Evening reads: Enjoy that iPad…

Good evening, you may have seen the latest news about the factory that makes the iPad for Apple. Foxconn worker falls to death in China

A Foxconn worker fell to his death in China, the company which assembles products for Apple said Thursday, following a series of fatalities that sparked concern about conditions at its plants.

The 23-year-old, identified only by his surname Xie, fell from his rented apartment in the southwest Chinese city of Chengdu on Wednesday, according to a statement released by Hon Hai Precision Industry, Foxconn’s parent company.

It said the cause of the tragedy was not immediately clear and Chengdu police were still investigating.

Taiwan tech giant Foxconn, which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, has come under the spotlight after suicides and labour unrest at its Chinese plants since 2010.

At least 13 employees died in apparent suicides in 2010, followed by several others in 2011. Activists blamed tough working conditions, leading to calls for better treatment of the company’s staff.

I won’t link to any articles about Sandusky, but we can’t get away from stories of child sexual abuse. Court orders Boy Scouts to release sexual abuse files

The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the release of 1,247 confidential Boy Scouts of America files, the first step toward publicly lifting the veil on 20 years of alleged child sexual abuse by troop leaders and others within the organization.

Also known as the “ineligible volunteer” or “perversion” files, the 20,000 pages ordered to be unsealed span two decades beginning in 1965, a portion of such records the Scouts have kept under lock and key since the 1920s.

There is more going on in Syria, US backtracks on claims Russia is arming Syrian regime

The US state department has acknowledged that Russian helicopters it claimed had been sent recently to the Syrian regime were, in fact, refurbished ones already owned by Damascus.

Secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, claimed on Tuesday that “the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria“.

Egypt had it’s share of headlines today as well: New Political Showdown in Egypt as Court Invalidates Parliament

The high court, packed with sympathizers of the ousted president, appeared to be engaged in a frontal legal assault on the Muslim Brotherhood, the once-outlawed organization whose members swept to power in Parliament this spring and whose candidate was the front-runner for the presidency as well.

“Egypt just witnessed the smoothest military coup,” Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, wrote in a Twitter post. “We’d be outraged if we weren’t so exhausted.”

I thought this link by Tommy Christopher was interesting: Politico Reporter Admits The Press Is Covering For Republican Obstructionism

Against overwhelming evidence that Republicans have plotted to obstruct everything President Obama does, even the things they agree with, the mainstream media has stubbornly insisted that “both sides” are the problem, that there’s just a “polarization” problem in DC. In an interview on Current TV’s The War Room with Jennifer Granholm, Politico‘s Joe Williams says that the press has been cowed into this perversion of “objectivity” by a right-wing that specializes in working the ref (I’m paraphrasing, of course).

And for the last link tonight…Daughter of Civil War veteran dies at age 94

Stella Mae Case, who died last Sunday at the age of 94, was one of the last living Americans whose father fought in the civil War, U-T San Diegoreports.

Her father, John Harwood Pierce, who was 70 when she was born in 1918, joined the 11th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry at the age of 14. Barely 5 feet tall, he once dressed in women’s clothing as a Union spy.

Pierce died when Case was 7, but she said she could remember seeing him in his Civil War unfirom for a Memorial Day parade.

“I think I must have realized even at a young age that he was quite a character,” Case said in an interview for a U-T San Diego feature story published in 2009.

At one point, she put together a website on her father’s life, based on old clippings, historical research and Internet searching.

U-T writer John Wilkens says recordkeeping is spotty, but that the national headquarters of the Daughters of Union Veterans lists seven people, still living, who can claim a Civil War vet as their father.

So what are y’all up to tonight. We leave for Washington DC in less than 36 hours, and what a feeling of anticipation is going through the house. Have a wonderful evening…