Stay true to the dreams of thy youth

** If only Fox News had the same credibility to do so with half of its commentators and "journalists"**

Turkey vowed to take “necessary steps” after concluding that Syria shot down a Turkish fighter jet near the Syrian border on Friday, sending tensions soaring in the already fraught region.

** Great, this worked so well the first time in Afghanistan... *** A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

Out of every $100 American consumers spend, about $1 goes to alcohol. That hasn't changed much over the past 30 years. But where we spend our money on alcohol has changed quite a bit. We spend a bigger chunk of our booze money in bars and restaurants. We spend less money buying alcohol at the store to drink at home.

Norway's Statoil aims to triple its North American oil and natural gas production by the end of the decade as it ramps up spending in oil-rich prospects, the company said on Wednesday. Statoil expects to produce 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in North America by 2020, up from the 149,000 boepd produced in the first quarter of this year, as it moves away from barely profitable natural gas fields to concentrate on more lucrative liquids-based acreage, Reuters reported.

Sanofi has launched its iPhone compatible blood glucose meter in the US and signed a number of retail deals to make the iBGStar available to consumers, including one with Apple.

General Electric of the US and Sargas of Norway have launched a new technology for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that they say will be much cheaper than rival processes and commercially viable without any government subsidy The two companies said that they have formed an alliance to sell gas-fired plants that would capture 90 per cent of their output of carbon dioxide, which can then be injected into oilfields to squeeze out more crude.

BP last week began drilling the first well in its concession in the Risha natural gas field in eastern Jordan, near the border with Iraq, the British oil major said on Monday.

Thousands of companies worldwide will be pushed to report on their environmental strategies and performance under proposals to be finalised at a UN summit in Rio de Janeiro this week.

For three decades, Norman Finkelstein has been the American Jewish community’s problem-child—denounced as a hysteric, a marginal ideologue, and a self-hating Jew. Selfless and vain, highly emotional—sometimes hysterical—in tone yet relentlessly logical in his arguments, he is now an academic with a doctorate from Princeton whose attacks on “the Holocaust Industry” and public cheerleading for Hezbollah have rendered him so toxic that he can’t obtain even the lowliest adjunct teaching position at any community college in America.

The most undercovered story in Washington is how President Obama, under the influence of election-year politics, is letting America drift toward war with Iran. This story is the unseen but ominous backdrop to next week's Moscow round of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Egypt was plunged yet again into turmoil and confusion Thursday as the nation's highest court ordered the dissolution of the country's newly-elected lower house of parliament after ruling that much of the Islamist-dominated body was elected illegally.

Michael Tomasky Gives the President Some Advice: Grow a Pair, Obama!