Morsi Urged to Retract Edict to Bypass Judges in Egypt

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

A demonstrator takes a breather during protests in downtown Cairo on Saturday. More Photos »

CAIRO — The association of judges here called Saturday for courts across Egypt to suspend all but their most vital activities to protest an edict by President Mohamed Morsi granting himself unchecked power by setting his decrees above judicial review until the ratification of a new constitution.

The judges’ strike, which drew the support of the leader of the national lawyers’ association, would be the steepest escalation yet in a political struggle between the country’s new Islamist leaders and the institutions of the authoritarian government that was overthrown last year. As it spills into the courts and the streets, the dispute also increasingly threatens to undermine the credibility of Egypt’s political transition as well.

A council that oversees the judiciary denounced Mr. Morsi’s decree, which was issued Thursday, as “an unprecedented attack on judicial independence,” and urged the president to retract parts of the decree eliminating judicial oversight.

State news media reported that judges and prosecutors had already walked out in Alexandria, and there were other news reports of walkouts in Qulubiya and Beheira, but those could not be confirmed.

Outside Egypt’s high court in Cairo, the police fired tear gas at protesters who were denouncing Mr. Morsi and trying to force their way into the building, the second day in a row that protesters took to the streets over the presidential decree, which critics have decried as a return to autocracy.

Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, a prosecutor appointed by Mr. Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, declared to a crowd of cheering judges that the presidential decree was “null and void.” He denounced what he described as “the systematic campaign against the country’s institutions in general and the judiciary in particular.”

A coalition of disparate opposition leaders including the liberal former United Nations diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, the leftist-nationalist Hamdeen Sabahy, and the former Mubarak-government foreign minister Amr Moussa formed a self-proclaimed National Salvation Front to oppose the decree. In addition to demanding the dissolution of the constitutional assembly, the group declared that it would not speak with Mr. Morsi until he withdrew his decree.

“We will not enter into a dialogue about anything while this constitutional declaration remains intact and in force,” Mr. Moussa said. “We demand that it be withdrawn and then we can talk.”

As the judges group called for a suspension of the courts, a growing number of lawyers filed claims demanding that the courts seek to overturn Mr. Morsi’s decree, joining the battle between the executive and judicial powers.

Advisers to Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s first democratically elected president, defended his action, saying he was trying to prevent the courts from disbanding the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly, which is writing a new constitution. The nation’s top courts had already dissolved the Islamist-led parliament and an earlier Islamist-led constituent assembly.

The advisers said a court decision on the new constitutional assembly had been expected as soon as next Sunday.

The judges’ group, as well as the newly unified secular opposition, have demanded that Mr. Morsi withdraw his decree, and that he disband and replace the current constitutional assembly. Many of the assembly’s non-Islamist members, including secularists and representatives of the Coptic Church, had already quit the body to protest the Islamists’ domination.

The increasingly vocal criticism of the assembly threatens to undermine the legitimacy of the ultimate charter, and has only increased the likelihood that the Islamist leaders may seek to pass and ratify it on their own, over the opposition of other groups, further damaging its credibility.

The opposition to the decree has also reinforced the fears of Islamists that judges appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak and the secular opposition were deliberately seeking to derail the process rather than accept their defeats at the polls.

Nevine Ramzy and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Having a Beer With a Smartphone

Drinking beer used to be simple. But the exploding popularity of craft beer over the past several years has changed that, giving beer drinkers a new world of possibilities — and a range of hard decisions.

Predictably, the ever-expanding roster of oatmeal stouts and vanilla porters has been accompanied by the creation of dozens of beer-related apps. These include local guides to the best pints, inane games, beery social networks and recommendation engines that determine which beers you might like based on what you have enjoyed in the past.

An app released this month, Craft Beer New York, gives local connoisseurs an excellent guide to the city’s bars, breweries and bottle shops ($1.99 for iPhones and other iOS devices; you must be 17 years old to download this and the other Apple beer apps). Its developer, Blue Crow Media, also makes attractive apps focused on coffee. The content for this app comes from Joshua M. Bernstein, a beer writer living in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, and the author of Brewed Awakening, a book about the craft beer movement.

The app rates 122 bars, 34 shops and 22 breweries. I first tested it out in Astoria, Queens, where I live, and it seemed to get things right without just picking the most obvious places to drink. There were short entries on half a dozen establishments, including specific recommendations on which beers to order.

It is worth noting that this app is different from a guide to bars. Good spots will not show up if they have pedestrian beer selections. At the same time, bars do not automatically get good ratings for having lots of choices. Mr. Bernstein acknowledges that the Beer Authority, a 70-tap bar that recently opened on a stretch of Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, is “a life preserver for folks working around the Port Authority.” But the app still sticks it with a 2 out of 5 rating because of its unimaginative décor, high prices and a tendency to play lame music.

Mr. Bernstein updates the app with newly opened establishments, and it also has a news tab that includes bulletins on things like how to ensure that an I.P.A. is fresh, or how to help out beer-related businesses affected by Hurricane Sandy. An Android version is due out in early 2013.

One of the more popular beer apps is Untappd, a location-based social-networking app for beer drinkers (free and available for Android and iOS). The app is designed to get people to share their impressions of beers, keeping track of what they liked while also guiding friends and strangers to good bars and brews. The app has an active community, but like any crowdsourced project there is a lot to sift through to find anything useful.

Another way to find new beers to try is to tell an algorithm what you drink and have it determine what else you might like. BrewGene is a nice version of this idea (free and available for Android, iOS or on the Web). It has a truly extensive database. I recently ordered a Goose Island I.P.A. from a bar, but when I went to enter it into the app found that there were five different beers with that name. I rated a few beers from the app’s top 100 list, and it began generating credible suggestions for me. The app’s ability to point me toward an establishment that would serve me these beers is lacking, however. Its “Places” function pulled in a seemingly random selection of nearby bars, bodegas and restaurants. There’s supposed to be a beer menu for each establishment, but all the ones I got were blank.

Have a favorite New York City app? Send tips via e-mail to appcity@nytimes.com or via Twitter to @joshuabrustein.

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New Zealand Wants a Hollywood Put on Its Map

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Standing by his desk in New Zealand’s distinctive round Parliament building, known locally as the Beehive, Prime Minister John Key proudly brandished an ornately engraved sword. It was used, he said, by Frodo Baggins, the protagonist of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and in the films it possesses magical powers that cause it to glow blue in the presence of goblins.

“This was given to me by the president of the United States,” said Mr. Key, marveling that President Obama’s official gift to New Zealand was, after all, a New Zealand product.

In Mr. Key’s spare blond-wood office — with no goblins in sight — the sword looked decidedly unmagical. But it served as a reminder that in New Zealand, the business of running a country goes hand in hand with the business of making movies.

For better or worse, Mr. Key’s government has taken extreme measures that have linked its fortunes to some of Hollywood’s biggest pictures, making this country of 4.4 million people, slightly more than the city of Los Angeles, a grand experiment in the fusion of film and government.

That union has been on enthusiastic display here in recent weeks as “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the first of three related movies by the director Peter Jackson, approached its world premiere on Wednesday in Wellington (and on Dec. 14 in the United States). Anticipation in New Zealand has been building, and there are signs everywhere of the film’s integration into Kiwi life — from the giant replica of the movie’s Gollum creature suspended over the waiting area at Wellington Airport to the gift shops that are expanding to meet anticipated demand for Hobbit merchandise (elf ears, $14).

