A 10-year backlog in EB-5 applications has a silver lining: $16.6 billion that investors can reinvest in real estate or other businesses if they still want a green card. The origin of the money is a unique problem with the EB-5 program, in which investors can invest $500,000 in a U.S. business in exchange for a green card. But the program requires investors’ money to be “at risk” pending the outcome of the application. Since the U.S. only hands out 10,000 EB-5 visas a year, a years-long backlog means some developers want to return investors’ money before they obtain the green card.

By BARÇIN YİNANÇ - An urban legend throughout the 1990s was that “American helicopters have dropped arms to the PKK,” the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party. I have never received confirmation of this legend from Turkish Foreign Ministry officials. I have even questioned retired top Foreign Ministry diplomats, believing that they could speak more freely. But even they were unable to confirm it, either on or off the record. Maybe they simply could not access evidence gathered by the intelligence sources, which would be a rather unusual state of affairs.

By Diane Garrett - Variety - Georges Chamchoum has a simple mission: He wants to share the rich and varied offerings from Asian filmmakers with Hollywood players and beyond. A cultural counter force to Washington isolationism, he has lined up a wide array of screenings, panels and tributes for the third annual Asian World Film Festival. The eight-day event kicks off Oct. 25 in Culver City and concludes Nov. 2, sponsored in part by Variety. This year’s installment is the broadest yet in scope. Movies range from “Dearest Sister,” the first film from Laos submitted for a foreign-language Oscar, and “Little Gandhi,” Syria’s first entry in that category, to pioneering Hollywood drama “Joy Luck Club,” part of a beefed-up Asian-American focus.

Relations between Ankara and Washington have grown so fraught during recent months that the Pentagon should prepare alternatives to a key Turkish air base for regional operations, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey said Tuesday. U.S. forces have operated out of Incirlik Air Base since the 1950s, but growing distrust between the NATO allies — from U.S. backing of Kurdish militias in Iraq to its refusal to extradite U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen — has put that military relationship at risk, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman.