Apple and Child Labor
March 1, 2010
Bloomberg.com
By Connie Guglielmo
Apple Inc. said three of its suppliers hired 11 underage workers to help build the iPhone, iPod and Macintosh computer last year, a violation it uncovered as part of its onsite audit of 102 factories.
“Apple discovered three facilities that had previously hired 15-year-old workers in countries where the minimum age for employment is 16,” the company said in a 24-page report on “Supplier Responsibility” posted on its Web site. The workers were “no longer in active employment at the time of our audit.”
Apple didn’t name its suppliers and manufacturers. The company visited sites in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Philippines and the U.S. Apple also found three cases where suppliers “falsified records” to conceal underage hiring, more than 60 facilities where employees were overworked, 24 partners that paid less than the minimum wage and 57 who didn’t offer all required benefits.
“Apple’s Code sets a maximum of 60 work hours per week and requires at least one day of rest per seven days of work,” the company said. Apple also said it asked suppliers to end a practice “where wage deductions were used for disciplinary purposes.”
The company said it stopped doing business with at least one unnamed supplier after finding repeated violations and “inadequate actions” to address the problems.
Recruitment Fees
Apple’s review also found that at eight facilities, including suppliers in Taiwan, foreign workers paid excessive recruitment fees to hiring agencies to get jobs. The company said employees were reimbursed $2.2 million in fee overcharges over the past two years and that Apple has set a standard limiting such fees to the “equivalent of one month’s net wages.”
Apple “also created extensive training programs to educate workers about their right to a safe and respectful work environment,” Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, said today.
As part of that training, more than 128,000 workers received information outlining their rights and more than 5,000 supervisors and managers received training on their responsibilities to employees, Apple said in its report.
The company also established courses for workers to expand computer and technical skills and set standards for dormitories, medical treatment and pregnancy non-discrimination.
Apple rose $2.62 to $204.62 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares more than doubled last year.
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Video of Pentagon Employee Selling Secrets to Chinese Spy
February 26, 2010
60 Minutes
“60 Minutes” has obtained an FBI videotape showing a Defense Department employee selling secrets to a Chinese spy for cash. The video, which has never been made public before, offers a rare glimpse into the secretive world of espionage and illustrates how China’s spying may now pose the biggest espionage threat to the U.S.
“60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley’s report will be broadcast this Sunday, Feb. 28, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
China may be the number-one espionage threat now. “The Chinese are the biggest problem we have with respect to the level of effort that they’re devoting against us, versus the level of attention we are giving to them,” says Michelle Van Cleave, once America’s top counter-intelligence officer who coordinated the hunt for foreign spies from 2003 to 2006.
“Definitely, without a doubt,” the Chinese focus most of their espionage on the U.S., says Fengzhi Li, who once recruited spies for China’s Ministry of State Security and is now in the U.S. seeking asylum.
The Chinese, says Van Cleave, have had the designs to all of the nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal for years and they have been after a lot more lately. “Virtually every technology that is on the U.S. control technology list has been targeted at one time or another by the Chinese,” she tells Pelley. “Sensors and optics…biological and chemical processes…all the things we have identified as having inherent military application,” says Van Cleave. “I think we are a real candy store for the Chinese and for others.”
In the videotape obtained by “60 Minutes”, Gregg Bergersen, a civilian Pentagon worker with a high-security clearance, is shown taking money, about $2,000, from the Chinese spy, Tai Shen Kuo. Bergersen then discusses how he will let Kuo look at secret documents. The documents included the types of weapons the U.S. was selling to its ally Taiwan as well as plans for a classified command and control system that was going to be used by Taiwan.
Bergersen clearly implicates himself on the videotape. “I’m very , very, very reticent to let you have it because it’s all classified, but I will let you see it,” he tells Kuo. “You know you can write all…the notes you want…it’s just I can never let anyone know…I’d get fired for sure on that,” says Bergersen. “Well, not even get fired, I’d go to *** jail!”
That’s where Bergersen is now, serving almost five years in federal prison for communicating national defense information. Kuo, a naturalized American citizen, was given 15 years for espionage. Both men pleaded guilty after being shown the tape and other evidence against them.
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The Positive Effects of Bitter Melon Against Breast Cancer
February 26, 2010
Natural News
By S.L. Baker
A vegetable commonly eaten in India and China called bitter melon (also known by the botanical name Momordica charantia), has been shown in previous studies to have a beneficial impact on blood sugar and cholesterol levels. It turns out that’s not all the health benefits bitter melon offers. A new study by Saint Louis University scientists provides evidence the vegetable triggers a chain of events on a cellular level that stops breast cancer cells from multiplying and also kills them.
