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Most BPO companies are foraying into locations in Asia for cost benefits centered on people or infrastructure while the European forays have more to do with developing multi-lingual capabilities and expanding on the near-shore and offshore models.
According to industry experts, another reason for BPO service providers to look at cheap locations outside India is because India's tax advantage disappears in '09, while in countries such as Malaysia, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, it is valid for another 10 years.
Meanwhile, Raman Roy's Quatrro, after setting up operations in Sri Lanka, is said to be headed to the Far East. "Sri Lanka is at the same stage that India was eight years ago with good language skills available at low costs," Roy said.
Two new Chinatown spots warn of the coming northern-barbecue outbreak.
Kathleen Hinkel Friend BBQ on Wentworth in Chinatown.
Kathleen Hinkel Skewers cook in the kitchen of Friend BBQ on Wentworth in Chinatown.
Kathleen Hinkel Skewers, scallop and eggplant dishes as served at Friend BBQ on Wentworth in Chinatown.
Kathleen Hinkel Big lamb skewers and scallop dishes as served at Friend BBQ on Wentworth in Chinatown.
Kathleen Hinkel Wentworth in Chinatown.
Kathleen Hinkel Skewers and pata lamb on the grill at Gao's Kabob on 22nd Place in Chinatown. From foreground they are sausage, beef tendon, ribs and pata lamb.
Kathleen Hinkel Four-person stir-fry for $14 at Gao's Kabob on 22nd Place in Chinatown.
You could scratch your back with the red-willow twig that serves as the delivery vehicle for the Xinjiang special lamb skewer at Friend BBQ. You could knock it in a bow and practice your apple shot, William Tell style. Or you could order a dozen or so of these fatty, sizzling, spice-crusted meat sticks and, once you've gnawed them clean, head into the night to hunt the undead that lurk in the side streets and alleys of Chinatown after dark.
Probably you'll just doink them in the metal canister set at each table of this two-month-old purveyor of shaokao, or northern-style barbecue, found on the streets of every city in China. That's also known as chuanr (串儿), among Muslim Uighurs in the far northwestern Xianjing autonomous territory from where it comes—likewise the particular species of shrub these little charred nubbins of ruminant flesh are threaded on. Like many good things, shaokao came to Chinatown via the Richland Mall basement food court, in this case five years ago at Lao Pi, a tiny food stall that specialized in all sorts of charcoal-grilled critters.
Lao Pi, sadly, is no more, though chuanr has been replicating quietly in a number of other restaurants in Chinatown, and seems ready for an outbreak with the recent opening of two specialists, Friend BBQ and Gao's Kabob Sports Grill. The former is a satellite of NYC's well-known Friendship BBQ, based in Flushing, Queens, while Gao's is a southern incursion, part of a growing minichain in flux, with locations in Houston and Plano, Texas (where it was recently renamed Focus BBQ). Since they've opened, both spots have been mobbed at times, usually late at night, when eating meat on a stick is the only safe method of exercising your twitchy jaws.
These spicy chew toys beg for beer, but though both places offer it on the menu, you'll have to bring it yourself. Neither is currently pouring—which can be particularly frustrating in the case of Gao's, which opened in July in a narrow shotgun dining room on sleepy 22nd Place, well off the Wentworth stroll.
Of the two, Gao's seems a bit more open to offering the off bits, including, e.g., whole grilled lamb feet, square-angled joints of chewy cartilaginous connective tissue crusted in the blend of cumin, chile, salt, and sesame you'll find pasted on much of the chuanr you'll encounter anywhere. There are pigs' feet too, not unlike the jellylike roasted nuggets found at A Place by Damao. No matter what your anatomical predilection, Gao's will grill it on a stick for you: kidneys, gizzards, hearts, tripe, and tendon from different creatures in all their chewy, snappy, slithery variety. Though simple lamb- and beef-fatted muscles take top billing (red willow again, just for the former), there are lots of parts to explore, from ruddy pork riblets to suckered squid tentacle tips to scored cocktail sausages (notice how the first character in 串儿 looks like a couple of weenies on a stick) to sheets of textured tofu skin wrapped around lengths of chive that almost feel like a breath mint amid the relentless brush fire in your mouth.
