Another worker has committed suicide at the southern Chinese manufacturing complex of iPhone maker Foxconn International Holdings Ltd (富士康國際控股), state media reported yesterday, the latest in a string of employees who have leapt to their deaths this year.
The employee “fell to death” early yesterday at one of Foxconn’s manufacturing facilities in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, Xinhua news agency reported.
“The death was confirmed by the municipal government. No further information was immediately available,” Xinhua said.
A Foxconn spokesman was not available for comment when contacted by reporters.
Neither Shenzhen’s municipal government nor local police had any immediate comment or further details.
Labor rights groups say that there have been at least 13 suicides at Foxconn factories across China this year, not including -yesterday’s fatality.
The incident comes months after several Foxconn workers, mostly in Shenzhen, died after jumping from buildings in the company’s plants earlier this year.
Since then, the company has pledged to improve work conditions, increase pay, reduce overtime hours and build a string of giant new manufacturing complexes in inland provinces such as Henan to allow workers to live closer to home and tap cheaper labor costs.
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