But the path to this moment has been filled with controversy. Two years ago, when a dispute with unions threatened to derail the “Hobbit” movies — endangering several thousand jobs and a commitment of some $500 million by Warner Brothers — Mr. Key persuaded the Parliament to rewrite its national labor laws.

It was a breathtaking solution, even in a world accustomed to generous public support of movie projects, and a substantial incentive package was included: the government agreed to contribute $99 million in production costs and add $10 million to the studio’s marketing budget. And its tourism office will spend about $8 million in its current fiscal year, and probably more in the future, as part of a promotional campaign with Time Warner that is marketing the country as a film-friendly fantasyland.

For a tiny nation like New Zealand, where plans to cut $35 million from the education budget set off national outrage earlier this year (and a backtrack from the government), the “Hobbit” concessions were difficult for many to swallow, especially since the country had already provided some $150 million in support for the three “Lord of the Rings” movies.

Now, even amid the excitement of the “Hobbit” opening, skepticism about the government’s film-centric strategy remains. And recently it has become entangled with new suspicions: that Mr. Key’s government is taking cues from America’s powerful film industry in handling a request by United States officials for the extradition of Kim Dotcom, the mogul whose given name was Kim Schmitz, so he can face charges of pirating copyrighted material.

New Zealand’s political scene erupted in September, as Mr. Key publicly apologized to Mr. Dotcom for what turned out to be illegal spying on him by the country’s Government Communications Security Bureau. The Waikato Times, a provincial paper, taunted Mr. Key, accusing him of making New Zealand the “51st state,” while others suggested that a whirlwind trip by Mr. Key to Los Angeles in early October was somehow tied to the Dotcom case.

“No studio executive raised it with me,” Mr. Key said in an interview last month. He spoke the day after a private dinner where he lobbied executives from Disney, Warner Brothers, Fox and other companies for still more New Zealand film work, with Mr. Jackson, a New Zealander, joining by video link.

Mr. Key has been sharply criticized for cozying up to Mr. Jackson in what some consider unseemly ways. Last year, a month before elections in which he and his National Party were fighting to keep control of the government, Mr. Key skipped an appointment with Queen Elizabeth II in Australia to visit the Hobbiton set. He also interviewed Mr. Jackson on a radio show, prompting an outcry from the opposition.

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Scientists See Advances in Deep Learning, a Part of Artificial Intelligence

Hao Zhang/The New York Times

A voice recognition program translated a speech given by Richard F. Rashid, Microsoft’s top scientist, into Mandarin Chinese.

Using an artificial intelligence technique inspired by theories about how the brain recognizes patterns, technology companies are reporting startling gains in fields as diverse as computer vision, speech recognition and the identification of promising new molecules for designing drugs.

The advances have led to widespread enthusiasm among researchers who design software to perform human activities like seeing, listening and thinking. They offer the promise of machines that converse with humans and perform tasks like driving cars and working in factories, raising the specter of automated robots that could replace human workers.

The technology, called deep learning, has already been put to use in services like Apple’s Siri virtual personal assistant, which is based on Nuance Communications’ speech recognition service, and in Google’s Street View, which uses machine vision to identify specific addresses.

But what is new in recent months is the growing speed and accuracy of deep-learning programs, often called artificial neural networks or just “neural nets” for their resemblance to the neural connections in the brain.

“There has been a number of stunning new results with deep-learning methods,” said Yann LeCun, a computer scientist at New York University who did pioneering research in handwriting recognition at Bell Laboratories. “The kind of jump we are seeing in the accuracy of these systems is very rare indeed.”

Artificial intelligence researchers are acutely aware of the dangers of being overly optimistic. Their field has long been plagued by outbursts of misplaced enthusiasm followed by equally striking declines.

In the 1960s, some computer scientists believed that a workable artificial intelligence system was just 10 years away. In the 1980s, a wave of commercial start-ups collapsed, leading to what some people called the “A.I. winter.”

But recent achievements have impressed a wide spectrum of computer experts. In October, for example, a team of graduate students studying with the University of Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey E. Hinton won the top prize in a contest sponsored by Merck to design software to help find molecules that might lead to new drugs.

From a data set describing the chemical structure of 15 different molecules, they used deep-learning software to determine which molecule was most likely to be an effective drug agent.

The achievement was particularly impressive because the team decided to enter the contest at the last minute and designed its software with no specific knowledge about how the molecules bind to their targets. The students were also working with a relatively small set of data; neural nets typically perform well only with very large ones.

“This is a really breathtaking result because it is the first time that deep learning won, and more significantly it won on a data set that it wouldn’t have been expected to win at,” said Anthony Goldbloom, chief executive and founder of Kaggle, a company that organizes data science competitions, including the Merck contest.

Advances in pattern recognition hold implications not just for drug development but for an array of applications, including marketing and law enforcement. With greater accuracy, for example, marketers can comb large databases of consumer behavior to get more precise information on buying habits. And improvements in facial recognition are likely to make surveillance technology cheaper and more commonplace.

Artificial neural networks, an idea going back to the 1950s, seek to mimic the way the brain absorbs information and learns from it. In recent decades, Dr. Hinton, 64 (a great-great-grandson of the 19th-century mathematician George Boole, whose work in logic is the foundation for modern digital computers), has pioneered powerful new techniques for helping the artificial networks recognize patterns.

Modern artificial neural networks are composed of an array of software components, divided into inputs, hidden layers and outputs. The arrays can be “trained” by repeated exposures to recognize patterns like images or sounds.

These techniques, aided by the growing speed and power of modern computers, have led to rapid improvements in speech recognition, drug discovery and computer vision.

Deep-learning systems have recently outperformed humans in certain limited recognition tests.

Last year, for example, a program created by scientists at the Swiss A. I. Lab at the University of Lugano won a pattern recognition contest by outperforming both competing software systems and a human expert in identifying images in a database of German traffic signs.

The winning program accurately identified 99.46 percent of the images in a set of 50,000; the top score in a group of 32 human participants was 99.22 percent, and the average for the humans was 98.84 percent.

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Scientists See Advances in Deep Learning, a Part of Artificial Intelligence

Hao Zhang/The New York Times

A voice recognition program translated a speech given by Richard F. Rashid, Microsoft’s top scientist, into Mandarin Chinese.

Using an artificial intelligence technique inspired by theories about how the brain recognizes patterns, technology companies are reporting startling gains in fields as diverse as computer vision, speech recognition and the identification of promising new molecules for designing drugs.

The advances have led to widespread enthusiasm among researchers who design software to perform human activities like seeing, listening and thinking. They offer the promise of machines that converse with humans and perform tasks like driving cars and working in factories, raising the specter of automated robots that could replace human workers.

The technology, called deep learning, has already been put to use in services like Apple’s Siri virtual personal assistant, which is based on Nuance Communications’ speech recognition service, and in Google’s Street View, which uses machine vision to identify specific addresses.

But what is new in recent months is the growing speed and accuracy of deep-learning programs, often called artificial neural networks or just “neural nets” for their resemblance to the neural connections in the brain.

