Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) yesterday said a modified Dreamliner had experienced a fault earlier this month, but insisted it would not affect the restart of the high-tech planes.
A company spokeswoman said discoloring on an electrical panel had been caused by vibrations from an insufficiently tightened nut during the flight on May 4, but added the incident was not connected to previous battery issues.
“The problem occurred in one particular airplane alone, and we have already fixed the trouble,” the spokeswoman said. “We believe the incident will not affect the safety of 787 flights.”
The incident, which ANA characterized as “minor,” is the first fault to be reported since regulators gave the green light to Boeing to get its next-generation aircraft back in the skies after a months-long hiatus.
Dreamliners worldwide were grounded after two separate incidents on Japanese-owned planes involving overheating in the lithium-ion battery packs in January, one of which provoked a fire on a parked plane in Boston.
After months of investigations into the plane’s power packs, US authorities last month issued formal approval of Boeing’s battery fix, followed by a similar move from Japanese regulators.
ANA said there had been no risk to the plane and it had landed normally after a “training flight” from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to Chitose in the northern island of Hokkaido on May 4.
The airline, the single biggest customer of the lightweight plane, which operates around a third of the 50 that Boeing has delivered, said the glitch would not affect the resumption of flights planned for next month.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained