Why Nintendo, Google and others may want to move some manufacturing out of China
China has long been the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. It has the suppliers, the assembly lines, the workers, the expertise. Companies, particularly technology giants like Google, depend on China to assemble their products. But now times are changing with more businesses than ever before looking to learn more about what the alternative to manufacturing in China is.
A year into a trade war provoked by a tough new stance by the United States, including costly tariffs, some companies are starting to look elsewhere.
Google, which already has a significant presence in Taiwan, now plans to shift some manufacturing of its Nest thermostats and server hardware out of China to avoid tariffs, according to a report from Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. And the Wall Street Journal reported that Nintendo is moving some production of its Switch video game consoles from China to Southeast Asia, citing people who work on the company’s supply chain.
This comes after a senior executive at Foxconn, the Taiwanese contract manufacturer that makes most of Apple’s smartphones in China, told Bloomberg that the company has enough capacity to make all United States-bound iPhones outside of China. Apple (AAPL) has not said it is looking to move manufacturing.
Video game consoles are typically a low-margin business, meaning that tariffs on consoles could be a real problem for Nintendo’s ability to turn a profit. And Nintendo has been counting on the Switch console to drive big sales.
Gulf of Oman tanker attacks: US says video shows Iran removing mine
The US military has released a video which it says shows Iran’s Revolutionary Guard removing an unexploded mine from the side of an oil tanker damaged in an attack in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday.
US officials also shared a photo of the Japanese tanker, apparently showing the unexploded mine before it was removed.
A Norwegian tanker was also damaged.
The US accused Iran of being behind the mine attacks. Iran said it “categorically rejects” the allegation.
The blasts came a month after four oil tankers were damaged in an attack off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. The US blamed Iran for that attack, but did not produce evidence. Iran also denied those accusations.
Hong Kong’s digital battle: tech that helped protesters now used against them
Wary of being tracked and targeted like activists inside China, protesters are keeping a low profile online
In early June, Ivan Ip, 22, joined a public chat group on Telegram called “Parade 69”, named for a mass demonstration planned in central Hong Kong to protest a bill allowing for the transfer of suspects from the city to China. According to Ip, an administrator of the group of more than 30,000 people, they discussed things like bringing sunscreen, water, and umbrellas to block the sun or rain.
Two days after the protest, which saw as many as one million Hong Kong residents march against the proposed extradition law, authorities arrived at Ip’s apartment in the evening. Banging on the door, they yelled: “Police! Open up the door!”
Syrian refugees in Lebanon tear down walls to keep their homes
Syrian refugees are facing a wave of hostility in Lebanon, writes Richard Hall
The sound of a hammer striking concrete echoes around the sprawling refugee camp. Outside almost every tent, piles of broken breeze blocks show the hard work of the past few days. An exhausted Salah Mustafa, a 35-year-old Syrian refugee who fled to Lebanon five years ago, is one of the last to finish tearing down the walls of his home.
“I built these walls to keep my mother warm,” he says, during a break. “She has trouble with her kidneys so she feels the cold more than anyone else. But even with the walls, the winter is unbearable.”
The next winter is likely to be much worse for Mustafa’s family, and for the thousands of other Syrian refugees here in the Lebanese border town of Arsal, who have spent days dismantling the concrete shells of their shelters in order to save them from being demolished entirely.
Apocalypse NowA Moroccan Oasis Struggles with Climate Change
Droughts, sandstorms and flash flooding: In the southern Moroccan oasis M’Hamid El Ghizlane, the effects global warming is likely to have on the Mediterranean region can already be observed today.
By Raphael Thelen
A sandstorm moves over the oasis town of M’Hamid El Ghizlane, coating buildings and streets with a fine yellowish coating that makes breathing more difficult and burns the eyes. Halim Sbai, 48, looks out at the remnants of the clay walls of his birth home on the edge of the oasis. “Whenever I’m here, the old and the new image of this place are superimposed on each other,” he says. “It’s then that I see the differences.”
Before the rain stopped falling and the sandstorms grew stronger, palm trees used to grow in this oasis in southern Morocco. Date palms reached to the sky while pomegranate trees, wheat and watermelons grew in their shade — so dense that Sbai had to fight his way through jungle-like vegetation when he wanted to swim in the Draa River near his home after it rained.
My video’s funnier than yours: Pakistan, India trade parodies before Cup clash
Islamabad (AFP)
A video parodying an Indian air force pilot who was briefly captured by arch-rival Pakistan earlier this year has gone viral ahead of a highly-anticipated World Cup clash between the two cricket-mad nations.
The 33-second video shows an actor posing as handlebar-moustached Abhinandan Varthaman, who was shot down over the disputed region of Kashmir earlier this year and held briefly by Pakistan.
He was released in a “peace gesture” aimed at defusing tensions between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours, who have been fierce rivals since independence from Britain in 1947.