Egypt: New Israeli building permits a signal talks could collapse - Ha'aretz

 Egypt has described Israel's building permits for 238 new housing units in East Jerusalem as a provocative step and a sign the direct peace talks could collapse, the foreign ministry said Saturday.

Construction renewed in the settlement of Ariel.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said that Egypt considers this step as a negative Israeli response to all efforts made to save the direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

"The Israeli side withdraws day after another from its commitments to peace efforts, and it clearly prefers to increase the pace of colonial settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian land than to engage seriously in the negotiation," he added.

The building tenders sparked angry Palestinian and U.S. reaction, with worries that the move that could further jeopardize the uncertain resumption of the direct talks.

The Palestinians and their Arab supporters are contemplating turning to the United Nations for recognition of their right to a state within the border of before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

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French protests jeopardise airport fuel supplies - The Guardian

French protesters take to the streets of Toulouse to challenge pension reform plans as strikes hit fuel supplies. Photograph: Guillaume Horcajuelo/EPA

France's main airport has only a few days' worth of fuel left, it was announced today, as the strikes against government pension plans continued to hit infrastructure.

The transport ministry warned of the fuel shortage at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris as unions worked to rally millions of people for another national protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy's bill to raise the retirement age.

The country has already endured four days of strikes, resulting in grounded flights and cut rail services. Ten of France's 12 oil refineries have been shut down or are in the process of being closed and several fuel depots have been blockaded.

A ministry spokesman said officials were working to restore aviation fuel supplies, and the economy minister, Christine Lagarde, urged people "not to panic", the BBC reported.

The fuel supply into the Paris region and international airports was cut yesterday from a pipeline running south from Le Havre.

Trapil, the company that operates the pipeline to the Paris airports, said Roissy-Charles de Gaulle could run out of fuel as early as next week.

A transport ministry spokesman said reserves would last until late on Monday or Tuesday. But he said the pipeline was now working intermittently, adding: "We are exploring possible solutions to supply the airport [at Roissy]. We are confident."

Lagarde said: "There is no reason to panic over this ... I am sure that we will unblock the situation through intelligent social dialogue."

However, about 10% of petrol stations have run out of fuel and panic buying has broken out in some areas.

Meanwhile more than 200 marches are planned today to oppose the plan to raise the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62, and from 65 to 67 for a full state pension.

Rail networks and air travel is expected to be affected but the government's main worry is students becoming rowdy. Riot police used teargas yesterday to disperse crowds in the city of Lyon. Dozens of students were arrested across the country and several police were injured.

In another sign of growing protest, truck drivers – the heavyweights of French demonstrations because of their ability to block roads – have heeded a call to join the action.

Maxime Dumont, head of the CFDT union's trucking section, said drivers could block fuel depots, refineries and food warehouses and clog roads by driving slowly along them.

"In the transport sector we can do a bit more to help the workers. We are going to join the movement to make the government give way," Dumont told Reuters.

More than a million people took to the streets in the most recent national protest on Tuesday, according to police. Trade unions organisers said 3.5m had taken part. A sixth day of nationwide strikes and protests is planned for Tuesday.

About 70% of people polled this week think the strikes will build into a national protest movement like the one in 1995, and more than half of those questioned said they would support it.

The pension reforms have already been approved by the national assembly, the lower house of the French parliament.

The senate has endorsed the key articles on raising the retirement age, and is due to vote on the full text on Wednesday.

The government says the legislation is the only way to a stop a €32bn (£28bn) annual pension shortfall ballooning to €50bn by 2020.

France has a long tradition of overpowering unpopular government proposals through militancy on the street, although analysts believe many French people are reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that raising the retirement age in line with other European countries is inevitable.

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New York Times Updates iPad App: Little Innovation - PC World

At last, the New York Times' iPad app is complete. Gone is the scant selection of "Editor's Choice" articles that Steve Jobs reportedly hated, and in its place is pretty much everything that the Times' website offers.

Just one big catch: The app is loaded with reminders that, come next year, the free ride is over. You already have to set up an account to read most sections. Soon, you'll need a paid subscription. As a premium package, I don't think the New York Times app passes muster.

The content's all there, and that's wonderful, but the layout lacks imagination. Essentially, it's NYTimes.com without scrolling. Stories appear in a familiar thumbnail format, sometimes with images, and long articles are spread across several pages, navigated with finger swipes. Embedded video is a nice touch when available, and I like the photo and video galleries. Still, if you're hoping for a new kind of tablet reading experience, it's not here.

I want to see the Times' app do more with social media. You can share links with Facebook and Twitter, but you can't see any conversation around the stories. A better app might also try to personalize the paper for readers. Why not create a "playlist" of articles based on reading history? Or how about the ability to mark an online article for later reading on the iPad? Even the basic organization of the app is too conservative. It's a list of sections and a list of stories, that's all. Meanwhile, apps from NPR and BBC have streamlined the reading process by letting you swipe between entire articles, eliminating the need to navigate. They're more fun to read than the Times' app, and they're going to stay free.

As the Times' own Nick Bilton wrote in his latest book, people don't really pay for words. "Imagine if I said I would sell you this book on Post-it notes," he wrote in I Live in the Future & Here's How it Works. "Would you still want to read it? Probably not. The experience would be terrible to consume." As it stands, the Times' iPad app is too much like a series of sticky notes, and not enough of a new take on delivering the news.

(Disclosure: I've written for the Times on a few occasions.)

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