“There has been a number of stunning new results with deep-learning methods,” said Yann LeCun, a computer scientist at New York University who did pioneering research in handwriting recognition at Bell Laboratories. “The kind of jump we are seeing in the accuracy of these systems is very rare indeed.”

Artificial intelligence researchers are acutely aware of the dangers of being overly optimistic. Their field has long been plagued by outbursts of misplaced enthusiasm followed by equally striking declines.

In the 1960s, some computer scientists believed that a workable artificial intelligence system was just 10 years away. In the 1980s, a wave of commercial start-ups collapsed, leading to what some people called the “A.I. winter.”

But recent achievements have impressed a wide spectrum of computer experts. In October, for example, a team of graduate students studying with the University of Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey E. Hinton won the top prize in a contest sponsored by Merck to design software to help find molecules that might lead to new drugs.

From a data set describing the chemical structure of 15 different molecules, they used deep-learning software to determine which molecule was most likely to be an effective drug agent.

The achievement was particularly impressive because the team decided to enter the contest at the last minute and designed its software with no specific knowledge about how the molecules bind to their targets. The students were also working with a relatively small set of data; neural nets typically perform well only with very large ones.

“This is a really breathtaking result because it is the first time that deep learning won, and more significantly it won on a data set that it wouldn’t have been expected to win at,” said Anthony Goldbloom, chief executive and founder of Kaggle, a company that organizes data science competitions, including the Merck contest.

Advances in pattern recognition hold implications not just for drug development but for an array of applications, including marketing and law enforcement. With greater accuracy, for example, marketers can comb large databases of consumer behavior to get more precise information on buying habits. And improvements in facial recognition are likely to make surveillance technology cheaper and more commonplace.

Artificial neural networks, an idea going back to the 1950s, seek to mimic the way the brain absorbs information and learns from it. In recent decades, Dr. Hinton, 64 (a great-great-grandson of the 19th-century mathematician George Boole, whose work in logic is the foundation for modern digital computers), has pioneered powerful new techniques for helping the artificial networks recognize patterns.

Modern artificial neural networks are composed of an array of software components, divided into inputs, hidden layers and outputs. The arrays can be “trained” by repeated exposures to recognize patterns like images or sounds.

These techniques, aided by the growing speed and power of modern computers, have led to rapid improvements in speech recognition, drug discovery and computer vision.

Deep-learning systems have recently outperformed humans in certain limited recognition tests.

Last year, for example, a program created by scientists at the Swiss A. I. Lab at the University of Lugano won a pattern recognition contest by outperforming both competing software systems and a human expert in identifying images in a database of German traffic signs.

The winning program accurately identified 99.46 percent of the images in a set of 50,000; the top score in a group of 32 human participants was 99.22 percent, and the average for the humans was 98.84 percent.

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Protests Erupt After Egypt’s Leader Seizes New Power

CAIRO — Opponents of President Mohamed Morsi were reported to have set fire to his party’s offices in several Egyptian cities on Friday in a spasm of protest and clashes after he granted himself broad powers above any court declaring himself the guardian of Egypt‘s revolution, and used his new authority to order the retrial of Hosni Mubarak.

Maya Alleruzzo/Associated Press

Egyptian protesters chanted antigovernment slogans and waved a national flag in Tahrir Square on Friday.

In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party clashed with followers of Mr. Morsi, an Islamist, who won Western and regional plaudits only days ago for brokering a cease-fire to halt eight days of lethal exchanges between Israeli forces and militants in the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, portrayed his decree assuming the new powers as an attempt to fulfill popular demands for justice and protect the transition to a constitutional democracy. He said it was necessary to overcome gridlock and competing interests. But the unexpected breadth of the powers he seized raised immediate fears that he might become a new strongman.

“We are, God willing, moving forward, and no one stands in our way,” Reuters quoted Mr. Morsi as saying on Friday said in a suburban mosque here after Friday prayers.

“I fulfill my duties to please God and the nation and I take decisions after consulting with everyone,” he said. “Victory does not come without a clear plan and this is what I have.”

He spoke as state television reported that his party’s offices in the Suez Canal cities of Suez, Port Said and Ismailia had been burned as his foes rampaged. Thousands of people protesting Mr. Morsi’s power grab gathered in Tahrir Square here — the focal point of protests that, last year, swept away Mr. Mubarak. Elsewhere in the capital, the president’s supporters massed in even larger numbers outside the presidential palace where Mr. Morsi said his aim was “to achieve political, social and economic stability.”

“I am for all Egyptians. I will not be biased against any son of Egypt,” he said on a stage outside the presidential palace, Reuters, reported, adding he was working for social and economic stability. “Opposition in Egypt does not worry me, but it has to be real and strong,” he said.

Sounding defensive at times and employing some of the language favored by his autocratic predecessor, Mr. Morsi justified his power grab as necessary to move Egypt’s revolution forward.

“The people wanted me to be the guardian of these steps in this phase,” he said, reminding his audience that he was freely elected after a contest “that the whole world has witnessed.”

“I don’t like, and don’t want — and there is no need — to use exceptional measures,” he said. “But those who are trying to gnaw the bones of the nation,” he added, “must be held accountable.”

News reports said clashes spread from Alexandria to the southern city of Assyut. But the severity of the clashes was not immediately clear.

Mr. Morsi’s new powers prompted one prominent adversary, Mohamed ElBaradei, to say on Twitter: “Morsi today usurped all state powers & appointed himself Egypt’s new pharaoh.”

“An absolute presidential tyranny,” Amr Hamzawy, a liberal member of the dissolved Parliament and prominent political scientist, wrote in an online commentary. “Egypt is facing a horrifying coup against legitimacy and the rule of law and a complete assassination of the democratic transition.”

Mr. Morsi issued the decree on Thursday at a high point in his five-month-old presidency, when he was basking in praise from the White House and around the world for his central role in negotiating a cease-fire that the previous night had stopped the fighting in the Gaza Strip.

But his political opponents immediately called for demonstrations on Friday to protest his new powers. “Passing a revolutionary demand within a package of autocratic decisions is a setback for the revolution,” Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a more liberal former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a former presidential candidate, wrote online. And the chief of the Supreme Constitutional Court indicated that it did not accept the decree.

In Washington on Thursday, the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, released a statement saying: “The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns form many Egyptians and the international community,” and noting that “one of the aspirations of the revolution was to ensure that power would not be overly concentrated in that hands of any one person or institution.” The statement called for resolution “through democratic dialogue.”

David D. Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim reported from Cairo and Alan Cowell from Paris. Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

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State of the Art: Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC Windows Phone 8X Are Great, and Yet

Thanksgiving, is it? I’ll tell you what I’m thankful for: competition.

Because competition drives innovation. Innovation leads to improvement. Improvement begets happiness.

In the tech world, some companies do their most innovative work when their backs are against the wall — especially Microsoft. Last month, it took the wraps off Windows Phone 8, the most polished edition yet of its beautiful, crystal-clear software for touch-screen phones. (My review of Windows Phone 8 is at http://j.mp/Qqfz2F.)

Unfortunately, as a Microsoft product manager told me understatedly, “We have an awareness problem.” Translation: Nobody is buying Windows phones. And since nobody’s buying them, nobody’s writing apps for them. And since nobody’s writing apps — well, you can see where this is going.

Still, Microsoft isn’t giving up. This month, Windows Phone 8 arrives aboard two fascinating new phones: the Nokia Lumia 920 ($100 with a new AT&T contract) and the HTC Windows Phone 8X ($200 from AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile).

It’s funny about Nokia and HTC; they, too, are fallen giants. Nokia was the world’s largest cellphone maker for 14 years straight; not anymore. At the moment, it’s in seventh place among smartphone makers. It has shed tens of thousands of employees. HTC is struggling, too, having sold 36 percent fewer smartphones this year than last.

How intriguing, then, that HTC and Nokia have each chosen Microsoft as its savior, and vice versa. Loser + loser = winner?

Yes, actually. The two new phones have a lot in common — for one thing, they’re both awesome. For another, both have bigger, sharper screens than the iPhone’s famous Retina screen. (The HTC and Nokia phones have 4.3- and 4.5-inch screens. That’s 1,280 by 720 pixels, packed in 341 and 332 to the inch.)

Both have rounded backs and edges, which make them both exceptionally comfortable to hold. (The curve also makes it easy to pull them out of your pocket the right way.)

Both come in a choice of bright colors. Both phones have the same blazing fast processor. Both can get onto their respective carriers’ 4G LTE data networks (meaning very fast Internet), in the cities where those are available.

And get this — both of these phones can also charge without being plugged in. That’s right: magnetic charging is finally built right into phones. Come home at the end of the day, throw your keys in the bowl, set the phone down on the charging pad (a $50 option) — and a little chime tells you that it’s happily charging, even though no cable is in sight.

It’s pretty great. It will become even greater if this charging method (an industry standard called Qi, pronounced chee) catches on. Someday there may be charging surfaces at coffee shops, airports and hotel rooms. (Only the Verizon version of the HTC phone has this feature turned on — not the AT&T or T-Mobile versions.)

Both phones also have built-in NFC chips. These allow near-field communications, which means “this phone can do things when you tap it against another gadget.” The promise is that you’ll be able to tap on a cash-register terminal to pay for something; tap against an NFC-enabled bus shelter ad to download promotional goodies; tap two phones together to transfer a photo or address; and tap against a Bluetooth speaker to “pair” it with the phone.

In practice, there’s more to it than that. Unfortunately, the tap only introduces the phones; Bluetooth or some other technology is needed to complete the connection. And Microsoft’s coming tap-to-pay initiative is incompatible with the one Google has spent millions of dollars setting up at cash registers across the land. But we can always hope.

The HTC Windows Phone 8X is the smaller of the two new phones, but even so, it dwarfs the iPhone — it’s wider, taller, heavier and thicker. If you get the Verizon model, your Internet experience will be faster and better in more cities than on the Nokia phone, which is available only on AT&T.

The back panel is faintly textured, so you’re less likely to drop this phone than you are the shiny-backed Nokia. But the buttons — power, volume, camera — are skinny and utterly flush with the phone’s body; you practically need an ice pick to push them in.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

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David Taub, Introducer of Pinot Grigio Wine, Dies at 72

When David Taub co-founded his wine importing company in 1977, most Americans knew about two kinds of Italian wine, and those mainly by their packaging: Chianti, for its straw-covered flask, and Soave Bolla, which came in a tall, elegant, rocket-shaped bottle.

Palm Bay International.¤

David S. Taub, a wine importer who helped introduce Pinot Grigio to the United States.

Mr. Taub expanded Americans’ palate for Italian wine (if not their choice in bottles) by introducing a simple white wine called Pinot Grigio. It became the top-selling Italian wine in the United States, part of an international surge in popularity that helped Italy surpass France in the 1980s as Europe’s largest wine exporter.

Mr. Taub, whose firm, Palm Bay International, is among the largest wine importers in the United States, died on Nov. 8 at 72. His son Marc said the cause was complications of kidney disease.

Soave Bolla was the most popular Italian white wine in America when Mr. Taub and his father, Martin, who were wine and liquor distributors, began to import a selection of varietals from the Trentino province of Italy, near the Italian Alps. The Taubs believed that one of those wines, Pinot Grigio, was the most likely to compete successfully with Soave.

It was crisper and more fruity than Soave, Mr. Taub said in a 2010 interview with Wine Spectator magazine: “more in the American style — easy to drink, customer-friendly.”

“The problem,” he added, “was, how do you take a wine that no one has heard of and introduce it into the marketplace?”

The Taubs first persuaded the vineyard that produced the wine to Anglicize its name. Cantina Viticoltori del Trentino, known as Ca’Vit (pronounced ca-VEET), became Cavit. The importers told their American distributors to pronounce it “like the talk-show host.”

Then, through someone who knew someone, the younger Taub contacted Dick Cavett himself, who agreed to lend his cosmopolitan aura to an ad campaign. “I’m the Cavett from Nebraska,” Mr. Cavett was quoted as saying, dressed in crisp talk-show attire and hoisting a glass in full-page ads that appeared in magazines and newspapers nationally. “But you should get to know the Cavit from the Italian Alps. The classic Cavit Pinot Grigio is assertively dry...” The tag line was “Ask for Cavit, as in Cavett.” Starting virtually from zero, within two years the Taubs were importing 500,000 cases of Cavit wines, most of it Pinot Grigio. By 2010, Mr. Taub told Wine Spectator, the number was three million. In an interview on Wednesday, Lucio Caputo, president of the Italian Wine and Food Institute, a New York-based trade association that works closely with the Italian government, called Mr. Taub “a pioneer in the expansion of the world” of Italian wine.

The portfolio of Palm Bay International, which is now led by Marc Taub, includes a vast variety of wines, in a wide price range, from Cavit as well as from other wineries in Italy, Spain, France, Chile, Argentina and Peru.

David Taub was born in Great Neck, N.Y., on Dec. 30, 1939, one of two children of Martin and Frances Taub. After graduating from Boston University in 1961 and serving in the military, he joined the family business, Gallo Wines Distributors of New York, where he worked until branching off to establish Palm Bay.

In addition to his son Marc, Mr. Taub, who still lived on Long Island, in Glen Head, is survived by his wife, Linda; two other sons, Andrew and Joshua; six grandchildren; and his brother, Richard, a professor of social science at the University of Chicago.

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Recipes for Health: Pear Clafoutis — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times NYTCREDIT:

If you don’t want to make a crust but want something tartlike for your Thanksgiving dessert, a clafoutis, which is something like a cross between a flan and a pancake, is a great choice. It’s a very easy dessert, yet it’s always impressive.

2 tablespoons pear eau-de-vie or liqueur (optional)

2 tablespoons mild-flavored honey, like clover

2 pounds ripe but firm pears, like Bartlett or Comice

3 large eggs

1 vanilla bean, scraped

1/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup sifted unbleached white flour

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1/2 cup milk

pinch of salt

1. Combine the pear eau-de-vie and the honey in a bowl. Peel, core and slice the pears and toss with the mixture. Let sit for 30 minutes.

2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 10-inch ceramic tart pan or baking dish.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer or with a whisk, beat together the eggs, the seeds from the vanilla bean and the sugar. Pour off the marinade from the pears and add to the egg mixture. Gradually beat in the flour, then beat in the yogurt, milk and salt.

