ISTANBUL (Reuters) - General Electric Co. will invest $900 million in Turkey's infrastructure development and innovation projects over the next three years, John Rice, Vice Chairman and President of GE global growth and operations said on Monday in Istanbul.
The 31th edition of the Turkish-American Council's annual conferences is set to begin on Monday in Washington which would discuss relations between Turkey and the United States. The three-day conference will bring together senior government, business and finance figures including Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, US Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman as well as 2008 Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. 
New goals to make the Turkish diaspora more active in political and economic scenes in their countries of residence have been set by the World Turkish Business Council (DTİK), founded in 2009 under the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK), an affiliate of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB).
TCA is hosting the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) and Attorneys General from four states this week on a program that takes the delegation to Istanbul, Patara and Ankara. The tour is led by Doug Gansler of Maryland and includes David M. Louie of Hawaii, Lawrence G. Wasden of Idaho and Chris Koster of Missouri. The delegation met with Turkish President Abdullah Gul in Istanbul and will also be visiting the President of the Turkish Constitutional Court, members of the Turkish Parliament, as well as leading journalists, legal and foreign policy experts.
Intel Capital is the first Silicon Valley investor to launch an office in Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, reports Financial News. Intel Capital is an American multinational company that makes investments in innovative technology start-ups as well as in firms offering hardware, software and services. The company has been investing in Turkey since 2005 and sees that the country has large potential as it has many technology innovators and entrepreneurs. Intel Capital most recent investments in Turkey are to Turkish companies Nokta and Grupanya.
ScienceDaily (June 5, 2012) — Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Space Systems' Dream Chaser design passed one of its most complex tests to date with a successful captive-carry test conducted near the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Jefferson County, Colo., on May 29. Just like the space shuttle before it, SNC's Dream Chaser will go through extensive testing to prove its wings will work. The company built a full-scale flight vehicle of the Dream Chaser spacecraft to carry out the evaluations.
If you had to pick a company as a metaphor for the key themes of this year’s World Economic Forum, you’d be pressed to find a better example than Turkey’s Yildiz Holding. The Istanbul conference — themed “bridging transformations,” and which opened Tuesday — is the first WEF meeting to focus specifically on the Middle East, Africa and Eurasia regions. It’s a region that Yildiz, an Istanbul-based food and beverages conglomerate that owns sweets maker Ulker and the luxury chocolate brand, Godiva, knows all to well. Propelled by a strong domestic market and rapid expansion across markets from West Africa to South Asia, the company, which posted an average of 11% revenue growth over the past two years and forecasts an expansion of 14% this year, is one of fast-growing Turkey’s corporate success stories.
"NY Med," an eight-episode documentary series follow-up to "Boston Med" and "Hopkins," is heading to ABC this July. The new documentary series will explore the lives of doctors and patients inside of Columbia and Weill Cornell hospitals, two of New York's most prestigious hospitals. 
By JASON GOODWIN - NYT - Joseph Kanon is a specialist in fin de guerre thrillers, whose previous novels set in 1945-46 include “Alibi,” “Los Alamos,” “The Good German” and “Stardust.” The period is well chosen: dark secrets are finally coming to the surface, and people are being called to account for what the war has made them. For readers, it’s immediately recognizable territory: the aftermath of the conflict, shabby, filmic. Now, in “Istanbul Passage,” Kanon compounds the fraught postwar mood with a location to match.
A Turkish mill booked a 30,000 mt mixed cargo from a North American supplier at a composite price of $403/mt CFR Izmir late Thursday, revealing the level of the global import benchmark market. The cargo includes 12,000 mt of plate and structural, 12,000 mt of shredded scrap and 6,000 mt of HMS I. Platts daily assessment has now lost $50/mt in a month, starting June at $400/mt CFR Turkish ports for premium-graded heavy melting scrap I/II (80/20 blend): a decrease of $10/mt in a day. This is the lowest point the price series has been since records began in December 2010. The reduction month-on-month matches almost to the dollar the decrease heard in the US domestic market for June. Louisville, Colo. – Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) announces the beginning of its Dream Chaser Space System’s flight test program with a successful captive carry of a full scale Dream Chaser Flight Vehicle near the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Colorado. This test marks the completion of the 12th Program Milestone for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev) Program and the 16th overall for SNC under NASA Commercial Crew Development Program.
Vision Solutions, Inc., the world's leading provider of information availability software and services, today announced their partnership with Istanbul Pazarlama A.S., one of the oldest and most established companies in Turkey's IT sector. The partnership comes on the heels of headlines that report Turkey is becoming the fastest growing economy in the world. From 2002 to 2010 the Turkish GDP grew from $230 billion to $736 billion. Turkish GDP grew by 8.9 percent in 2010 and its estimated growth will continue at this rate. Optimism for growth in the IT sector remains high due to youthful, well-educated and technically savvy population -- half the entire country is under the age of 29. World-renowned Belgian chocolatier Godiva has opened its first Godiva Chocolate Café in Europe at London’s luxury department store, Harrods. The café is a unique destination for all lovers of chocolate wishing to enjoy the ultimate chocolate experience in an exquisite setting. Chocoholics can look forward to a tempting menu, including elegant patisserie and decadent chocolate drinks, which has been created jointly by Harrods executive pastry chef Markus Bohr, Godiva’s executive chef chocolatier Thierry Muret and Godiva global chef chocolatier David Funaro. 
Spellbinding but worrisome from a logistical standpoint, dark horse Istanbul's bid to host the 2020 Olympics eerily echoes Rio de Janeiro's footing when it came from behind to win the right to host the 2016 Games. Four years ago, Rio, in a major upset, became the first nation in South America to secure the Games, despite a technical score well below rivals Tokyo and Chicago going into the final vote. 
