Such a move raises the prospect that rising inflation and production costs in Shenzhen, one of China’s main manufacturing hubs, could prompt global consumer electronics makers to look at other destinations such as Vietnam, India and Indonesia as well as poorer inland provinces in China itself, such as Hubei and Chongqing, and to choose to manufacture products there in the future.

Taiwan Electronic and Electrical Manufacturers’ Association Vice President Luo Huai Jia said Monday the organization, which represents the interests of electronic manufacturers on the island, is encouraging Taiwanese electronics makers to build new facilities in cheaper Asian countries such as Vietnam, India, Indonesia and Malaysia, because of rising wages in China.

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The statement by Apple is the first direct public acknowledgment of the suicides by a client of Hon Hai, which along with its subsidiaries and affiliates also goes by the trade name Foxconn.

“We are saddened and upset by the recent suicides at Foxconn,” the Apple statement said. “Apple is deeply committed to ensuring that conditions throughout our supply chain are safe and workers are treated with respect and dignity. We are in direct contact with Foxconn senior management and we believe they are taking this matter very seriously.”

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Cardboard cutouts resembling iPhones were sent on fire by labor activists near the Hon Hai office in Hong Kong on Tuesday.
An employee of Hon Hai died after falling from a building at the firm’s plant in southern China Tuesday, following several others this year, China’s state media Xinhua news agency reported. Most have been ruled suicides, although the most recent death and several others have not been classified.

The cause of the spate in suicides among workers at Hon Hai, which also is known by its trade name Foxconn, is hard to pinpoint. Statistically, the rate of suicides isn’t exceptional given the size of the company’s staff–it has 800,000 workers in China, about half of those in Shenzhen–and it’s unclear to what degree the wave of incidents is a result of copycat behavior as found in suicide clusters elsewhere or if there are other factors.

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Responding to a petition posted on the Web site for Number 10 Downing Street, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown late Thursday apologized for what he characterized as the “appalling” treatment of Turing 55 years earlier by British officials. Turing, who was gay, was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency and given two choices, prison or “chemical castration” by a series of injections of female hormones. Two years after choosing the latter punishment, he committed suicide.

Turing had helped lead the team of British codebreakers at Bletchley Park whose work gave the Allies crucial advantages against German forces during the war, and formed a basis for later generations of computers.

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According to publications that include Shanghai Daily, Sun Danyong, a recent engineering graduate, jumped out of the window of his apartment last Thursday. The reports said Sun, who had been tasked with sending iPhone prototypes to Apple, had been under suspicion for stealing after one of the handsets went missing. Some publications reported that, in the days prior to his suicide, Sun had been detained and beaten by a senior official in the security department of the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturing giant.

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It’s a well-intentioned bit of legislation and it doesn’t lack for emotional import, given the famous MySpace suicide case from which it takes its name, but c’mon. As worded here, the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act essentially makes it a crime to hurt someone’s feelings. Worse, its definition of the speech used to do that is very loose and ripe for abuse. It would seem to cover, for example, an irate reader comment on this post or pointed criticism of a public official. Or flame wars? And that’s just silly, isn’t it? And beyond that, it’s a violation of the First Amendment.

“This cannot possibly be constitutionally permissible, it cannot possibly be a good idea, it cannot possibly be what the drafters intended, and yet that is what they wrote,” UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told the St. Louis Post Dispatch. “If it is passed through Congress, I see it being struck down in courts,” he added.

Here’s hoping it doesn’t even make it that far…