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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