Protests Erupt After Egypt’s Leader Seizes New Power

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptians in central Cairo ran from tear gas during clashes with the police on Friday. Protesters took to the streets in several cities. More Photos »

CAIRO — Protests erupted across Egypt on Friday, as opponents of President Mohamed Morsi clashed with his supporters over a presidential edict that gave him unchecked authority and polarized an already divided nation while raising a specter, the president’s critics charged, of a return to autocracy.  

In an echo of the uprising 22 months ago, thousands of protesters chanted for the downfall of Mr. Morsi’s government in Cairo, while others ransacked the offices of the president’s former party in Suez, Alexandria and other cities.

Mr. Morsi spoke to his supporters in front of the presidential palace here, imploring the public to trust his intentions as he cast himself as a protector of the revolution and a fledgling democracy.

In a speech that was by turns defensive and conciliatory, he ultimately gave no ground to the critics who now were describing him as a pharaoh, in another echo of the insult once reserved for the deposed president, Hosni Mubarak.

“God’s will and elections made me the captain of this ship,” Mr. Morsi said.

The battles that raged on Friday — over power, legitimacy and the mantle of the revolution — posed a sharp challenge not only to Mr. Morsi but also to his opponents, members of secular, leftist and liberal groups whose crippling divisions have stifled their agenda and left them unable to confront the more popular Islamist movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The crisis over his power grab came just days after the Islamist leader won international praise for his pragmatism, including from the United States, for brokering a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.

On Friday, the State Department expressed muted concern over Mr. Morsi’s decision. “One of the aspirations of the revolution was to ensure that power would not be overly concentrated in the hands of any one person or institution,” said the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland.

She said, “The current constitutional vacuum in Egypt can only be resolved by the adoption of a constitution that includes checks and balances, and respects fundamental freedoms, individual rights and the rule of law consistent with Egypt’s international commitments.”

But the White House was notably silent after it had earlier this week extolled the emerging relationship between President Obama and Mr. Morsi and credited a series of telephone calls between the two men with helping to mediate the cease-fire in Gaza.

For Mr. Morsi, who seemed to be saying to the nation that it needed to surrender the last checks on his power in order to save democracy from Mubarak-era judges, the challenge was to convince Egyptians that the ends justified his means.

But even as he tried, thousands of protesters marched to condemn his decision. Clashes broke out between the president’s supporters and his critics, and near Tahrir Square, the riot police fired tear gas and bird shot as protesters hurled stones and set fires.

Since Thursday, when Mr. Morsi issued the decree, the president and his supporters have argued that he acted precisely to gain the power to address the complaints of his critics, including the families of protesters killed during the uprising and its aftermath.

By placing his decisions above judicial review, the decree enabled him to replace a public prosecutor who had failed to win convictions against senior officers implicated in the killings of protesters.

The president and his supporters also argued that the decree insulated the Constituent Assembly, which is drafting the constitution, from meddling by Mubarak-era judges.

Since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, courts have dissolved Parliament, kept a Mubarak loyalist as top prosecutor and disbanded the first Assembly.

But by ending legal appeals, the decree also removed a safety valve for critics who say the Islamist majority is dominating the drafting of the constitution.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo, and Helene Cooper from Washington.

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Ex-boxer 'Macho' Camacho dies after shooting

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Hector "Macho" Camacho, a Puerto Rican boxer known for skill and flamboyance in the ring as well as for a messy personal life and run-ins with the police, was declared dead on Saturday, four days after being shot in the face. He was 50.

Shot while sitting in a parked car outside a bar Tuesday with a friend in the city of Bayamon, he was declared dead at the Centro Medico trauma center in San Juan. The friend, 49-year-old Adrian Mojica Moreno, died at the scene of the shooting. Police said Mojica had nine small bags of cocaine in his pocket and a 10th bag was found open in the car.

Originally from Bayamon, just outside San Juan, Camacho was long regarded as a flashy if volatile talent, a skilled boxer who was perhaps overshadowed by his longtime foil, Mexican superstar Julio Cesar Chavez, who would beat him in a long-awaited showdown in Las Vegas in 1992.

Camacho fought professionally for three decades, from his humble debut against David Brown at New York's Felt Forum in 1980 to an equally forgettable swansong against Sal Duran in Kissimmee, Florida, in 2010.

In between, he fought some of the biggest stars spanning two eras, including Sugar Ray Leonard, Felix Trinidad, Oscar De La Hoya and Roberto Duran.

"This is something I've done all my life, you know?" Camacho told The Associated Press after a workout in 2010. "A couple years back, when I was doing it, I was still enjoying it. The competition, to see myself perform. I know I'm at the age that some people can't do this no more."

