According to the report, which was released Aug. 25, the return of manufacturing to the United States will accelerate as companies take into account the full costs of outsourcing to China and the strategic advantages of making products closer to consumers in North America.

The report (PDF), expands on earlier research which predicted that over the next five years, factors including 15-20 percent annual increases in Chinese wages and a strengthening yuan will nearly erase China's manufacturing cost advantage vs. low-cost U.S. states for goods imported into North America.

Even as Chinese factories become more productive, thanks to automation and improved technology, rising factory wages will make it tough to compete with higher U.S. labor productivity, the report says.

"Greater automation would undercut the primary advantage of outsourcing to China, which is access to cheap labor," said Harold L. Sirkin, a BCG senior partner and lead author of the study. "Once companies carefully look at all the costs, many will find they'll be better off making their products closer to customers in the U.S."

The report cites a number of specific examples, including one directly from the plastics industry: Coleman Co. is moving production of its 16-quart wheeled plastic coolers from China to Wichita, Kan., "owing to rising Chinese manufacturing and shipping costs."

Won't other low-wage nations like Vietnam and Mexico pick up work from China? Yes, they will, according to the report, but they will not be able to absorb all the higher-end manufacturing that otherwise would go to China, because they lack adequate infrastructure, skilled workers, scale, and domestic supply networks.

China will remain a major manufacturing power. The difference is that it will no longer be the force it is today for supplying customers in North America, the report says.

"Foreign companies will want to maintain their Chinese manufacturing operations to serve the Chinese market and the rest of Asia," said Douglas Hohner, another BCG partner who focuses on manufacturing.

"But in terms of supplying North America, China will no longer be the default option," he said

Shah and Ali grew up in Pakistan and met in New York City while they were working as cab drivers.

Ali worked at the bialy shop for a decade and when he learned of Ross'sdecision to call it quits, he called Shah. Shah attended a culinary arts school in Manhattan and the men had been roommates at one time.

Ali said the men tasted their first bite of a bagel from the bakery more than a decade ago.

Ali said he and his partner vow to use the same recipes and shop's kosher-certified equipment. They'll also serve the shop's popular kosher menu.

Most of the staff has stayed on to usher in the bakery's next chapter.

"We all worked together for many, many years and the bakery owner is a very, very good man," Ali said. "We want to make this business as the same, a good business."

The international Ulema conference on suicide bombings that was supposed to take place in Kabul in late January has been postponed...

The conference of Islamic scholars was originally proposed to Islamabad in November 2012 by Salahuddin Rabbani, the chairman of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, and was to specifically address the issue of suicide bombings and reiterate the finding that they are un-Islamic and not permitted by the Koran.

Salahuddin Rabbani is the son of former High Peace Council Chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was killed by a Taliban suicide bomber at his home in Kabul in September 2011. A few days before he was assassinated, he had asked Islamic scholars at a conference in Tehran to release a fatwa saying that Islam forbids suicide.

At the time of Burhanuddin's death, his daughter Fatima told Reuters that her father thought "the majority of Afghan Taliban were keen to join the [peace] process, but the Pakistani branch of the group opposed it."

The Pakistani government did not cooperate in the investigation into Burhanuddin's death, and Afghanistan's Interior Minister and the chief of the National Directorate of Security blamed the suicide bombing on Pakistan, its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, and Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura.
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This latest attempt to convene an influential group of Islamic scholars to pronounce on the impermissibility of suicide bombings was initially agreed to by Pakistan after it was proposed in November 2012. But on Dec. 27, the Taliban issued a statement condemning the proposed conference as "clear American intrigue" designed to "create mistrust among Mujahideen, paving a way for the US to perpetually control Afghanistan." The Taliban called instead for the Ulema -- especially those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia -- to support the mujahideen, their "spiritual offspring," as a matter of religious duty and to boycott the "fraudulent gathering."

Then on Jan. 9, Mullah Omar weighed in on the proposed conference, issuing a four-page-statement warning that clerics who participate in the conference will be "answerable to God" and will be discredited by the believers. He dismissed the planned conference as a desperate ploy by the United States, and reiterated the Taliban's insistence that "they will not lay down weapons until achievement of their goals and establishment of a real Islamic state."

It is not surprising that the Taliban should resist an effort to remove the tactic of suicide bombing from their arsenal; it is also a tactic favored by the Taliban's close ally, al Qaeda. Nor is it surprising that plans for the conference seem to be disintegrating in the face of the Taliban's condemnation. The fact that the most recent mention of the proposed conference makes no reference to suicide bombings as part of the agenda suggests that if the conference proceeds at all, that important topic will not be addressed.

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