There are larger formats with which to fill out a session at Gao's—garlicky oysters, sheets of enoki mushrooms or more chives, piles of crayfish, heaping platters of spicy chicken and noodles. And there's quite a lot of overlap between this menu and that at Friend BBQ's, in addition to which each is almost indistinguishable in execution (though there seems to be a great disturbance in the Yelpverse with regard to both).
At Friend at least you can distract yourself by staring at six mounted flat-screen TVs livestreaming Dota 2 game play (it's Survivor at Gao's). The Xinjiang lamb skewers are a size or two larger here, and I was particularly taken with the ribbons of chewy chicken skin and the cylinders of glistening pork belly wrapped around snappy enoki.
Does it sound like a mess? Each spot provides plastic gloves to protect tender digits, and tables are set with paper to absorb the splatter—though at Friend you'll hardly need them with a roasted half eggplant slathered in garlic that seems delicate in comparison, each strand of the heat-sweetened fruit flesh ready to be chopsticked from the skin like a long noodle. Same goes for the chopped scallop meat served on the shell under a tangle of noodles.
A Place by Damao is a Sichuan joint unlike any other.
Blood. Zombies. Despair. Cigarette smoke. Guns. They're about all the buttons that need pushing from a Left 4 Dead movie, and this fan-made trailer - for a flick shot in a weekend - gets 'em all.
Marin high school students who like to work with their hands got to make and take home a solar box over the weekend.
The event, a maker’s workshop, was organized by the Marin nonprofit Big Skills, Tiny Homes. The workshop was part of a move to offer youth samples of construction training to see if they want to pursue that for a career, said Sean Ticknor of Big Skills, Tiny Homes.
Sunday’s maker’s workshop took place at the Fairfax Pavilion in downtown Fairfax.
Big Skill, Tiny Homes provides construction training and career planning for trade focused high school grads. For more information, go to bigskillstinyhomes.org.
DETROIT — DTE Energy says it will reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030.
The southeastern Michigan utility says it will be relying more on wind, solar power and natural gas to create electricity while closing some coal-burning plants sooner than planned. DTE says it wants to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2040, a decade earlier than announced two years ago.
The utility this week is filing its latest plan with state regulators. Chief executive Gerry Anderson says DTE is “in the midst of a fundamental energy transformation.” DTE says it will close three coal-fired plants in 2022: St. Clair, Trenton Channel and River Rouge.
YOUNTVILLE — Authorities in Northern California have so far been tight-lipped about why a former Army rifleman may have killed three women after a daylong siege at a veterans home in Napa County wine country.
Albert Wong, 36, slipped into a going-away party for two employees of The Pathway Home on the campus of the Yountville veterans home campus about 50 miles (85 kilometers) north of San Francisco on Friday, then let some people leave, but kept the three women.
Wong, whose military records show he served in Afghanistan from April 2011 to March 2012, was enrolled in The Pathway Home’s veteran treatment program until he was recently expelled, according to a relative of one of the women.
Gonzales Shushereba was seven months pregnant. She was married a year ago and was supposed to travel to Washington, D.C., with her husband this weekend to celebrate their anniversary.
“Jennifer and her colleagues died doing the work they were so passionate about — helping those in critical need,” her husband, T.J. Shushereba said in a statement.
Directors of the veterans program are beginning an exhaustive review of security protocols, said The Pathway Home spokesman Larry Kamer. It may never reopen, he said.
The six residents have been moved to other facilities while officials discuss the future of the program, Kamer tells the San Francisco Chronicle.
The facility’s board members are scrutinizing building security, emergency protocols and what kind of screenings are in place for incoming patients.
Cissy Sherr, of Milbrae, said in an interview with The Associated Press that she and her husband became Wong’s guardians after his father died and his mother developed health problems. When Wong became a teenager and Sherr and her husband worked full-time, they decided to put him in foster care.
Find out why Exxon Mobil, Comcast, and SodaStream should all be on Warren's watchlist.
It's easy to see why Warren Buffett, the founder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A) (NYSE:BRK-B), is one of the most admired investors in the world. He's made early investors in Berkshire millionaires thanks to his investing and business prowess, and his homespun aphorisms have taught many of us key lessons about investing and money management.
Though he's one of the richest people in the world, he still lives in a modest house in Nebraska and continues to work every day even as he approaches age 90.
Buffett fans probably already have a sense of what kind of stocks the Oracle of Omaha like, but you may not have thought of these three. Keep reading to see why our contributors recommend ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM), Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA), and SodaStream International (NASDAQ:SODA).
John Bromels (ExxonMobil): Buffett famously said, "It's better to invest in a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price." And ExxonMobil's price is looking more than fair right now, thanks to some questions about the company's oil production capacity.
For several quarters now, Exxon's upstream oil production has been falling. That's in large part because conservative Exxon didn't spend much money on new exploration during the oil price downturn of 2014 to 2017, and now older wells are drying up faster than the company can bring new production capacity online.
Thanks to the current high price of oil, though, Exxon is still making money -- and lots of it -- with net income up 16% year over year in its most recent quarter. And the company has begun working in earnest to start bringing production online. In particular, it's making swift progress in getting its promising offshore Liza oilfield in Guyana online. But even with an accelerated timeline, production isn't expected to begin until 2020.
However, that makes this a good time to invest like Buffett: Not only can you pick up shares at a bargain price, but you can avail yourself of the company's current 3.8% dividend yield while you wait for Exxon's production numbers to improve. After all, if you're investing like Buffett, you're keeping an eye on the long term, and Exxon is looking like a solid long-term investment at these prices.
Buffett loves to own stocks that make money from doing actually very little -- just collecting money from people as they're passing by. And isn't that the very definition of Comcast's business model?
People these days love to talk about "cutting the cord" and ditching cable TV in favor of streaming online. On the surface, this trend sounds like bad news for Comcast. But how do you get online in the first place? Usually, by paying an internet service provider like Comcast to give you access to the internet. Comcast owns the "pipes," and you have to pay a toll to use them.
For all of the worrying about Comcast's future in the age of cord-cutting, this company is doing just fine, recording profits of $22.7 billion over the last year. At a trailing P/E ratio of just 6.5, Comcast is priced like a business that's going out of business. But it's really a toll booth business -- and business is booming.
Jeremy Bowman (SodaStream): Coca-Cola has long been one of Buffett's favorite stocks. Not only does he love the company's products, but he loves big brands like Coke, which, along with its distribution network and marketing muscle, give it an economic moat. But there's another smaller beverage company that may interest Buffett and his acolytes: SodaStream, the maker of countertop DIY soda machines.
SodaStream is by far the biggest player in its niche at-home soda-making market, dispatching competitors like Primo Water and Cuisinart, as the stock has skyrocketed since the company pivoted away from soda to a sparkling water brand. Over the last three years, the stock has jumped more than 300%.
However, there's good reason to believe the stock could bubble higher. Revenue surged 24% in its most recent quarter, growing in its three largest regions, and SodaStream continues build operating leverage as it gets bigger. That means profits are growing faster than revenue, something investors like Buffett see as a key sign of a sustainable competitive advantage. SodaStream's razor-blade model also gives it a moat as customers are locked into the system once they buy a starter kit, and purchases of consumables like CO2 refills and flavors generate higher margins for the company.
Finally, analysts have consistently underestimated the stock as it surged past estimates in nearly every report in the last three years. Considering its growth prospects, the stock looks very reasonable at a P/E ratio of 27.
Houston, TX – Royce White released a statement on Sunday saying he will not play until he is medically cleared by mental health professionals.
The rookie's lengthy statement came one day after the Houston Rockets assigned him to Rio Grande Valley of the NBA D-League.
White, the 16th overall pick by the Rockets last June, has sat out the entire season in part because of a complex social anxiety disorder.
In his lone season at Iowa State in 2011-12, White was the only player in the country to lead his team in scoring (13.4 ppg), rebounding (9.3 rpg), assists (5.0 apg), steals (1.2 spg) and blocks (0.9 bpg).
The Rockets have yet to see those all-around talents in the regular season, though general manager Daryl Morey recently said the club is "committed to Royce's long term success and we will continue to support him now and going forward."
White claimed those words to be "fundamentally incorrect," in his statement and feels it is "unsafe for unqualified Rockets front office personnel to make medical decisions, as they are not mental health professionals."