4. Arrange the pears in the baking dish. Pour on the batter. Place in the oven and bake 40 to 50 minutes, until the top is beginning to brown. Serve hot or warm.

Yield: 8 servings.

Advance preparation: Although this is best served warm, you can allow it to cool completely and serve it at room temperature. It will hold for several hours out of the refrigerator. Leftovers make a nice breakfast treat.

Nutritional information per serving: 195 calories; 2 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 71 milligrams cholesterol; 40 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 47 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Recipes for Health: Pear Clafoutis — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times NYTCREDIT:

If you don’t want to make a crust but want something tartlike for your Thanksgiving dessert, a clafoutis, which is something like a cross between a flan and a pancake, is a great choice. It’s a very easy dessert, yet it’s always impressive.

2 tablespoons pear eau-de-vie or liqueur (optional)

2 tablespoons mild-flavored honey, like clover

2 pounds ripe but firm pears, like Bartlett or Comice

3 large eggs

1 vanilla bean, scraped

1/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup sifted unbleached white flour

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1/2 cup milk

pinch of salt

1. Combine the pear eau-de-vie and the honey in a bowl. Peel, core and slice the pears and toss with the mixture. Let sit for 30 minutes.

2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 10-inch ceramic tart pan or baking dish.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer or with a whisk, beat together the eggs, the seeds from the vanilla bean and the sugar. Pour off the marinade from the pears and add to the egg mixture. Gradually beat in the flour, then beat in the yogurt, milk and salt.

4. Arrange the pears in the baking dish. Pour on the batter. Place in the oven and bake 40 to 50 minutes, until the top is beginning to brown. Serve hot or warm.

Yield: 8 servings.

Advance preparation: Although this is best served warm, you can allow it to cool completely and serve it at room temperature. It will hold for several hours out of the refrigerator. Leftovers make a nice breakfast treat.

Nutritional information per serving: 195 calories; 2 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 71 milligrams cholesterol; 40 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 47 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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With Cease-Fire Joy in Gaza, Palestinian Factions Revive Unity Pledges

GAZA — A cease-fire that halted eight days of lethal conflict between Israel and Hamas brought jubilation to Gaza on Thursday as thousands of flag-waving residents poured into the streets and competing Palestinian factions sought to use the moment to revive their efforts to unify. In Israel, where the mood was more cynical and subdued, troops deployed to the border began pulling back.

The cease-fire agreement, which took effect on Wednesday night and seemed to be holding through Thursday, averted a full-scale Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. It did not resolve the underlying issues between the antagonists but said they would be addressed later, in a vague process that would not begin until at least 24 hours of calm had elapsed.

The wording of the agreement, reached under strong Egyptian and American diplomatic pressure, allowed both sides to claim some measure of victory in the battle of aerial weaponry that had killed at least 150 Palestinians and five Israelis over the past week. A sixth Israeli, a soldier, died on Thursday from wounds received before the cease-fire.

Whether the agreement succeeds could provide an early test of how Egypt’s new Islamist government might influence the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the most intractable in the Middle East.

Gaza City roared back to life after more than a week of nonstop Israeli aerial assaults had left the streets vacant. Gazans carried flags not just in the signature green of Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, but also the yellow of its rival Fatah faction, the black of Islamic Jihad and the red of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

“It’s the first time in 70 years I feel proud and my head held high,” said Mohamed Rajah, 71, a refugee from Haifa, Israel, who rushed to kiss four masked militants of the Islamic Jihad faction as they prepared for a news conference. “It’s a great victory for the people of Palestine. Nobody says it’s Hamas, nobody says it’s Islamic Jihad or Fatah — Palestine only.”

Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister of Gaza who had largely remained in hiding after the initial Israeli assault on Nov. 14 that killed Ahmed al-Jabari, the head of the Hamas military wing, appeared at a unity rally alongside Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative, a member of the Palestinian leadership that governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank and who has spent the past several days in Gaza. Mr. Barghouti said the leaders of all Palestinian factions would meet in Cairo in coming days to discuss reconciling their differences.

“The Palestinian people have won today,” Mr. Barghouti told hundreds outside the parliament building. “We must continue this victory by making our national unity.” Mr. Haniya, in a televised speech later, said “The blood of Jabari united the people of the nation on the choice of jihad and resistance.”

With Israeli forces still massed on the Gaza border, a tentative calm in the fighting descended after the agreement was announced. But the tens of thousands of Israeli reservists called up during the crisis began to withdraw from staging areas along the Gaza border, where the Israeli military had prepared for a possible invasion of Gaza for the second time in four years.

In southern Israel, the target of more than 1,500 rockets fired from Gaza over the past week, wary residents began to return to routine. But schools within a 25-mile radius of the Palestinian enclave remained closed.

A rocket alert sounded at the small village of Nativ Haasara near the border with Gaza on Thursday morning, sending residents running for shelter. The military said the alert had been a false alarm.

Israel Radio said a dozen rockets were fired from Gaza in the first few hours of the cease-fire, but Israeli forces did not respond. In the rival Twitter feeds that offered a cyberspace counterpoint to the exchanges of airstrikes and rockets, the Israel Defense Forces said they had achieved their objectives of severely damaging Hamas’s military capabilities.

At the same time, Israeli security forces said on Thursday that they had detained 55 Palestinian militants in the West Bank after confrontations. The army said the detentions were designed to “continue to maintain order” and to “prevent the infiltration of terrorists into Israeli communities.”

Jodi Rudoren reported from Gaza, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo, Rick Gladstone from New York, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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Gadgetwise Blog: App Smart Extra: A Few More Must-Try Apps for iPad

App Smart this week recommended apps to help new iPad owners make the most of their tablet PCs, whether they have an iPad 4 or a Mini.

But there’s space to talk about only a certain number of apps, and Apple still leads its competition in the number it offers, including ones tailored for tablet screens.

If the column-based interface of the Jasmine YouTube app that I mentioned in App Smart doesn’t appeal to you, then you may prefer the free YouPlayer app. While not quite as full-featured, it does feel much more like accessing YouTube through a native interface. Plus it offers handy functions like lists of featured or popular video clips and even a “nearby” option, for clips shot near you.

For a completely different weather app experience, Weatherwise (free) does all the usual things like forecasting the next five days’ weather, or giving a detailed 24-hour prediction. But its main feature is that it demonstrates the weather with a custom animated picture instead of a boring icon. The image that comes free with the app is a stylized bonzai tree that reacts to night or day, wind, rain or sun and so on. If you like the premise of this app, you can buy more themes through its interface for a dollar each.

To demo the music-making powers of the iPad, try out the $2 app OscilloScoop. This app is a neat way to generate sounds through looped patterns. It uses a graphical input system that looks somewhat like the screen of an oscilloscope to let you craft some unique, and very catchy sounds.

Finally if you need a fun game suggestion, it’s hard to beat the nerdy joy of playing the first-person-shooter app Doom Classic on an iPad mini ($5 via iTunes). As you play, remember that this is an entire tablet PC that’s comparable in size to the box that the original PC game came in back in 1993.

Extra Quick Call

Owners of a Windows 8 or Windows RT tablet may be delighted to find that Barnes and Noble has released a version of its Nook e-reader app for this platform. It’s free in the app store, and has some graphical tricks to try to emulate real paper books.

