•
China Losing Luster with U.S. Manufacturers; A new survey finds rising worries about product quality and intellectual-property theft. More U.S. companies are looking to Mexico and their own backyard
BusinessWeek
November 26, 2008, 9:17PM EST
By Pete Engardio
Two years of disastrous quality-control breakdowns, from foul fish and lead-tainted toys to poisoned drugs and dairy products, are taking their toll on China’s allure as a manufacturing platform. A new study by supply-chain consulting firm AMR Research found that quality concerns are among the chief reasons U.S. manufacturers are scaling back plans to source more goods from China. Read more »
•
Two things to say here about Walmart:
1. There is a great documentary that exposes the evil underbelly of Walmart by detailing:
- the negative financial impact on the communities where stores are set up,
- unsafe conditions in the store parking lots that cost shoppers their lives,
- general disregard of workers in the U.S.,
- deplorable treatment of workers of color and those wanting to unionize by store management ,
- poor conditions of Chinese laborers that make “low cost” products
- HOW TO STOP WALMART FROM INVADING YOUR COMMUNITY!
Find out more about the moive here: http://walmart.bravenewfilms.org/
2. I couldn’t resist including an unfortunate article from today’s The New York Times about an employee killed by shoppers in the rush of Black Friday shoppers, November 28, 2008:
Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death by Customers
November 29, 2008 By JACK HEALY and
ANGELA MACROPOULOS
A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York was trampled to death by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy.
Read more »
•
Pietermaritzburg - Hijackers injected a 24-year-old Pietermaritzburg man with an unknown sleep-inducing drug and dumped him in the middle of nowhere on Monday night. As a result of the drug, Ivan Marx lay unconscious in an open field in Bishopstowe outside the city from about 21:00 on Monday until about 06:00 Tuesday morning.
And after reporting the matter to the police and going to a doctor he again slept from 11:00 to 17:00, and did not even hear his cellphone repeatedly ringing.
Read more »