost said: "The injury woke me up to the fact that maybe this wasn't what I really wanted to be doing with my life. I'm sure many people suffer such crises, but this one was more than the usual itch.

"I hope to not only find a job that I will love, but that my experiences will help others to find their own penchants.

"Where I'm from lots of people tend to avoid risks. They'll tend to take the safe road. Happiness at work? For many that's a fairy tale, and only the lucky few enjoy their employment.

"I've decided to explore the possibilities ... to take a leap and see if I can discover something I'm truly passionate about."

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Jessops Slashes Jobs And Ignores Gift Vouchers

Troubled high street photography retailer Jessops has gone into administration and will no longer accept gift vouchers or returned goods, it has been confirmed.

Sky sources earlier revealed that an application for administration was filed on Wednesday morning at the High Court, leaving some 2,000 jobs at risk.

PwC administrator Rob Hunt said: "Over the last few days the directors, funders and key suppliers have been in discussions as regards additional consensual financial support for the business.

"However these discussions have not been successful. In light of these irreconcilable differences the directors decided to appoint administrators and we were appointed earlier today.

"Our most pressing task is to review the company's financial position and hold discussions with its principal stakeholders to see if the business can be preserved.

"Trading in the stores is hoped to continue today but is critically dependent on these ongoing discussions. However, in the current economic climate it is inevitable that there will be store closures."

The company's website was still operational on Wednesday afternoon

The administrators  added: "At present Jessops is not in a position to honour customer vouchers or to accept returned goods."

The demise of the decades-old chain would be the first high street casualty of 2013, and comes soon after consumer electricals chain Comet hit the wall, sparking more than 6,000 job losses.

Jessops has struggled amid the digital photo revolution and the retail shift to online trading and camera phones.

It underwent a major overhaul in 2007 and a swathe of store closures, but came close to collapse two years later before being rescued by its main lender HSBC in a controversial debt-for-equity swap that saw it taken off the stock market.

The bank took a 50% stake in the business in return for writing off £34m of loans.

There was speculation last year that suppliers such as Canon were considering injecting cash into Jessops to help prop the business up, but no deal materialised.

Last year it also lost two key executives, chairman David Adams and chief executive Trevor Moore - who joined HMV.

Martyn Everett was then appointed as chairman and Neil Old was promoted to lead the business as chief operating officer.

The firm began life in 1935 when Frank Jessop opened his first shop in Leicester.

The company's website was still active on Wednesday afternoon and its helplines were still in operation.

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Electric Cars Lose Their Spark With Buyers

The brakes have been put on the rush to electric vehicles, according to a survey of 200 global motor industry leaders.

Details released in an annual survey by KPMG show that interest in electric cars has waned as increased fuel efficiency becomes a prime factor in purchasing decisions.

KPMG International's Global Automotive Executive Survey also found that as emerging markets edge towards a predicted 50% share of new vehicles, countries such as China, India and Brazil set the strategic plans of car firms.

It also found that the rising middle class in emerging markets are also more interested in upscale traditional vehicles than austere, frugal models.

Consumers in emerging markets such as Brazil have differing car tastes

The report found that "in the last 12 months the optimism over electric cars has dampened considerably among car makers.

KPMG added: "The initial excitement about the potential of e-mobility has subsided somewhat."

Autocar deputy editor Matt Burt told Sky News electric vehicles (EVs) never fully sparked for the public.

"Despite the best efforts of car makers to highlight the benefits of EVs, car enthusiasts have never really fallen in love with them," Mr Burt said.

"Consumers remain unconvinced due to issues such as battery range, the perceived difficulty of recharging and vehicle cost, which is still prohibitively high for most families despite Government grants and incentives."

The Lotus Evora jazzed up the electric world

While interest in battery power has drained away and some manufacturers move towards fuel cell technology, a renewed shift towards traditional engines is taking place.

The emergence of oil and gas production increase through fracking technology is further halting a shift away from hydrocarbons.

A third of car makers now intend to develop traditional internal combustion engines (ICEs), and while 25% intend to explore plug-in hybrids only 8% said they would seek battery technology.

"A majority of respondents now believe that internal combustion engine downsizing offers the best chance for fuel efficiency over the next decade," the report said.

Solar power has recently been trialled on boats

Mature markets such as Britain have seen a trend in smaller cars ownership and the Government has targeted owners with larger engines through increased road tax levies.

"By 2018 it seems likely that electric vehicles will form one small part of an increasingly varied car market, alongside hybrids, extremely efficient ICE-driven vehicles and newer technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells and natural gas," Mr Burt said.

"Luxury cars and SUVs tend to offer bigger profit margins for manufacturers than family saloons and hatchbacks, so it will be no surprise to see car makers tailor their products to suit the tastes of rapidly expanding markets."

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Bank Chiefs Split Over New Standards Body

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

A split has emerged among Britain's major banks about the development of a new standards body that would trumpet the power to strike off rogue bankers as part of a campaign to repair the industry's battered reputation.

I have learned the chairmen of the six biggest UK-based lenders held talks on Tuesday aimed at thrashing out plans for a new Banking Standards Board, which would be administered independently of the industry.

People familiar with the discussion said the bank chairmen had divided into two camps over the proposals for the standards body, which have been publicly endorsed by the industry lobbying group, the British Bankers' Association (BBA).

Some of the chairmen, said to include Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of the state-backed Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), are understood to favour the immediate creation of the new organisation, which would have powers similar to those held by the General Medical Council and other professional standards bodies.

Sir David Walker, the new chairman of Barclays, has also publicly expressed strong support for an independent organisation which all professional bankers would be obliged to join.

A number of the bank chairmen, however, are understood to oppose acting in the next few months.

Said to include Lord Burns, the chairman of Santander UK, this faction argued during Tuesday's talks that looming changes to the way Britain's banking industry is regulated necessitated a delay to the formation of the new standards board.

"The argument was that we should wait until we see how the new Financial Conduct Authority approaches these issues before acting," a senior bank executive told Sky News.

Anthony Browne, the BBA chief executive, is also understood to have participated in Tuesday's conference call. People close to the talks insisted the new standards body had the unanimous banking of Britain's major lenders.

One insider said the "muddy compromise" that had been reached during Tuesday's talks would be contained in a new submission by the BBA to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which is examining bankers' conduct in the light of a series of scandals.

The idea for a new standards body was contained in a submission by Barclays to the Parliamentary Commission last September. The panel was set up by ministers in the wake of Barclays' £290m fine for manipulating the interbank borrowing rate Libor.

"(The) Chartered Institute for Bankers would offer "certainty and confidence to customers that they are being served by qualified and trustworthy professionals who are bound by a code of conduct and are individually 'licensed'," the Barclays submission said.

None of the bank chairmen could be reached for comment on Wednesday. The BBA declined to comment.

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