Free Republic

Tata Coffee Ltd said on Monday it would supply premium coffee beans to Starbucks, the American coffee retail chain. This is the first time Starbucks, the world's largest and leading coffee chain with over 8,500 retail outlets around the world, has decided to source coffee beans from India, Tata Coffee managing director Hamid Ashraff told reporters in Bangalore. He said, Tata Coffee, the largest integrated coffee company in Asia, is the only producer company to be chosen by Starbucks. Starbucks would buy coffee beans at a 40 per cent price premium from Tata Coffee, it said.

Outsourcing of information-technology services continues to be a hot topic — and a sore point for many IT professionals. As they stand in unemployment lines, they see their former jobs being shipped off to India, where they are now done by people making one-fifth as much. It has aroused much bitterness and led to legislative efforts to restrict outsourcing in the name of saving jobs for Americans. I can't really offer any comfort to unemployed programmers, but the process of outsourcing is good for both the U.S. and world economies. Any jobs saved in the short-run by restrictions on outsourcing...