June 16, 2008. Senator Sherrod Brown (Democrat -Ohio) is particularly concerned about cases where elements of production have been outsourced to overseas companies, noting: "In recent testimony to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), an FDA official acknowledged that American drug companies outsource operations to take advantage of weak drug safety standards abroad."

The letters come against a backdrop of rising concern in the US about the safety of medicines, in no small part because of the ongoing saga about contaminated heparin products. Several countries around the world have recalled heparin products after discovering they contained contaminated heparin sourced from a supplier in China. That event in turn precipitated an administration request for increased funding for the FDA to ensure import safety.

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Outsourcing referrs to a company that contracts with another company to provide services that might otherwise be performed by in-house employees. Many large companies now outsource jobs such as call center services, e-mail services, and payroll. These jobs are handled by separate companies that specialize in each service, and are often located overseas.

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This morning, Southwest Airlines announced that it has stopped plans to outsource certain aircraft maintenance work to Aeroman, an El Salvador company.

In a statement released by the company, the airline said the decision was based on the heightened scrutiny following the discovery last month of fuselage cracks in several of its Boeing 737s, and not because doubts over Aeroman’s professionalism. Nonetheless, the move is a victory for union groups long distraught that airlines have been moving more of their maintenance operations overseas, saying the policy means fewer American jobs and less Federal Aviation Administration oversight.

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The Washington Times has a story that reports the outsourcing of RFID passport creation from the US to some interesting companies overseas. The Government Printing Office (GPO) is making a mint by charging the State Department more for blank passports than it costs to produce them, the savings are magnified by outsourcing savings.

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The opening of the 1,000-seat delivery center by India’s largest software developer, TCS, in Ohio could not have come at a more opportune moment. It comes when the U.S. eoconomy is going into a tailspin and politicians there have upped the ante against U.S. jobs being outsourced to India.

Hopefully, the new centre will help dilute some of the resentment against export of high-volume, low margin jobs to India. The significance of the “reverse outsourcing” is not lost on the people or the politicians — especially with US jobs shifting to India becoming a talking point among the presidential candidates.

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Recent research by Ben L. Kedia and Shirley Daniel highlights the growing importance of international business expertise. This PowerPoint presentation offers some intriguing insights to share with your students.

Toward the end of my three week trip I was invited by my young Russian host and friend Nicolai Vasilevich and his lovely wife Yulya out to dinner. At the end of a wonderful meal Yulya asked if I would like a banana. I politely declined and thanked her, and explained I was most satisfied with the meal. But the whole while my mind was racing: "What do I do? Do I offer her a banana even though they are as close to her as they are to me? What is the polite thing to do?"

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The American truckers, environmentalists, and politicians who are sounding the alarm about the potential dangers of allowing Mexican tractor-trailers onto U.S. interstate highways rarely mention an important fact: Hundreds of Mexican-plated trucks already deliver cargo all over the United States, and have done so for years.

Teamsters union members have waged angry protests at the border and on Capitol Hill, waving signs saying "NAFTA Kills" and "Unsafe Mexican Trucks."

But more than 1,000 south-of-the-border companies are already allowed to drive cargo beyond the border zone under a long-standing exemption to the U.S. moratorium on Mexican long-haul trucking.

And these Mexican drivers and trucks have had better driver and vehicle safety records than their U.S. counterparts in recent years, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation–although opponents say many violations never get recorded because of sloppy government record-keeping.

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What’s the debate over outsourcing?

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“MTV has been responsible for breaking artists from Latin America, Asia and India beyond their natural and domestic markets because we have the global platform to do so,” said Bhavneet Singh, managing director and senior VP of emerging markets, MTV Nets Intl. “We will be in a position, for example, to take some of the Arab artists to the MTV European Music Awards. Music translates and travels across the world. We will be able to export the best of Arab music outside of the Middle East.”

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