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Tool Kit: Online Shopping Tips for the Holidays

Some people may be looking forward to leaving Thanksgiving dinner before the pie is served to join the Black Friday rush, which will begin during dinnertime Thursday, earlier than ever, at stores like Sears, Walmart and Lord & Taylor.

But for those who prefer to stay for the pie course, avoid the lines and freezing temperatures and shop from the comfort of their homes, there are just as many deals to be found online this year, especially for smart shoppers.

Last year, online shoppers spent $816 million on Black Friday, an increase of 26 percent from the year before, and an additional $2.3 billion over Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday, according to comScore. It expects online spending to rise this year.

Online, there is no commute, no parking and no crowds — and shopping can be done in bed or at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Still, you cannot try clothes on, you have to wait for your purchase to arrive and there is always the nagging feeling that a better price is just one more click away.

To find your way around those problems, here are some tips from online shopping pros, retailers and shopping bloggers.

BARGAINS START EARLY “Cyber Monday is passé,” said Fiona Dias, chief strategy officer for ShopRunner.com, a network of e-commerce sites. “With online sales beginning as early as the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, consumers who hold out for the best deal may find that what they are looking for has already sold out.”

Amazon.com, for example, started its Black Friday deals on Monday, but they end Saturday. SHOP ON TUESDAYS One of the secrets of online shopping is that prices change by the second. To maximize your chances of getting the best price year-round, shop on Tuesday, a variety of e-commerce experts say. For whatever reason, Tuesday is when most e-commerce sites, including Shopbop, Etsy and RetailMeNot, post discounts and new items.

No matter the day, online retailers often start sales in the wee hours, so shop early.

As for the time of year, women’s clothes, shoes and accessories are discounted most in January, February, August and September, according to Shop It To Me, an online shopping search site. For consumer electronics like laptops, shop in midsummer and late September, before and after the back-to-school rush, according to Decide.com, a price comparison site.

NEVER PAY FULL PRICE Online holiday shoppers should use 40 percent off as a benchmark for a good deal, said Marjorie Cader, a Shop It To Me spokeswoman, based on discount data the site has collected. Expect discounts that are about 5 percent better from online-only retailers than from those that also operate brick and mortar stores, she said.

Comparison shopping sites like TheFind or ShopStyle can locate the best prices; Google or coupon sites like RetailMeNot can also help find a discount.

Google, Amazon and even flash sale sites like Gilt.com do not always have the lowest prices. You might check small shopping blogs dedicated to your favorite brands, like Grechen’s Closet for contemporary women’s clothes or J. Crew Aficionada.

“Spend 20 minutes and ensure you are getting the best deal out there,” said John Faith, senior vice president of mobile at WhaleShark Media, which operates coupon sites, including RetailMeNot.

BE A HAGGLER This is the year haggling at the cash register could become acceptable, as offline retailers try to keep shoppers offline. If you find a better price online — by using an application like RedLaser or searching Amazon — ask whether the cashier will match it. Big retailers like Target have already said they will.

WAIT TILL THE LAST MINUTE Procrastinators might benefit during the holidays. Electronics sold online are least expensive in the week before Christmas, according to Decide, especially TVs, laptops and cameras.

And while Dec. 17 is the last day that most online retailers will offer free shipping in time for Christmas, Walmart, the luxury clothing seller Net-a-Porter and others will deliver the same day. In San Francisco and New York, eBay now offers same-day delivery from hundreds of stores, including Macy’s, Target and Toys “R” Us.

NEVER PAY FOR SHIPPING... Nine of ten retailers will offer free shipping on certain purchases this holiday season, and a third will offer free shipping on all purchases, according to the National Retail Federation.

Some, though, require that you enter a promotional code, so it’s wise to take a minute to look around the Web site or search a coupon site to find it.

Stores including Walmart, Toys “R” Us and Nordstrom allow you to shop online and pick up your order locally.

...OR FOR RETURNS Sites like Zappos.com and Piperlime send prepaid shipping labels, but beware.

“When it comes to returns, read the fine print,” said Brian Hoyt, a spokesman for WhaleShark Media. Some merchants include a prepaid return label but subtract the price from your refund, and others charge a restocking fee as high as 30 percent for consumer electronics.

Many companies, including Gap and J. Crew, also let you return an online purchase to a local store. And until Dec. 31, PayPal will cover the return shipping cost if the merchant does not, as long as you pay with PayPal and make the return within 30 days.

SEARCH WISELY Try searching synonyms, like “coat” instead of “jacket.” On sites like eBay, try leaving out words — if you are looking for an Yves Saint Laurent handbag on eBay, search for “Saint Laurent” or “Laurent bag.”

“If you search for ‘Yves Saint Laurent,’ you’ll be fighting over pieces with a bigger group of people,” said Sophia Amoruso, founder and chief executive of the e-commerce retailer Nasty Gal, who suggested purposefully misspelling brand names as well. “Think of what an uninformed person might list a really great designer piece as, and you can get an amazing gem for an incredible price.”

EBay Fashion also lets shoppers search by taking a cellphone picture of a fabric to find similar designs.

GET INSPIRED Search for “black sequin dress,” and you’ll get 128 results on Zappos.com, 2,618 on Amazon.com and a truly overwhelming 18 million on Google.

One solution: Trust online curators to suggest items. Etsy creates lists of recommended items. On Pinterest, you can peruse items culled by others. Other sites to search for inspiration: Polvyore, Fancy, Svpply, Lookbook.nu and We Heart It.

TRY IT ON, VIRTUALLY You can visit sites that show real people wearing the clothes you’re interested in buying, like Go Try It On, Fashism and Rent the Runway and sites that show video, including Asos, MyHabit and Joyus. Or, as long as a site offers free shipping and returns, order two sizes and return one.

SHOP INTERNATIONALLY “Don’t let international shopping scare you off,” said Caroline Nolan, the writer of Pregnant Fashionista, a maternity shopping blog.

Many international e-commerce sites, like Asos, ship free to the United States. And because the seasons are different, winter clothes in Australia, for instance, go on sale just as Americans are starting to shop for winter, she said. FarFetch has items from small boutiques worldwide and 1stDibs is good at finding rare items like an antique from Paris. On eBay, you might have luck finding items made by a European designer by switching to eBay’s site for a particular country.

MAKE SITES WORK FOR YOU On Shop It To Me, you can enter your favorite designers and sizes and the site will send you personalized e-mails with promotions and sales. Many sites allow shoppers to place a symbol like a heart on best-liked items or save them to a wish list. On a site like Pinterest, shoppers can build a list.

“You always think you’ll remember where you saw something or what brand it was, but really you never do,” said Noria Morales, style director at SugarInc, a network of fashion and lifestyle blogs.

Even better, sites like Shopbop and Polyvore send alerts when items you have saved go on sale or are running low. EBay sends alerts when new items are listed for a search you have saved.

BE DILIGENT No one has time to read 50 e-mails a day from retailers. But for your favorite e-commerce sites, it is worth signing up for e-mails, as well as tracking them on Facebook and Twitter, where they often post exclusive deals. Many online shoppers have more luck hunting for items than trusting services to send alerts, said Grechen Reiter, owner of Grechen Media, a network of shopping blogs.

