FOXCONN

Working conditions at Chinese manufacturing plants where Apple Inc's iPads and iPhones are made are far better than those at garment factories or other facilities elsewhere in the country, according to the head of a non-profit agency investigating the plants.

An electronics firm is bidding to block iPad imports in China after winning a copyright suit against Apple, prompting two cites to pull the popular tablets from store shelves.

Apple has said that auditors from a labor rights group have begun inspections of the Chinese factories, including Foxconn factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, which manufacture its iPad and iPhone.

Apple's stock price hit $500 per share for the first time on Monday, peaking at $503.83 in yet another sign that the company's fortunes continue to rise.

Apple Inc said on Monday that a U.S. non-profit labor group has begun an unprecedented inspection of working conditions at its main contract manufacturers, including Foxconn's plants in southern China, as the maker of the IPhone continues to grapple with persistent image problems there.

Apple issued a press release on Monday announcing that the Fair Labor Association has begun investigating Foxconn's upon Apple's request. It was a necessary move, but it would never have happened without CEO Tim Cook at the helm.

Apple, under attack for poor labor practices at its Asian contract manufacturers, said it had asked the Fair Labor Association to inspect them.

Is there anyone on the planet who hasn't read of the spate of suicides, worker deaths and accidents at the Chinese plants owned by Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industries, better known as Foxconn?

On Thursday protestors in the U.S. joined others around the world by handing a 250,000 strong petition to employees at Apple's Grand Central Station store.

Now that the all new Apple iPad 3 has a set release date of early March, the question now is will it be ethically produced by Chinese factory workers at places like Foxconn. Reports of poor working conditions in Chinese factories that make the $500 or more iPad, have forced Apple to confront the possibility it may have to intervene or at least make an effort to investigate the charges.

Hacker group SwaggSec has hacked one of Foxconn's servers, leaking the company's internal information such as usernames and passwords for clients and employees, according to a statement SwaggSec has posted.

After two stories detailed Apple's overseas operations, CNN released a report on Monday that features an 18-year-old female college student by the name of Miss Chen, who works overtime at Foxconn building iPads even though she had never seen one of Apple's finished tablets before.

By day, Robert Leitao manages a Catholic church in Southern California. By night, he indulges his other passion: predicting Apple Inc's results.

Apple is expected to reveal the iPhone 5 at the Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) 2012, which will take place in San Francisco from June 6 to June 10. The new phone is said to feature a bigger screen and 4G LTE.

Apple's seventh-generation iPod Nano will reportedly come with a built-in camera. Rumors of this feature were known about a year ago, but with newer photos and Apple patenting the device, it's a near-certainty that the next iPod Nano will record still and video images.

Even as the protests against Apple's workers mistreatment practice are surging incessantly, there are still thousands of Chinese job seekers who are lining up in front of the gates of Foxconn, the company's major product manufacturer in China, hoping that they will be hired to work on iPhone 5 production.

The protests against Apple's worker mistreatment practice are surging wave upon wave. A recent online petition demands the tech giant to take further steps in protecting workers and make its next iPhone the first ethical iPhone.

Sharp Corp forecast a record 290 billion yen ($3.8 billion) net loss for the year to March after posting surprise quarterly losses as a slump in TV sales forced it to halve output at a western Japan LCD plant.

Sharp Corp will halve its LCD panel output at its Sakai facility in Osaka in Japan, marking its second deep production cut in a year, hurt by slumping television demand, the Nikkei business daily said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an email to the employees, Thursday, claiming the company cares about the worker's welfare, after the New York Times published, Wednesday, a lengthy report about the terrible working conditions in the major Apple product manufacturer Foxconn.

Apple celebrated the second birthday of the iPad on Friday, but the tablet's success has been overshadowed by a recent report from the New York Times that exposes labor violations at Apple's supply chain in China.