Chinese workers who often spend more than 60 hours per week assembling iPhones and iPads for Apple will have their overtime curbed and their pay increased following an audit.

Apple has announced that an independent group, the Fair Labor Association (FLA), has started inspecting the working conditions in the Chinese factories where its iPads and iPhones are assembled, a move inspired by the spate of bad press for its factories.

A WORKER at iPhone maker Foxconn’s southern China manufacturing hub, the scene of a string of employee suicides this year, died late last week from what his family said was overwork, a claim the company denied.

At least 55 people have died and seven are missing in flooding across a broad stretch of southern China, state media reported today.

Rescuers in earthquake-hit China continued to pull bodies from collapsed buildings today as a specialist British team was refused permission to join the operation.