Instructions: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: Apple has discovered multiple cases of child labour in its supply chain, including one Chinese company that employed 74 children under the age of 16, in the latest controversy over the technology giant's manufacturing methods. 
  
 An internal audit found a flipside to the western consumer's insatiable thirst for innovative and competitively priced gadgets. It uncovered 106 cases of underage labour being used at Apple suppliers last year and 70 cases historically. The report follows a series of worker suicides over working conditions at Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles must-have products such as the iPad and iPhone, and lethal explosions at other plants. 
  
 Apple's annual supplier report – which monitors nearly 400 suppliers – found that children were employed at 11 factories involved in making its products. A number of them had been recruited using forged identity papers. 
  
 The report uncovered a catalogue of other offences, ranging from mandatory pregnancy tests, to bonded workers whose wages are confiscated to pay off debts imposed by recruitment agencies. They also found cases of juveniles being used to lift heavy goods, workers having their wages docked as a punishment and one factory dumping waste oil in the toilets. 
  
 One Chinese supplier, a circuit board component maker called Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics, was axed by Apple after 74 children under the age of 16 were recruited to work on its production lines. According to Apple, the children had been knowingly supplied by one of the region's largest labour agencies, Shenzhen Quanshun Human Resources. Its investigators found that the agency conspired with families to forge identification documents. Apple did not disclose the ages of the children involved, but its code of conduct states it will not employ workers under the age of 15, or under the legal working age in any jurisdiction – which is 16 in China. 
  
 Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, who in a previous role was responsible for building Apple's supply chain, has been under pressure to push through changes after the suicides at Foxconn, whose manufacturing operations are largely based in China. Last September a brawl involving up to 2,000 workers forced Foxconn to close a plant in northern China. 
  
 Last year he described the use of underage labour as "abhorrent", saying it was "extremely rare in our supply chain", and stepped up measures to weed out bad practice including hiring an independent auditor, the Fair Labor Association. 
  
 "Underage labour is a subject no company wants to be associated with, so as a result I don't believe it gets the attention it deserves, and as a result it doesn't get fixed like it should," said Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations at Apple. He vowed to eradicate the practice, but said it could take some time. 
  
 At Pingzhou, the children were returned to their families and the employer was "required to pay expenses to facilitate their successful return". Although 95% of the facilities scrutinised by Apple complied with child labour laws, transgressors were told to return minors to a school chosen by their family, pay for their education, and give them an income equal to their factory wages. 
  
 Bonded labour was discovered at eight factories. In order to find work, some foreign labourers pay fees to a string of recruitment agencies and sub-agencies, amassing huge debts. Their wages are then automatically handed over to pay the debts, tying them to jobs until the balance has been paid off. 
  
 Apple ordered its suppliers to reimburse excessive recruitment fees – anything higher than one month's wages – and said $6.4m (£4m) was handed back to contract workers in 2012. 
  
 Investigators found 90 facilities that deducted wages to punish workers, prompting Apple to order the reimbursement of employees. Mandatory pregnancy testing was found at 34 places of work, while 25 tested for medical conditions such as hepatitis B. At four facilities, payroll records were falsified to hide information from auditors, and at one, a supplier was found intentionally dumping waste oil "into the restroom receptacle". 
  
 Apple said it took measures to protect whistleblowers, and that it made 8,000 calls last year to workers interviewed by auditors in order to find out if they had suffered intimidation. ||||| Courtesy Michael Wolf Apple Inc stepped up audits of working conditions at major suppliers last year, discovering multiple cases of underage workers, discrimination and wage problems. 
  
 The iPhone and iPad maker, which relies heavily on Asian-based partners like Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group to assemble the vast majority of its iPhones and iPads, said on Thursday it conducted 393 audits, up 72 percent from 2011, reviewing sites where over 1.5 million workers make its gadgets. 
  
 Apple in recent years has faced accusations of building its profits on the backs of poorly treated and severely underpaid workers in China. 
  