Lead researcher Ratna Ray, Ph.D., a professor in the department of pathology at Saint Louis University, noted in a statement to the media that she personally uses bitter melon when she cooks stir fry dishes. She decided to investigate the health effects of bitter melon extract after other researchers discovered how it can lower blood sugar and regulate cholesterol levels. In fact, bitter melon extract has been used by traditional healers in China and India for centuries as a natural treatment for diabetes. But Dr. Ray was surprised to find this vegetable was a powerful inhibitor of breast cancer growth, too.
“To our knowledge, this is the first report describing the effect of bitter melon extract on cancer cells,” Dr. Ray stated. “Our result was encouraging. We have shown that bitter melon extract significantly induced death in breast cancer cells and decreased their growth and spread.”
The research, published in the March 1 edition of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, involved human breast cancer cells exposed to bitter melon extract in the lab. Dr. Ray cautioned that it is too early to jump to conclusions that the extract could help breast cancer patients — but her findings are promising.
“Cancer prevention by the use of naturally occurring dietary substances is considered a practical approach to reduce the ever-increasing incidence of cancer. Studying a high risk breast cancer population where bitter melon is taken as a dietary product will be an important area of future research,” Dr. Ray said in the press statement.
Dr. Ray and colleagues are currently conducting follow-up studies. They are looking at a number of different cancer cell lines in order to investigate how bitter melon halts cancer cell growth. They are also planning to test the vegetable extract in animals to see if it will delay or kill breast cancer cells. If that research goes well, clinical trials in human breast cancer patients could soon follow.
“Breast cancer is a major killer among women around the world, and in that perspective, results from this study are quite significant,” Rajesh Agarwal, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado, Denver School of Pharmacy, and the Cancer Research associate editor for this study, commented in a media release. “This study may provide us with one more agent as an extract that could be used against breast cancer if additional studies hold true.”
Bitter melon is widely grown in Asia, Africa and South America. Extracts of this vegetable are currently included in some dietary supplements in Western countries because bitter melon is known to contain healthful phytochemicals such as carotenoids, flavanoids and polyphenols, as well as vitamin C.
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Gas Prices to Top The 3 Dollar Mark
February 23th, 2010
Sun Times
Gas prices are headed up to above $3 a gallon for regular, and experts say it isn’t because of higher demand.
The average per-gallon price of unleaded regular gasoline in Chicago jumped 10 cents in the last week to $2.82, which is 84 cents higher than a year ago, according to AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.
Nationally, the price is $2.65 a gallon, up 3 cents a gallon from last week and 73 cents a gallon higher than a year ago.
Pump prices typically rise this time of year as refineries switch to a more expensive grade of gas. But prices are climbing even after millions of Americans got pink slips and kept their cars in the driveway.
What’s pushing prices higher is the crude oil that’s used to make motor fuel, said Fred Rozell of the Oil Price Information Service. Crude is an international commodity that has become ever more expensive as demand grows in China. As crude prices increase, so do gas gas prices.
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Internet Overloaded With Advertising, Misinformation, and Hate
February 22, 2010
Organic Consumers Association
By Chris Hedges
The Internet has become one more tool hijacked by corporate interests to accelerate our cultural, political and economic decline. The great promise of the Internet, to open up dialogue, break down cultural barriers, promote democracy and unleash innovation and creativity, has been exposed as a scam. The Internet is dividing us into antagonistic clans, in which we chant the same slogans and hate the same enemies, while our creative work is handed for free to Web providers who use it as bait for advertising.
Ask journalists, photographers, musicians, cartoonists or artists what they think of the Web. Ask movie and film producers. Ask architects or engineers. The Web efficiently disseminates content, but it does not protect intellectual property rights. Writers and artists are increasingly unable to make a living. And technical professions are under heavy assault. Anything that can be digitized can and is being outsourced to countries such as India and China where wages are miserable and benefits nonexistent. Welcome to the new global serfdom where the only professions that pay a living wage are propaganda and corporate management.
The Web, at the same time it is destroying creative work, is forming anonymous crowds that vent collective rage, intolerance and bigotry. These virtual slums do not expand communication or dialogue. They do not enrich our culture. They create a herd mentality in which those who express empathy for “the enemy”-and the liberal class is as guilty of this as the right wing-are denounced by their fellow travelers for their impurity. Racism toward Muslims may be as evil as anti-Semitism, but try to express this simple truth on a partisan Palestinian or Israeli website.
Jaron Lanier, the “father of virtual reality technology,” in his new book “You Are Not a Gadget,” warns us of this frightening new collectivism. He notes that the habits imposed by the Internet have reconfigured how we relate to each other. He writes that “Web 2.0,” “Open Culture,” “Free Software” and the “Long Tail” have become enablers of this new collectivism. He cites Wikipedia, which consciously erases individual voices, and Google Wave as examples of the rise of mass collective thought and mass emotions. Google Wave is a new communication platform that permits users to edit what someone else has said in a conversation when it is displayed as well as allow collaborators to watch each other as they type. Privacy, honesty and self-reflection are instantly obliterated.