“It is the thrill of the hunt that gets us going, after all,” she said.

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Recipes for Health: Apple Pear Strudel — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

This strudel is made with phyllo dough. When I tested it the first time, I found that I had enough filling for two strudels. Rather than cut the amount of filling, I increased the number of strudels to 2, as this is a dessert you can assemble and keep, unbaked, in the freezer.

Filling for 2 strudels:

1/2 pound mixed dried fruit, like raisins, currants, chopped dried figs, chopped dried apricots, dried cranberries

1 1/2 pounds apples (3 large) (I recommend Braeburns), peeled, cored and cut in 1/2-inch dice

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons unsalted butter for cooking the apples

1/4 cup (50 grams) brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (30 grams) chopped or slivered almonds

3/4 pound (1 large or 2 small) ripe but firm pears, peeled, cored and cut in 1/2-inch dice

For each strudel:

8 sheets phyllo dough

7/8 cup (100 grams) almond powder, divided

1 1/2 ounces butter, melted, for brushing the phyllo

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment.

2. Place the dried fruit in a bowl and pour on hot or boiling water to cover. Let sit 5 minutes, and drain. Toss the apples with the lemon juice.

3. Heat a large, heavy frying pan over high heat and add 2 tablespoons butter. Wait until it becomes light brown and carefully add the apples and the sugar. Do not add the apples until the pan and the butter are hot enough, or they won’t sear properly and retain their juice. But be careful when you add them so that the hot butter doesn’t splatter. When the apples are brown on one side, add the vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and almonds, flip the apples and continue to sauté until golden brown, about 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the pears and dried fruit, then scrape out onto one of the lined sheet pans and allow to cool completely. Divide into two equal portions (easiest to do this if you weigh it).

4. Place 8 sheets of phyllo dough on your work surface. Cover with a dish towel and place another, damp dish towel on top of the first towel. Place a sheet of parchment on your work surface horizontally, with the long edge close to you. Lay a sheet of phyllo dough on the parchment. Brush lightly with butter and top with the next sheet. Continue to layer all eight sheets, brushing each one with butter before topping with the next one.

5. Brush the top sheet of phyllo dough with butter. Sprinkle on half of the almond powder (50 grams). With the other half, create a line 3 inches from the base of the dough, leaving a 2 1/2-inch margin on the sides. Top this line with one portion of the fruit mixture. Fold the bottom edge of the phyllo up over the filling, then fold the ends over and roll up like a burrito. Using the parchment paper to help you, lift the strudel and place it on the other parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with butter and make 3 or 4 slits on the diagonal along the length of the strudel. Repeat with the other sheets of phyllo to make a second strudel. If you are freezing one of them, double-wrap tightly in plastic.

6. Place the strudel in the oven and bake 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, brush again with butter, rotate the pan and return to the oven. Continue to bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve warm or room temperature.

Yield: 2 strudels, each serving 8

Advance preparation: The fruit filling will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator. The strudel can be baked a few hours before serving it. Recrisp in a medium oven for 10 minutes. It can also be frozen before baking, double-wrapped in plastic. Transfer directly from the freezer to the oven and add 10 minutes to the baking time.

Nutritional information per serving: 259 calories; 13 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 15 milligrams cholesterol; 34 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 91 milligrams sodium; 4 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Cease-Fire Between Israel and Hamas Takes Effect

CAIRO — Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire on Wednesday, the eighth day of lethal fighting over the Gaza Strip, the United States and Egypt said after intensive negotiations in Cairo.

The cease-fire, which took effect at 9 p.m. local time (2 p.m. E.S.T.), was formally announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr of Egypt at a news conference here. The agreement was aimed at quieting an escalating aerial battle between Palestinians and Israelis that had threatened to turn into an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

Whether the cease-fire could hold was uncertain at best, and even in the minutes leading up to the effective start time, both sides were firing at each other. But as 9 p.m. came and went, Gazans wary of more Israeli bombs ventured outside in jubilation.

“This is a critical moment for the region,” Mrs. Clinton, who rushed to the Middle East late Tuesday in an intensified effort to halt the hostilities, told reporters in Cairo. She thanked Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, who played a pivotal role in the negotiations, for “assuming the leadership that has long made this country a cornerstone of regional stability and peace.”

Mrs. Clinton also pledged to work “with our partners across the region to consolidate this progress, improve conditions for the people of Gaza, provide security for the people of Israel.”

Mr. Amr said Egypt’s role in reaching the agreement reflected its “historical commitment to the Palestinian cause” and Egypt’s efforts to “bring together the gap between the Palestinian factions.”

The top leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, also had strong words of praise for Mr. Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood roots are shared by Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza and does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. At a news conference in Cairo, Mr. Meshal thanked Egypt for its role and said Israel had “failed in all its objectives.”

The negotiators reached an agreement after days of nearly nonstop Israeli aerial assaults on Gaza, the Mediterranean enclave run by Hamas, the militant Islamist group, and the firing of hundreds of rockets into Israel from an arsenal Hamas had been amassing since the the three-week Israeli invasion four years ago.

Under the terms distributed after the news conference, Israel agreed to stop all land, sea and air hostilities in Gaza, including the “targeting of individuals” — a reference to militants of Hamas and its affiliates who have been killed. The cease-fire also calls on the Palestinian factions in Gaza to stop all hostilities against Israel, including rocket attacks and attacks along the border.

The agreement came despite a bus bombing in Tel Aviv earlier in the day, which Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups had applauded. Also complicating the path to the cease-fire were Israeli strikes overnight on Gaza.

It was unclear how the agreement would be enforced, but the terms stated that “each party shall commit itself not to perform any acts that would breach this understanding.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who had been threatening to start another ground invasion if the Gaza rockets did not stop, said in a statement that he was satisfied, for the moment, with the outcome. But he left open the possibility of more military action.

The statement issued by his office said Mr. Netanyahu had spoken with President Obama and “responded positively to his recommendation to give a chance to the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire and to allow an opportunity to stabilize the situation and to calm it down before there is a need to use much greater force.”

An agreement had been on the verge of completion on Tuesday, but was delayed over a number of issues, including Hamas’s demands for unfettered access to Gaza via the Rafah crossing into Egypt and other steps that would ease Israel’s economic and border control over other aspects of life for the more than one million Palestinian residents of Gaza, which Israel vacated in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.

The Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza said the Palestinian death toll after a week of fighting stood at 140 at noon. At least a third of those killed are believed to have been militants. On the Israeli side, five Israelis have been killed, including one soldier.

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram from Gaza, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, Alan Cowell from London, Andrea Bruce from Rafah and Christine Hauser from New York.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Tip of the Week: Have Your Phone Take a Memo

A voice recorder app for your smartphone is one way to quickly capture sudden thoughts on a device you are likely to have with you when inspiration strikes. Some phones have built-in recorders; the Voice Memos app in Apple’s iOS system for the iPhone lets you record, edit and e-mail your dictated thoughts as sound clips. If your phone does not include a voice or sound recorder with the operating system, you can find several third-party programs (like Evernote, which may include more features than a default system app) in your phone’s app store.

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Airlines’ On-Time Performance Rises

Rich Addicks for The New York Times

Delta Air Lines employees monitor ground traffic from a tower at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

ATLANTA — Next time you dawdle at the duty-free store or an airport bar, thinking you have a few more minutes until your flight is set to go, know this: the plane’s doors might have already closed.

