A third worker has died from an explosion at a Foxconn plant in China that makes Apple products, the contract manufacturer said on Sunday.

The company said it is still investigating the blast, but said initial findings suggest “that the accident was caused by an explosion of combustible dust in a duct.”

Foxconn said it has halted production at that plant and similar plants pending the investigation. The facility is believed to make Apple’s iPad.

Statement from Foxconn Technology Group

Update on the Tragic Accident at Foxconn Technology Group’s Hongfujin Precision Electronics (Chengdu) Co. Facility

Foxconn can confirm that, sadly, a third employee has died from injuries from the May 20 explosion at one of the polishing workshops at our company’s Hongfujin Precision Electronics (Chengdu) Co. Ltd. facility in Chengdu.

Fifteen other employees were injured in that accident and six of those employees have been treated and released from the hospital. Foxconn is working with medical professionals and the local government to ensure that all of the injured employees receive the highest quality medical treatment. Our condolences go out to the families of the deceased employees and they are being given the full support of the company. Our thoughts are also with the injured employees and their families who are also being given the full support of our company at this very difficult time.

The cause of this tragic accident is still being investigated by a joint investigation task force led by government officials and law enforcement authorities, but that task force has communicated initial findings that the accident was caused by an explosion of combustible dust in a duct. Foxconn is cooperating fully with all relevant government bodies to carry out a full investigation into the specific root cause of the accident and the company is taking all necessary actions to ensure the safety of employees at this and all other production facilities.

All operations at the affected workshop remain suspended and production at all other workshops that carry out similar processing functions have also been halted pending the results of the investigation into the cause of the Chengdu accident. All other production operations in our facilities in China continue operating normally.

Foxconn Technology Group will provide updates on this tragic accident as information becomes available.

After having just visited WeeWorld in London, an avatar-based site that allows mostly young people to create online personas for social networking and other activities around the Web, it was interesting to see Walt Disney last week forking over up to $700 million to own another popular social-networking site for “tweens” called Club Penguin.

As much as I despise that icky marketing term to signify kids on the cusp of becoming teenagers, to spend that much money to get its hands on that market is an interesting indicator of the desperation of older media companies to latch onto a big trend and also the perplexing development of the social-networking business, where the cart is so far in front of the horse that it’s almost laughable.

I have to give Canadian-based Club Penguin props for building a site in only two years that has attracted 12 million registered users and about 5 million monthly unique visitors–700,000 of whom pay a monthly fee of almost $6 to play in the virtual online space.

But its purchase price is still way high compared to its revenues (especially since no advertising is one of the attractions of this site to parents) and now sticks a large no-discount sticker all over the Web for such sites.

True, Club Penguin has been a raging success, especially compared to Disney’s own recent efforts at sites like Toontown. Perhaps that is due in part to that site’s not-so-punny catchphrase on top of its newspaper-like homepage: “The Best Game in the Tooniverse” with a price of “Five Jellybeans,” which just screams to kids: lame.

So Disney is paying the price for an inability to innovate online in the space–as it did before in an odd deja vu to a lot of Disney online efforts, including a premium site called Blast and when it bought Infoseek and turned it into the clunky Go portal.

Ponying up $350 million in cash with promises of $350 million more if certain performance criteria are met speaks volumes to me about this key problem Disney has long had on the Web–how to grow its original online media organically, beyond the basics of theme-park ticketing and other obvious stuff around its established products.

This time, Disney is not fooling around, it seems. “We plan to rename it Disney’s Club Penguin and to immediately use our Disney-branded properties such as Disney.com, Disney Channel, Radio Disney and our parks and resorts to raise its profiles,” said Disney CEO Robert Iger on a recent quarterly call. “We believe virtual worlds can extend and expand on the life of a franchise, expand our global reach for our entertainment content and allow us direct contact with our consumers in a more personalized and engaging way.”

Now, I have been a big admirer of the recent digital efforts of Iger, whom we interviewed at D4, such as his aggressive move into streaming and selling television content on the Web (how much do I love its ABC.com player, for example?).

Perhaps this is part of that drive, but it is unclear if paying these kind of prices will get Disney there, even without all the marketing muscle it brings to bear.

Even if Club Penguin is trumpeted all over the massive Disney universe from theme park to cable channel (that started immediately), the purchase is risky on a very basic level, given the cost and the nature of kids’ fast-changing preferences. Neopets? Webkins? And for us older demographic: Furby, Beanie Babies and Cabbage Patch Kids.

And, of course–and here I am really dating myself–the Pet Rock.