Tastes and information on the Internet are determined by the crowd, what Lanier calls the hive mentality. Music, books, journalism, commercials and bits of television shows and movies, along with inane YouTube videos, are thrust onto our screens and into national consciousness because of the statistical analysis of Internet crowd preferences. Lanier says that one of the biggest mistakes he and other computer scientists made when the Internet was developed was allowing contributions to the Internet to go unpaid. He says decisions such as this have now robbed people, especially those who create, of their ability to make a living and ultimately the capacity for dignity. Digital collectivism, he warns, is destroying the dwindling vestiges of authentic creativity and innovation, including journalism, which takes time, investment and self-reflection. And while there are a few sites that do pay for content-Truthdig being one-the vast majority are parasites. The only income left for most of those who create is earned through self-promotion, but as Lanier points out this turns culture into nothing but advertising. It fosters a social ethic in which the capacity for crowd manipulation is more highly valued than truth, beauty or thought.
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The Kevin Trudeau Show: 2-17-10
Today, Kevin explains why he is in court today and the real reason he didn’t get fair coverage from the mainstream media. Plus, more predictions! You won’t want to miss this vital information!!
Foreclosures Reach 315,000 in January
Corporations Have No Interest In Your Safety
Updates to Mental Health Disorders Manual
Speaking of New Made-Up Disorders…
Anti-Depressant Drugs No More Effective Than Placebos
Household Cleaners May Cause Breast Cancer
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 2-16-10
Today, Kevin explains why the government and media are tuning in specifically for this broadcast!
Plus, get out a pen and paper! Kevin exposes top secret predictions that will help you get ready for the worst!
And Jacob Hafter, the attorney in the case to get HCG legalized in the State of Nevada, stops by to give you the inside details of the court proceedings.
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
Australia Could Censor Political YouTube Videos
February 12, 2010
The Age
By Asher Moses
Google says it will not “voluntarily” comply with the government’s request that it censor YouTube videos in accordance with broad “refused classification” (RC) content rules.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy referred to Google’s censorship on behalf of the Chinese and Thai governments in making his case for the company to impose censorship locally.
Google warns this would lead to the removal of many politically controversial, but harmless, YouTube clips.
University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt, one of Australia’s top communications experts, said that to comply with Conroy’s request Google “would have to install a filter along the lines of what they actually have in China”.
As it prepares to introduce legislation within weeks forcing ISPs to block a blacklist of RC websites, the government says it is in talks with Google over blocking the same type of material from YouTube.
YouTube’s rules already forbid certain videos that would be classified RC, such as sex, violence, bestiality and child pornography. But the RC classification extends further to more controversial content such as information on euthanasia, material about safer drug use and material on how to commit more minor crimes such as painting graffiti.
Google said all of these topics were featured in videos on YouTube and it refused to censor these voluntarily. It said exposing these topics to public debate was vital for democracy.
In an interview with the ABC’s Hungry Beast, which aired last night, Conroy said applying ISP filters to high-traffic sites such as YouTube would slow down the internet, “so we’re currently in discussions with Google about … how we can work this through”.
“What we’re saying is, well in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws,” Conroy said.
“Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government.”
Google Australia’s head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said the company had a bias in favour of freedom of expression in everything it did and Conroy’s comparisons between how Australia and China deal with access to information were not “helpful or relevant”.
Google has recently threatened to pull out of China, partly due to continuing requests for it to censor material.
“YouTube has clear policies about what content is not allowed, for example hate speech and pornography, and we enforce these, but we can’t give any assurances that we would voluntarily remove all Refused Classification content from YouTube,” Flynn said.
“The scope of RC is simply too broad and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information. RC includes the grey realms of material instructing in any crime from [painting] graffiti to politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia, and exposing these topics to public debate is vital for democracy.”
Asked for further comment, a Google Australia spokeswoman said that, while the company “won’t comply voluntarily with the broad scope of all RC content”, it would comply with the relevant laws in countries it operates in.
However, if Conroy includes new YouTube regulations in his internet filtering legislation, it is not clear if these would apply to Google since YouTube is hosted overseas.
“They [Google] don’t control the access in Australia – all their equipment that would do this is hosted overseas … and I would find it very hard to believe that the Australian government can in any way force an American company to follow Australian law in America,” Landfeldt said.
“Quite frankly it would really not be workable … every country in the world would come to Google and say this is what you need to do for our country. You would not be able to run the kind of services that Google provides if that would be the case.”