 That criticism came to the fore around 2010, after reports of suicides at Foxconn drew attention to the long hours that migrant laborers frequently endure, often for a pittance in wages and in severely cramped living conditions. 
  
 Foxconn is the trading name of Hon Hai Precision Industry and employs 1.2 million workers across China. 
  
 Under Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, Apple has taken new steps to improve its record and boost transparency, including the extensive audits of its sprawling supply chain. Last year, it agreed to separate audits by the independent Fair Labor Association. 
  
 In an interview on Thursday, Apple senior vice president of operations Jeff Williams said the company has increased its efforts to solve two of the most challenging issues - ensuring there are no under aged workers in its supply chain and limiting working hours to 60 hours a week. 
  
 While child labor reflected a small percentage of the workforce, Apple is now investigating its smaller suppliers - which typically supply parts to larger suppliers and hence face less oversight on such issues - to bring them into compliance, sometimes even firing them. 
  
 "We go deep in the supply chain to find it," Williams said. "And when we do find it, we ensure that the underage workers are taken care of, the suppliers are dealt with." 
  
 In one case, Apple said it terminated its relationship with a component maker Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics Co Ltd after discovering 74 cases of underage workers. 
  
 Officials at Pingzhou Electronics could not be reached despite three telephone calls from Reuters. 
  
 Apple also discovered an employment agency that was forging documents to allow children to illegally work at the supplier. 
  
 Apple reported both the supplier and the employment agency to local authorities, the company said in its latest annual report on the conditions in its supply chain. 
  
 Apple has audited both small and ancillary suppliers, as well as large ones such as Korea's Samsung Electronics Co, for working conditions. It found 95 percent of sites audited complied with avoiding underage labor. 
  
 Child labor is an issue that is part of the larger supply industry as the component maker that Apple found violated child labor laws supplied parts to more than a hundred different companies, including automotive companies, Williams said, vowing to eradicate under aged labor from the industry. 
  
 "I don't know how long it will take to get there but that's our goal," said Williams, who has spent a significant amount of his 14 years at Apple in Asia managing the supply chain. 
  
 FOCUS ON STUDENT INTERNS 
  
 For 2013, Williams said a key focus for Apple will be student interns and ensuring that suppliers do not abuse the internship system, especially in China where many colleges require students to complete internships as part of their curriculum. 
  
 Some companies in China are solving labor shortages by employing students. Last September, city officials of the northeastern Chinese coastal city of Yantai ordered vocational high schools to send students to a large plant run by Foxconn - a key contract manufacture for Apple and other large electronics companies like Hewlett Packard - to overcome a shortage of workers. 
  
 Another focus areas has been "bonded labor", where agencies who help immigrant workers find jobs take a substantial portion of the worker's pay. 
  
 Apple said in the report that it asked suppliers to reimburse $6.4 million in excess foreign contract worker fees in 2012, according to the report. 
  
 The company said it achieved 92 percent compliance with a maximum 60-hour work week in its supply chain. Where violations were discovered, Apple took action, it said in its report. 
  
 Apple also found and stopped discriminatory practices against women workers in 34 supplier facilities that required pregnancy testing and 25 facilities that tested employees for certain medical conditions, the report said. 
  
 (Additional reporting by Shanghai newsroom; Editing by Richard Pullin) |||||
Output:
Apple's own audit of its supply chain turned up 106 underage workers at overseas plants last year, reports the Guardian. Most of the violations—74 of them—occurred at one China facility. The kids were ordered home, and Apple cut ties with the plant, which makes components for circuit boards. In all, 11 factories had at least one worker under age 16, often because their families worked with recruiters to forge IDs. While Apple has had high-profile problems at its Foxconn production plant in China, the facilities involved in this report are mostly lower-level parts suppliers. "We go deep in the supply chain to find it," an Apple VP tells Business Insider. "And when we do find it, we ensure that the underage workers are taken care of, the suppliers are dealt with." Foxconn has previously acknowledged hiring underage interns, and Apple says a main focus now is making sure that plants don't abuse the concept of internships.