PARIS / Reuters Qatar Airways is seeking strict guarantees as it talks to CFM International about supplying engines for a revamped order for Airbus narrow-body jets, which it expects to finalise ‘soon’, its chief executive said. The Gulf airline has cancelled four A320neo jets powered by alternative Pratt & Whitney engines and expects to swap the overall aircraft order, ...
Read More »SpaceX launches rocket, deploying 10 satellites
Bloomberg Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. returned to the skies with a flawless delivery of communications satellites into orbit, its first flight since a September 1 fireball destroyed a rocket and its payload on a Florida launch pad. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 10 Iridium Communications Inc. satellites rumbled aloft from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California’s central ...
Read More »â€˜Full’ Heathrow extends European hub lead
Bloomberg London’s Heathrow airport, which has operated close to the capacity of its two runways since the start of the decade, eked out a further 700,000 passengers to extend its lead as Europe’s top travel hub in 2016 as growth in Paris stuttered and Istanbul and Frankfurt fell back. Heathrow’s traveller tally increased 1 percent to 75.7 million, while ...
Read More »John Lewis to slash bonuses as outlook turns grim
Bloomberg As Britain’s retailers reported on what for most was a successful holiday season, one of the biggest and most storied of all warned that it expects a particularly difficult year ahead. Employee-owned John Lewis Partnership said that Brexit-induced inflation and a rise in online competitors are increasingly pressuring earnings. Such is its concern that the owner of John ...
Read More »Air France-KLM downbeat on prospects for ‘difficult’ 2017
Bloomberg Air France-KLM Group Chief Executive Officer Jean-Marc Janaillac delivered a downbeat assessment of the carrier’s prospects for 2017, saying it faces ‘difficult’ times in the year ahead amid rising oil prices and an ongoing struggle to rein in expenses. Weak margins combined with high debt remain the greatest challenges to Europe’s biggest airline, Janaillac said in an address ...
Read More »Smart windshields: The next ad frontier
Bloomberg The next frontier in digital advertising may be your car’s windshield. Automakers, technology companies and glass manufacturers are teaming up to turn the display that graces the front of an iPhone into the windshield of a car — one that can show ads, directions and vehicle information to the person behind the wheel. The advent of connected cars ...
Read More »Wearable sensors that are ‘check engine’ light for health
WASHINGTON / AP A next step for smart watches and fitness trackers? Wearable gadgets gave a Stanford University professor an early warning that he was getting sick before he ever felt any symptoms of Lyme disease. Geneticist Michael Snyder never had Lyme’s characteristic bulls-eye rash. But a smart watch and other sensors charted changes in Snyder’s heart rate and ...
Read More »â€˜E-waste’ a threat to health, environment
JAKARTA / AP The waste from discarded electronic gadgets and electrical appliances has reached severe levels in East Asia, posing a growing threat to health and the environment unless safe disposal becomes the norm. China was the biggest culprit with its electronic waste more than doubling, according to a new study by the United Nations University. But nearly every ...
Read More »Cheeky antics threaten their survival
Wellington / DPA New Zealand’s alpine parrots live life at full throttle, perching on car roofs as they surf down mountain highways, hanging out at ski-field cafes and vandalizing cars just for fun. But the same keen intelligence that has enabled the kea to survive in the extreme environment of the Southern Alps is placing them in danger. Many ...
Read More »â€˜Have an eye for the animal’
Jungingen / DPA Low-stress cattle consultant Phillip Wenz doesn’t care for the label “cow whisperer.” “That would imply that I whisper,” he says. In fact, Wenz, 47, communicates with cows by entirely silent means, walking beside them very calmly, his mouth shut, hands in his pockets. “Fidgeting around makes the animals nervous,” he says. Wenz is an expert in ...
Read More »