"I do wish to play, but I only intend to do so with the collaboration and recommendation of trained professionals," the statement read. "My only hope is that decision makers involved realize that doctors are the only logical source to decide action."
I’m Charlie Nardozzi and this is the Vermont Garden Journal. My heart goes out to all those Vermonter’s still dealing with the devastation from recent floods. While the main priority is to get their homes and lives back together, eventually many will turn their attention to their landscape. Flooded lawns, shrubs, trees, and gardens can look awful, but depending on what you’re growing and how long it was flooded, they may recover quicker than you’d think.
In vegetable garden, any flooding that was due to rivers or streams overflowing is likely to contain chemicals and raw sewage. Unfortunately, you’ll have to till under all those vegetables still in the garden. It’s just not safe to eat them. Often after the waters recede, there will be a layer of silt on your garden. The best thing to do for your flooded vegetable garden is once the soil dries, till it and sow a cover crop such as winter rye. The cover crop plants will help recreate the air spaces in the soil plants will need and when tilled under next spring, supply essential organic matter.
For trees and shrubs, how they react to flooding depends on what you’re growing and how long they were under water. Luckily, most of the recent flooding didn’t stand on the soil very long. Trees and shrubs that can withstand up to 1 week of flooding include red and silver maples, ash, river birch, dogwoods and winterberry. Trees and shrubs that are likely to suffer from even a day or so under water include daphne, juniper, yews, lilacs, and euonymous. To help trees and shrubs recover, rake off excess silt so it doesn’t smoother the roots, add mulch to help encourage air spaces to start forming again, and cover expose roots. Don’t fertilize until next spring.
On flooded lawns, rake off excess silt, aerate the soil this fall and overseed with grass seed to encourage new growth before winter. Mother nature is as resilient as us Vermonters. With a little help your plants should grow strong next spring.
Next week on the Vermont Garden Journal, I’ll be talking about asters. For now, I’ll be seeing you in the garden!
Kim Levengrond-Yehezkel and Ziv Hajbi, executed by an Arab former co-worker.
”May Allah send the message I am longing for,” Ashraf Walid Suleiman wrote on his Facebook page.
Then he went on to murder two Israelis, tying the hands of Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, a receptionist working toward her law degree, and the mother of a 16 month old baby, and Ziv Hajbi, the father of twin boys, before shooting them at close range.
A 58-year-old woman was left with a gunshot wound in the stomach after she burst in on the Islamic terrorist while he was busy doing Allah’s work.
That was the message from Allah that Ashraf, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were looking for.
“The Palestinian people everywhere praise the heroic operation,” Hamas wrote, gloating over the heroism of tying up a 28-year-old receptionist before killing her. The Palestinian Authority will be paying a salary to Ashraf if he’s captured alive and will be making payments to his family if he’s killed.
At the United Nations, Mahmoud Abbas, the unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, and the boss of Fatah and the PLO, which control the terrorist entity, called terrorists, “hero martyrs”.
“By Allah, even if we have only a penny left it will only be spent on the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners, and only afterwards will it be spent on the rest of the people,” Abbas had declared in July.
Two days later, Yotam Ovadia, heading home to prepare a romantic dinner for his wife, was stabbed to death.
“The heart breaks at the sound of your little son calling ‘Abba, Abba.’ (‘Daddy, Daddy’),” his father-in-law said at his funeral.
In September, it was Ari Fuld, an American father of four who moved to Israel, who was stabbed in the back outside a supermarket. Despite his wounds, he managed to chase down his killer, before dying. The family of the killer, Khalil Yusef Ali Jabarin, will receive a monthly salary from the PA.
These murders were paid for by the peace process. They were funded by the supporters of the two state solution. The solution that has solved nothing except how Islamic terrorist groups pay killers to murder fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, at a supermarket, at work or on the way home.
When the Democrats denounce President Trump’s pressure on the PLO, his cuts in foreign aid, his expulsion of the PLO office in Washington D.C., these are the crimes that they are supporting.