This week the Computer Research and Education Association (CORE) put out a statement on behalf of all Australasian computer science lecturers and professors opposing the government’s internet filtering policy.
They said the filters would only block a fraction of the unwanted material available on the internet, be inapplicable to many of the current methods of online content distribution and create a false sense of security for parents.
CORE said the blacklist could be used by current and future governments to restrict freedom of speech, while those determined to get around the filters and access nasty content could do so with ease.
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Pepsico Grows as American Snack Food Intake Increases
February 12, 2010
Business Week
By Duane D. Stanford
PepsiCo Inc., the world’s largest snack maker, said fourth-quarter profit doubled, as food sales grew in the Americas.
Net income increased to $1.43 billion, or 90 cents a share, from $719 million, or 46 cents, a year earlier, Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo said today in a statement. Year-earlier profit included restructuring costs. Earnings per share matched the average of 10 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
PepsiCo affirmed its forecast of an 11 percent to 13 percent gain in earnings per share this year, excluding some costs and foreign-currency effects. Changes in pricing last quarter helped counter little-changed sales volume at the Americas foods division and volume declines at Americas beverages. Total revenue increased 4.5 percent to $13.3 billion, in line with analysts’ estimates.
PepsiCo rose 81 cents to $61.19 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares gained 11 percent in 2009.
Latin America Foods’ net revenue rose 10 percent, leading the food gains in the Americas. The results exclude the effects of foreign currency fluctuations. The company forecast a one- time charge of about $125 million in the first quarter because of currency devaluation and hyperinflationary accounting in Venezuela.
Share repurchases together with a voluntary $600 million funding of PepsiCo’s pension plans may total about $5 billion this year, the company said.
Coca-Cola Co., the world’s largest soft-drink maker, said Feb. 9 that fourth-quarter profit gained 55 percent as volume sales grew in China and India.
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Linking Frankincense to a Cure for Cancer
February 12, 2010
BBC News
By Jeremy Howell
Oman’s Land of Frankincense is an 11-hour drive southwards from the capital, Muscat.
Most of the journey is through Arabia’s Empty Quarter – hundreds of kilometres of flat, dun-coloured desert. Just when you are starting to think this is the only scenery you will ever see again, the Dhofar mountains appear in the distance.
On the other side are green valleys, with cows grazing in them. The Dhofar region catches the tail-end of India’s summer monsoons, and they make this the most verdant place on the Arabian peninsula.
Warm winters and showery summers are the perfect conditions for the Boswellia sacra tree to produce the sap called frankincense. These trees grow wild in Dhofar. A tour guide, Mohammed Al-Shahri took me to Wadi Dawkah, a valley 20 km inland from the main city of Salalah, to see a forest of them.
“The records show that frankincense was produced here as far back as 7,000 BC,” he says. He produces an army knife. He used to be a member of the Sultan’s Special Forces. With a practised flick, he cuts a strip of bark from the trunk of one of the Boswellia sacra trees. Pinpricks of milky-white sap appear on the wood and, very slowly, start to ooze out.
“This is the first cut. But you don’t gather this sap,” he says. “It releases whatever impurities are in the wood. The farmers return after two or three weeks and make a second, and a third, cut. Then the sap comes out yellow, or bright green, or brown or even black. They take this.”
Shortly afterwards, a frankincense farmer arrives in a pick-up truck. He is white-bearded, wearing a brown thobe and the traditional Omani, paisley-patterned turban.
He is 67-year-old Salem Mohammed from the Gidad family. Most of the Boswellia sacra trees grow on public land, but custom dictates that each forest is given to one of the local families to farm, and Wadi Dawkah is his turf.
Camel train
He has an old, black, iron chisel with which he gouges out clumps of dried frankincense.
“We learnt about frankincense from our forefathers and they learnt it from theirs” he says. “The practice has been passed down through the generations. We exported the frankincense, and that’s how the families in Dhofar made their livings.”
And what an export trade it was. Frankincense was sent by camel train to Egypt, and from there to Europe. It was shipped from the ancient port of Sumharan to Persia, India and China. Religions adopted frankincense as a burnt offering.
That is why, according to Matthew’s Gospel in the Bible, the Wise Men brought it as a gift to the infant Jesus. Gold: for a king. Frankincense: for God. Myrrh: to embalm Jesus’ body after death.
The Roman Empire coveted the frankincense trade. In the first century BCE, Augustus Caesar sent 10,000 troops to invade what the Romans called Arabia Felix to find the source of frankincense and to control its production. The legions, marching from Yemen, were driven back by the heat and the aridity of the desert. They never found their Eldorado.
Oman’s frankincense trade went into decline three centuries ago, when Portugal fought Oman for dominance of the sea routes in the Indian and the Pacific Oceans.
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