Enlarge / An iPhone assembly worker works with Apple supplier Pegatron in an image distributed by Apple. (credit: Apple )

A new report in The Information cites both former Apple employees and internal presentations and data to make the case that Apple has failed to keep its manufacturing partners in China accountable after the Chinese government passed a new law limiting the use of temporary workers at factories.

The former Apple employees included three from Apple's supplier responsibility team, and one who was "a senior manager familiar with its operations in China."

In the mid-2010s, China introduced a new labor law that required factories to limit the portion of their workforces made up of temporary workers (also called dispatch workers) to 10 percent.

Enlarge / Chinese President Xi Jinping learns about the progress on a COVID-19 vaccine during his visit to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing on March 2, 2020. (credit: Getty | Xinhua News Agency )

China has now signed onto a massive, global alliance to develop and equitably distribute a coronavirus vaccine—putting the United States’ absence from the pact into yet sharper relief.

With its late entry announced Friday, China joins at around 170 other countries in the pact, called the COVAX Facility . The effort is being spearheaded by the World Health Organization and co-led along with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

COVAX is designed to pool resources to help develop a vaccine and bring it to market globally. Once at that point, the alliance will help ensure all participating countries have access to whichever vaccine candidate(s) prove successful, regardless of where it was developed. It will also provide financial assistance to lower income countries to access the vaccine. So far, at least 77 high-income countries (including China) have signed on, as well as 92 low- and middle-income countries.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

TikTok will be gone from app stores tomorrow morning unless a federal judge acts to block the Trump administration's ban on the app before midnight tonight.

Judge Carl Nichols of the US District Court for DC said today that he will determine whether to grant or reject TikTok's request for an injunction on the ban before the deadline hits at the stroke of 12.

In a hearing on Thursday, Nichols gave the administration until Friday afternoon either to delay or defend the ban. The administration chose to file a response defending the ban but did so under seal, so the filings are not available to the public.

Enlarge / Computer chip with Chinese flag, 3d conceptual illustration. (credit: Steve McDowell / Agefotostock )

Fortune 500 companies aren’t the only ones flocking to cloud services like Microsoft Azure. Increasingly, hackers working on behalf of the Chinese government are also hosting their tools in the cloud, and that’s keeping people in Redmond busy.

Earlier this year, members of the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center suspended 18 Azure Active Directory applications after determining they were part of a sprawling command-and-control network. Besides the cloud-hosted applications, the members of the hacking group Microsoft calls Gadolinium also stored ill-gotten data in a Microsoft OneDrive account and used the account to execute various parts of the campaign.

Microsoft, Amazon, and other cloud providers have long touted the speed, flexibility, and scale that comes from renting computing resources as needed rather than using dedicated servers in-house. Hackers seem to be realizing the same benefits. The shift to the cloud can be especially easy thanks to free trial services and one-time payment accounts, which allow hackers to quickly get up and running without having to have an established relationship or even a valid payment card on file.

Enlarge / World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a press conference organized by the Geneva Association of United Nations Correspondents (ACANU) amid the COVID-19 outbreak, caused by the novel coronavirus, on July 3, 2020 at the WHO headquarters in Geneva. (credit: Getty | Fabrice Cof )

A total of 156 countries—representing about 64 percent of the world’s population —have committed to pooling resources to help develop, buy, and equitably distribute two billion doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of 2021.

“This isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, which is co-leading the effort along with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

So far, 64 high-income countries have signed on to the effort, as well as 92 low- and middle-income countries , which would be eligible for support in procuring vaccine doses. Gavi CEO Seth Berkley said in a WHO press conference on Monday that he expects 38 more countries to sign up in the coming days.

Enlarge / TikTok's US operations may soon be part of every cool teen's favorite conglomerates, Microsoft and Walmart. (credit: SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images )

TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer, who only began the job on June 1, is heading right back out the door again as the company plans a sale under pressure from the White House.

"In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for," Mayer wrote in an email to TikTok employees late Wednesday. "Against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company."

Mayer praised employees' efforts, saying that "there is no doubt that the future [of TikTok] is incredibly bright." But at the same time, he added, "I understand that the role that I signed up for—including running TikTok globally—will look very different as a result of the US Administration’s action to push for a sell off of the US business."

Enlarge / TikTok's US operations may soon be part of every cool teen's favorite code conglomerate, Microsoft. (credit: SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images )

TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, filed suit today in federal court arguing that President Donald Trump's efforts to ban the app or force a sale to a US firm are not grounded in facts but instead are part of an "anti-China political campaign."

An executive order curtailing TikTok's US operations "is not rooted in bona fide national security concerns," TikTok argues in its complaint ( PDF ). "Independent national security and information security experts have criticized the political nature of this executive order, and expressed doubt as to whether its stated national security objective is genuine," the company adds.

TikTok's complaint seeks to prevent the president and the Department of Commerce from "impermissively banning" the app, alleging that the authority under which the order was enacted (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA) was a "gross misappropriation" and "a pretext for furthering the President's broader campaign of anti-China rhetoric in the run-up to the US election."

Enlarge (credit: Samuel Axon)

For years, iPhones (or their boxes) have said that they were "designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China." But thanks to an escalating trade war between the US and China, that might not be true in the coming years. Reuters reports that two of Apple's biggest manufacturing contractors, Foxconn and Pegatron, are working to expand their facilities in Mexico with an eye toward eventually building iPhones there.

Foxconn's plans aren't final, Reuters reports. Apple hasn't signed off on the idea and declined to comment to Reuters. But Foxconn is reportedly looking to make a final decision this year.

Foxconn already has a significant presence in Mexico. Five Foxconn factories in Mexico make televisions, servers, and other products. But building iPhones could represent a major expansion of Foxconn's activities in the Latin American country.