Rich Addicks for The New York Times

A customer checking her bag. Delta installed bag check-in computers on boarding ramps.

There is a lot to complain about in air travel, particularly during the holiday season, with seats and overhead bins filled to capacity and the airlines charging fees for everything from a few inches of extra leg room to a bite to eat. But there is a nugget of good news. The number of flights leaving, and arriving, on time has improved significantly in recent years.

That is partly the result of the airlines flying fewer flights. But it is also because some airlines are focusing more on getting their planes out of the gate on schedule.

“There has been a lot of focus on improving performance across the industry,” said Peter McDonald, United’s chief operations officer. With carry-on space at a premium, he said passengers are also eager to board early. “There’s not a lot of hanging out at the bar until the last minute anymore.”

John Fechushak, Delta Air Lines’ director of operations in Atlanta, compared the daily task to “putting together a puzzle with different pieces every day.”

Here is a sampling of what Delta, for instance, looks at each day for each flight. How many minutes did it take for a plane to reach its gate after landing? Was the cabin door opened within three minutes? How soon were bags loaded in the hold? Did boarding start 35 minutes before takeoff? Were the cabin doors closed three minutes ahead of schedule?

So far this year, 83 percent of all flights took off within 15 minutes of schedule, the highest level since 2003, according to the Department of Transportation, which compiled figures through September. But that average belies a wide range of airline performances.

Hawaiian Airlines, helped by good weather for much of the year, topped the rankings, with 95 percent of flights leaving on time. At US Airways, 89 percent of departures were on time in that period, while Delta had 87 percent.

The biggest laggard this year has been United, which is struggling with its merger with Continental Airlines. The carrier has had three major computer problems this year, including two that crashed the airline’s passenger reservation system, stranding thousands of travelers and causing significant delays and cancellations. Its on-time departure rate, as a result, was 76 percent this year, the industry’s lowest.

American Airlines, which is going through bankruptcy proceedings and has been dealing with contentious labor relations, has also performed poorly. It delayed or canceled hundreds of flights in recent months after pilots called in sick or reported more mechanical problems. The airline also canceled scores of flight after seats were improperly bolted on some of its planes. As a result, nearly 40 percent of American’s flights were late in September.

Government statistics, however, do not provide the full picture: smaller carriers, like ExpressJet and SkyWest Airlines, which operate regional flights for Delta, United and US Airways, generally have lower on-time performance than their partners.

On-time statistics also vary widely by month, with the worst months in August and January, when summer storms, holiday travel or winter weather cause more disruptions. There are also single events that throw off the airlines: statistics, for instance, will be skewed for October by Hurricane Sandy, which shut down air travel through much of the East Coast and caused more than 19,000 flight cancellations.

Carriers have strong incentives to get planes out on time. Airlines now operate schedules that leave little wiggle room. Airplanes typically fly to several places every day, so any delayed flights, especially early in the day, can cascade through the system like falling dominoes and bedevil flight planners all day. Airlines often have to burn more fuel to try to make up for lost time, or make new arrangements for passengers who miss connections.

Airlines have long padded flight times to make up for congestion at airports or delays caused by air traffic controllers. Even so, passengers still expect their flight to take off and land at the time printed on their ticket.

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Recipes for Health: Pear Cranberry Galette — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I used Bartlett pears for this juicy galette, but pretty much any variety will work, as long as they’re not overly ripe.

1 dessert galette pastry (1/2 recipe)

2/3 cup dried cranberries

2 pounds pears, ripe but not too soft, peeled, cored and sliced (about 8 to 12 wedges per pear, depending on the size; if the pears are very large, cut the slices into 2 pieces at the middle)

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons mild honey, like clover

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup (25 grams) almond powder

1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon milk, for egg wash

1 tablespoon raw brown sugar

1. Remove the pastry from the freezer and place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Leave to thaw while you prepare the fruit, but don’t keep it out of the freezer for too long. It’s easiest to handle if it’s cold and will thaw quickly. You just want it soft enough so that you can manipulate it.

2. Soak the cranberries for 5 minutes in hot water. Drain and dry on paper towels. Toss the sliced pears with the lemon juice in a large bowl, then add the dried cranberries, honey, cinnamon and vanilla and gently toss together.

3. Sprinkle the almond powder over the pastry, leaving a 2- to 3-inch border all around. Place the fruit on top. Fold the edges of the dough in over the fruit, pleating the edges as you work your way around the fruit to form a free-form tart that is roughly 9 inches in diameter. Place in the freezer on the baking sheet for 45 minutes to an hour. This helps the galette maintain its shape.

4. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the galette from the freezer. Brush the exposed edge of the pastry with the egg wash. Sprinkle the sugar over the fruit and the crust. Place in the oven and bake 50 to 60 minutes, until the fruit is bubbly and the juice is running out and caramelizing on the parchment. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

Yield: 1 9-inch galette, serving 8

Advance preparation: You can assemble this through Step 3 and freeze it for up to a month. Once it is frozen, double-wrap it in plastic. You can also freeze the galette after baking. Thaw and warm in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes to recrisp the crust.

Nutritional information per serving: 246 calories; 6 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 43 milligrams cholesterol; 46 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 90 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Recipes for Health: Pear Cranberry Galette — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I used Bartlett pears for this juicy galette, but pretty much any variety will work, as long as they’re not overly ripe.

1 dessert galette pastry (1/2 recipe)

2/3 cup dried cranberries

2 pounds pears, ripe but not too soft, peeled, cored and sliced (about 8 to 12 wedges per pear, depending on the size; if the pears are very large, cut the slices into 2 pieces at the middle)

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons mild honey, like clover

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup (25 grams) almond powder

1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon milk, for egg wash

1 tablespoon raw brown sugar

1. Remove the pastry from the freezer and place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Leave to thaw while you prepare the fruit, but don’t keep it out of the freezer for too long. It’s easiest to handle if it’s cold and will thaw quickly. You just want it soft enough so that you can manipulate it.

2. Soak the cranberries for 5 minutes in hot water. Drain and dry on paper towels. Toss the sliced pears with the lemon juice in a large bowl, then add the dried cranberries, honey, cinnamon and vanilla and gently toss together.

3. Sprinkle the almond powder over the pastry, leaving a 2- to 3-inch border all around. Place the fruit on top. Fold the edges of the dough in over the fruit, pleating the edges as you work your way around the fruit to form a free-form tart that is roughly 9 inches in diameter. Place in the freezer on the baking sheet for 45 minutes to an hour. This helps the galette maintain its shape.

4. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the galette from the freezer. Brush the exposed edge of the pastry with the egg wash. Sprinkle the sugar over the fruit and the crust. Place in the oven and bake 50 to 60 minutes, until the fruit is bubbly and the juice is running out and caramelizing on the parchment. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

Yield: 1 9-inch galette, serving 8

Advance preparation: You can assemble this through Step 3 and freeze it for up to a month. Once it is frozen, double-wrap it in plastic. You can also freeze the galette after baking. Thaw and warm in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes to recrisp the crust.

Nutritional information per serving: 246 calories; 6 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 43 milligrams cholesterol; 46 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 90 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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