Nothing like a bit of exposure on the tech blogs to force the Juarez arm of the Chinese company into doing the right thing by its worker bees. Apparently, the “ringleader” was someone who actually left Foxconn last year, and will be the one punished by the heavy arm of the law – not the hundreds of other workers who joined in on the arson.

Thankfully, Foxconn has also confirmed that nothing was severely damaged by the fire, so they can get back to work polishing those nice aluminium iPhone 4s we’ve been expecting. [Digitimes]

Apparently at the end of the work day on Friday, supervisors at the Foxconn factory in Juarez, Mexico weren’t quite ready to wrap up for the weekend, so they told the workers that the transportation trucks that take them home everyday were being held up at a military checkpoint. In the meantime, the workers were forced to keep toiling away without any extra compensation.

Well, that bit about the military checkpoint wasn’t entirely true, and when the workers found out that the trucks were just being blocked-in in the parking lot, they expressed their anger by burning down the factory’s gymnasium, the area of the building in which the factory’s finished computers and cell phones are stored.

This reportedly isn’t the first time the slimy managers at the Juarez plant had tried to strong arm their employees into staying overtime without extra pay, so the explosive reaction is not entirely surprising. Sometimes you just gotta fight fire with arson. [El Norte (sub. required) - Thanks Wilibaldo]

The name of the soldier in the “I love NY” underpants is Spc. Zachery Boyd of Fort Worth, TX, fighting next to Spc. Cecil Montgomery of Many, LA and Jordan Custer of Spokane, WA, centre.

A front shot of the Hudson River water landing, as passengers waited to be rescued.

Nothing really impressive happening in this shot of a French aerobatic team. I just love it.

This is one of the segments of the Mexico border barrier, running between Yuma, Arizona and Calexico. It’s 4.5m tall, and it can be lifted and repositioned so the dunes don’t cover it.

Go to the Big Picture for the rest of the series. [Big Picture]

Mi gusta chica mexicana, si. Ella es muy sweet. Mi no gusta Justin Long, porque es cojones obnoxious. Si? Claaaaaro. Los Mac-PC knock-off comerciales de television de cable company Yoo, however, es malo malo. Chingada. Tortilla. Tacos. Chimichanga. [Thanks Rodrigo]

I’m pretty attached to my laptop, but I don’t know if I’d jump on it to keep it from getting jacked while some robber was shooting at me, like this store clerk in Mexico.

Fortunately for him, the robbers were either bitches or they just had one bullet (or both), since they ran off after firing the shot that the clerk managed to dodge. [LiveLeak]

Reports HuffPo:

Employees at a Telefonica Movistar cell-phone store in Morelia, Mexico say they arrived Tuesday morning to find that the store had been broken into. An examination of the shop revealed the only items missing were hollow replica phones for display that are completely useless for making calls.

Employees say the clueless thieves overlooked real cell phones and cash in another part of the shop.

Even though the hot goods are nearly worthless, detectives are still on the case, meaning these idiots could eventually serve some jail time for their hollow plastic haul. [Huffington Post - Thanks, Scotland]

While on vacation in Mexico, Alberto downloaded Wall-E over his wireless carrier’s network, only to be slapped with an insane $US62,000 bill.

After explaining to the carrier how outrageous that is, he was made an offer: They’d knock the bill down to what it cost them in bandwidth. Unfortunately for Alberto, they claimed their cost was still $US17,000.

Alberto called in to one of those cable news network shows about money where the host wears headphones and yells at the viewer for half an hour and neglected to mention the carrier’s name, but we can’t see any way a 700MB file would cost $US17,000 in bandwidth fees. There’s a lesson in all this: If you’re going abroad, buy a roaming plan. Or at least tell us the name of the carrier so we can complain more effectively. [CNN via Ars Technica]

In an effort to prevent criminals from using prepaid mobile phones to extort money and negotiate kidnapping ransoms, Mexico is requiring that all mobile phone companies build up a database on their clients.

Starting in April, anyone purchasing a phone in Mexico will be fingerprinted and their call logs, text and voice messages will be archived for a year. These seem like strict measures, but hundreds of tourists are kidnapped in Mexico each year and the problem is getting worse. In fact, some believe these measures don’t go far enough:

Billionaire Carlos Slim, who controls Mexico’s No. 1 cell phone operator America Movil, said the law would be more useful if it tracked the movements of cell phone users. “What needs to be done is another type of more effective measures.”

Either way, will these steps do much to prevent you from being nabbed while visiting on Spring break? I doubt it. Mexico’s corrupt bureaucracy is legendary. At most it would amount to a minor obstacle that could be easily remedied with a little extra cash. [Yahoo Tech]

The flying fishbowl will launch from Spaceport America, near Las Cruces, with tickets running an estimated $US100,000. Scuba gear will probably cost extra.

And a related FYI: Rocket Racing, which is also funding the bubble ship, is developing a NASCAR-inspired rocket racing league. This can’t lose! [New Scientist]

Steve Jobs Technological High School Centre (Steve would NEVER have used that name!) is currently open, and apparently seeking applicants. Be mindful that there is a one in five chance that this is actually a horrible con, and that you’ll immediately be shunted into an underground sweatshop where you’ll sew exact replicas of out-of-production black turtle necks and Levi 501s. [Macenstein]