«Foxconn is one of Apple’s main manufacturer contractors. Thousands of Mac minis, iPods, iPhones and iPads are assembled daily in the Shenzhen factory, which runs 24/7. The company also produces some products for Intel, Dell, and HP, among others.

After the sixth suicide attempt in April, Southern Weekly—described by The New York Times as China’s most influential liberal newspaper—sent a young reporter to sneak into the factory as a worker. At the same time, they sent a senior reporter to talk with Foxconn’s executives. Their mission: To discover what’s really going on in that factory, and find out the true reasons behind the suicides.»

Source: gizmodo.com

Update (29/o5/2o1o): Suicide-hit Foxconn factory to increase wages: The owner of a Chinese electronics factory where several employees have committed suicide is to increase wages by 20%.

«To all human beings,

We are a delegation of penguins from the South pole, mandated by our peoples to travel to important human’s cities to alert them about global warming caused by human impact and the peril it represents for our future.

We are at the first stage of our rescue plan, consisting into a peaceful demonstration. We hope that our message will be heard and promptly acted upon by the humans before we have to step up our actions (protestation to highest authorities and ultimately urban guerrilla).We have already heard of isolated but desperate suicide acts..»

Source: Vincent JF Huang and ecoguerilla

«Le cycle de vie des bouteilles d’eau est très consommateur de pétrole et d’énergie. Pour fabriquer 1 kilo de PET (polyéthylène téréphtalate), il faut 2 kilos de pétrole brut. De l’embouteillage à la déchetterie, une bouteille va parcourir 300kms en moyenne en France. Elle arrivera à être recyclée si elle est correctement triée et si les structures nécessaires existent (16% des bouteilles aux Etats-Unis), faute de quoi elle peut être envoyée dans d’autres pays, comme la Chine. Lorsqu’elles se retrouvent dans les décharges, l’incinération des bouteilles produit des émanations toxiques et des cendres contenant des métaux lourds.. L’histoire de la bouteille d’eau est illustrée dans le petit film d’animation d’Annie Leonard The Story of bottled water..»

Source: 20minutes

«A dog that has been seen at nearly every demonstration in Athens over the last two years has turned up again during the recent protests against new austerity measures»

Source: guardian.co.uk

«Archive is a circular library for the nomad book collector, allowing the user to step inside, and walk away with half a ton of books.»

Source: David Garcia Studio

« Basically we’re taking 5 classic indie games: World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD and Penumbra Overture and bundling them in a pay-what-you-want sale.

All of the games work great on Mac and Linux, 100% of your purchase goes directly to the developers and non-profits as you specify (minus credit card fees). Games are DRM free and can be installed anywhere.

Your contribution supports Child’s Play charity and Electronic Frontier Foundation. By default, the amount is split equally between the participants, but you can tweak the split any way you’d like. »

Source: wolfire.com

«The concept car Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. plans to show at the Expo 2010 (more images in the extended) betrays tremendous pressure to set the highest standard. Combining all of the wildest dreams of electric vehicle buffs into one concept car, SAIC claims to achieve a net vehicle emissions balance of less than zero. The world’s first negative emissions vehicle.»

Source: treehugger.com

«Worldwide, the equivalent of almost 270,000 trees is either flushed or dumped in landfills every day and roughly 10 percent of that total is attributable to toilet paper, according to the latest issue of World Watch magazine.»

Source: National Geographic’s Green Guide

«Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default. Today, it has become a platform where you have no choice but to make certain information public, and this public information may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to target ads..»

Source: eff.org
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