Lynn Carpenter says pension fund deficits could be a major threat to dividend payments. Legislation forces companies to keep private pension plans well funded, meaning some will have to raise large sums of cash at short notice. Lynn picks 9 firms that could soon be forced into making big dividend cuts.

Unmanned aircraft producer AeroVironment (AVAV:NASDAQ) is now the only company with a nano-sized plane in development, at least as far as DARPA is concerned.

There’s an old adage in business that big contracts command big headlines. But bigger isn’t always better. All too often, companies that focus only on big contracts discover there are very lean stretches between contract awards. And that affects the predictability of their earnings.

As a journalist who has followed both the aerospace sector and China’s global emergence for many years, I can honestly say that I wasn’t surprised when China recently announced its intent to get into the jumbo-jet airliner business.

It’s one of the biggest product-development programs in Asia right now, and it could easily determine whether Japan remains a global industrial powerhouse - or limps into the future as an international has been.

Just one day after arch-rival Airbus SAS was forced to raise prices because of a weak dollar, The Boeing Co. (BA) said yesterday (Wednesday) that its first-quarter profits soared 38%, easily eclipsing Wall Street expectations.