The two state solution isn’t peace. The PLO and Hamas have never been at peace with Israel. It’s two Rabbis murdered in January and February. It’s a receptionist wondering until the last moment whether she will make it home to her baby. It’s Hava Roizen, a Russian immigrant from the Soviet Union, who worked as a photographer, hit by a car. And it’s the terror victims of tomorrow. And the day after.
As the leader of the Palestinian Authority has made painfully clear, even the last “penny” given to that terrorist organization will be spent to finance the murder of Jews. Any dollar, pound, euro and yen given to the Palestinian Authority is blood money. It’s not only the terrorists who have blood on their hands.
It’s the supporters of the two state solution whose hands are covered in the blood of its victims.
The proponents of the two state solution are a terror lobby. And this terror lobby claims to be liberal, while funding an Islamic terror state, it claims to be Zionist while defending Islamic terrorists who want to destroy Israel, and it claims to represent true Jewish values while funding the murder of Jews.
“I will bury him at the age of 35. What have I done wrong in my life? He’s leaving little children behind, 7-year-old twins, a 4 and a half-year-old boy. What is their mother supposed to tell them?” Ziv Hajbi’s mother demanded.
Tell them that American liberal Jews, love the left more than they love decency, morality or other Jews.
That’s why they continue to support the PLO.
A week after the murder of Ari Fuld, Dana Milbank at the Washington Post, wrote, “America’s Jews are watching Israel in horror”. He didn’t mean the horror of an American Jew being buried after a murder funded by their tax dollars. Nor did he mean horror at his own complicity in the crime.
Dana was horrified that Israel was defending itself to even the most limited degree from the killers.
He quoted his ‘Rabbi’, who according to Milbank “comes from Zionist royalty”, fulminating that, “the current government of Israel has turned its back on Zionism.” But by Zionism, Dana and his ‘Rabbi’ don’t mean the simple act of preserving Israel and the lives of people like Kim, Ziv, Ari and Yotam. Instead their idea of Zionism is a “negotiated peace” with the killers whose crimes are made possible by the illusion of negotiations. There has been a generation of negotiations and no end to Islamic terror.
Israel hasn’t turned its back on Zionism. The Jewish enablers of the PLO, of the terrorist killers, have. In an Orwellian twist, they have redefined Zionism to mean the destruction of Israel. Israel’s government, which fights for the Jewish State’s survival, is therefore anti-Zionist, while the lefties who want to destroy Israel are the true Zionists. Up is down. Left is right. And a generation of terror is peace.
“The current government in Israel has, like Esau, sold its birthright,” Milbank quotes his ‘Rabbi’.
Israel has not sold its birthright. Those American Jews who chose terrorists over Israel have.
They have sold out Israel for a chance to be at the next Women’s March, right behind its Farrakhan loving leaders. They sold Israel for an Obama speech, for a cocktail party and for fitting in on the left.
Esau sold his birthright in a moment of hunger. They sold theirs out of cowardice and treachery. They paid for it with lies. Their manicured hands are covered in the blood of Israeli terror victims.
And it still isn’t enough. They never stop shouting for more.
More money for the terrorists. More land for their terror bases. More terrorists freed from prison. And more dead bodies in the cemeteries. More fathers and mothers who never come home to their children.
What can Ziv’s wife tell their children? She can tell them that Dana Milbank, that his ‘Rabbi’, that J Street, that six hundred other useless organizations and six hundred thousand useless individuals, may not believe in G-d, Zionism or that Jews have the same right to defend themselves as any other people.
But they do believe in funding the terrorists who murdered Ziv. They believe in the two state solution, with two growing Islamic terrorist states shooting, bombing and rocketing their way across Israel.
And they believe that the lack of peace is never the fault of the terrorists whom they have funded for a generation, but it is always the fault of the Jews who have yet to sufficiently appease the terrorists.
Abbas and Ashraf swear by Allah. But it isn’t Allah, the figment of a murderous desert warlord’s vanity and greed, that took these lives. It’s the two state solution. It’s the blood money pouring into the PLO.
These murders were brought to you by the two state solution. The next ones will be too.
And those responsible for feeding the blood money into the murder machine will condemn Israel’s “ultranationalist”, “nationalist”, “apartheid” government. They will pound their pulpits, feign tears over Israel’s betrayal of democracy and human rights, and then warn that Israel is about to lose their support.

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