Light and death

APPLE was expecting lots of publicity ahead of the international release of the iPad, its latest gadget, on May 28th—but not the sort it received in Hong Kong this week, which included the ritual burning of pictures of iPhones and calls for a global boycott. The protests were triggered by a series of suicides of employees of Foxconn, a subsidiary of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, the world's largest “contract manufacturer”. It makes products for Apple and, according to reports, most other electronics heavyweights, among them Dell, HP, Nintendo and Sony.