Group inspecting Apple suppliers NEW YORK (AP) — Apple said Monday that an independent group, the Fair Labor Association, has started inspecting working conditions in the Chinese factories where its iPads and iPhones are assembled. ADVERTISING Amid growing criticism over
Group inspecting Apple suppliers
NEW YORK (AP) — Apple said Monday that an independent group, the Fair Labor Association, has started inspecting working conditions in the Chinese factories where its iPads and iPhones are assembled.
Amid growing criticism over labor and environmental practices — especially in China — Apple, last month, disclosed a list of suppliers for its popular gadgets for the first time.
The FLA team began the inspections Monday morning at Foxconn City in Shenzhen, China, Apple said Monday. The complex employs and houses hundreds of thousands of workers.
Foxconn, a unit of Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., employs an estimated 1 million to 1.1 million people in China at a series of huge factory campuses. Foxconn assembles iPads and iPhones for Apple, Xbox 360 gaming consoles for Microsoft and other gadgets for companies including Hewlett-Packard and Dell.
In 2010, there was a rash of suicides at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plant. Plant managers installed nets to prevent more people from committing suicide by jumping from the roof. A May explosion at the company’s Chengdu, China, plant killed three people and injured 15. A New York Times story published Jan. 26 reported on accidents and long hours in Foxconn factories, based on workers’ accounts. Foxconn disputed allegations of back-to-back shifts and crowded living conditions.
N.J. Senate OKs gay marriage bill
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — In a move that supporters called a civil rights milestone, New Jersey’s state Senate on Monday passed a bill to recognize same-sex marriages, marking the first time state lawmakers officially endorsed the idea — despite the promise of a veto by Gov. Chris Christie.
Monday’s vote was 24-16 in favor of the bill, a major swing from January 2010, when the Senate rejected it 20-14.
“It means the world isn’t changing, it means the world has already changed,” Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality said after the vote. “So wake up and smell the equality.”
Before the vote, Marsha Shapiro squeezed the hand of her longtime partner Louise Walpin, and reflected on how a body that rejected gay marriage two years ago was about to change its stance. “The pride will overpower the sorrow,” she said.
But opponents say it’s “an exercise in futility” even if the Assembly passes the bill Thursday as expected, given Christie’s veto vow.
U.S., N. Korea to talk in Beijing
WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. envoy will hold talks with North Korea on its nuclear program in Beijing next week, the first such negotiations since the death of the nation’s longtime leader Kim Jong Il.
Glyn Davies, the U.S. envoy on North Korea, will meet Feb. 23 with North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Monday.
It will be the third round of bilateral talks since last summer, aimed at restarting six-nation aid-for-disarmament negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear program. The reclusive nation pulled out of the multi-nation talks in 2009.
But it will be the first such contact since Kim died Dec. 17 and power passed to his untested youngest son, Kim Jong Un.
Militia was ready for war, feds say
DETROIT (AP) — Displaying guns, vests and other military gear, a prosecutor told jurors Monday that members of a Midwest militia were willing “to go to war” in an extraordinary plot to kill a police officer as a springboard to a broader rebellion against the U.S. government.
Some of the evidence was placed directly in front of the jury box as trial opened for seven members of a group called Hutaree, who are charged with conspiring to commit sedition as well as weapons crimes.
Still, defense attorneys dismissed any talk by the defendants as little more than fantasy and equated the group more to a “social club” than a militia.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Graveline said the anti-government Hutaree was looking for some type of conflict to trigger an attack — maybe a traffic stop, a search warrant or a dispute between authorities and another militia.
“They wanted to start an armed confrontation. … The war to them meant patriots rising up against the government,” said Graveline, who held up automatic weapons and other items seized after nine people were arrested in southern Michigan, Indiana and Ohio in March 2010.