Camacho's family moved to New York when he was young and he grew up in Spanish Harlem, which at the time was rife with crime. Camacho landed in jail as a teenager before turning to boxing, which for many kids in his neighborhood provided an outlet for their aggression.

Former featherweight champion Juan Laporte, a friend since childhood, described Camacho as "like a little brother who was always getting into trouble," but otherwise combined a friendly nature with a powerful jab.

"He's a good human being, a good hearted person," Laporte said as he waited with other friends and members of the boxer's family outside the hospital in San Juan after the shooting. "A lot of people think of him as a cocky person but that was his motto ... inside he was just a kid looking for something."

Laporte lamented that Camacho never found a mentor outside the boxing ring.

"The people around him didn't have the guts or strength to lead him in the right direction," Laporte said. "There was no one strong enough to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him how to do it."

Drug, alcohol and other problems trailed Camacho after the prime of his boxing career. He was sentenced in 2007 to seven years in prison for the burglary of a computer store in Mississippi. While arresting him on the burglary charge in January 2005, police also found the drug ecstasy.

A judge eventually suspended all but one year of the sentence and gave Camacho probation. He wound up serving two weeks in jail, though, after violating that probation.

Camacho's former wife, Amy, obtained a restraining order against him in 1998, alleging he threatened her and one of their children. The couple, who had two children at the time, later divorced.

He divided his time between Puerto Rico and Florida in recent years, appearing on Spanish-language television as well as on a reality show called "Es Macho Time!" on YouTube.

Inside the boxing ring, Camacho flourished. He won three Golden Gloves titles as an amateur, and after turning pro, he quickly became a contender with an all-action style reminiscent of other Puerto Rican fighters.

Long promoted by Don King, Camacho won his first world title by beating Rafael Limon in a super-featherweight bout in Puerto Rico on Aug. 7, 1983. He moved up in weight two years later to capture a lightweight title by defeating Jose Luis Ramirez, and successfully defended the belt against fellow countryman Edwin Rosario.

The Rosario fight, in which the victorious Camacho still took a savage beating, persuaded him to scale back his ultra-aggressive style in favor of a more cerebral, defensive approach.

The change in style was a big reason that Camacho, at the time 38-0, lost a close split decision to Greg Haugen at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas in 1991.

Camacho won the rematch to set up his signature fight against Chavez, this time at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. Camacho was roundly criticized for his lack of action, and the Mexican champion won a lopsided unanimous decision to retain the lightweight title.

It was at that point that Camacho became the name opponent for other rising contenders, rather than the headliner fighting for his own glory.

He lost a unanimous decision to another young Puerto Rican fighter, Trinidad, and was soundly defeated by De La Hoya. In 1997, Camacho ended Leonard's final comeback with a fifth-round knockout. It was Camacho's last big victory even though he boxed for another decade.

"Hector was a fighter who brought a lot of excitement to boxing," said Ed Brophy, executive director of International the Boxing Hall of Fame. "He was a good champion. Roberto Duran is kind of in a class of his own, but Hector surely was an exciting fighter that gave his all to the sport."

The fighter's last title bout came in 1997 against welterweight champion Oscar De La Hoya, who won by unanimous decision. Camacho's last fight was his defeat by Duran in May 2010. He had a career record of 79-6-3.

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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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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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The Lede Blog: Vignettes of Black Friday

With promotions, discounts and doorbusters already well under way on Thanksgiving Day itself, many big-box retailers are making Black Friday stretch longer than ever. The Lede is checking out the mood of American consumers in occasional vignettes Thursday and Friday as the economically critical holiday shopping season kicks off.

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Syrian Airstrike Severely Damages Hospital in Aleppo

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Airstrikes by the Syrian government damaged a hospital in the northern city of Aleppo early on Thursday and flattened a building next to it, killing at least 15 people and leaving as many as 40 missing in an attack that closed one of the city’s few functioning medical facilities, antigovernment activists said.

Video purporting to depict the aftermath showed the facade shorn off the first three stories of the hospital, with its name, Dar el-Shifa, in red letters on its tower. Beside it, another building was reduced to a two-story pile of rubble. People milled in the street, shouting “God is great.”

Among the 15 people confirmed dead were two hospital workers and two children, said Abu Louai al-Halabi, an activist in Aleppo, adding that up to 40 people were still believed to be trapped under the rubble. One man was pulled out alive several hours after the explosion, according to another video posted on the Internet by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

Rebels seized a military base in southeastern Syria, giving them control of a swath of oil-producing territory, and as tensions increased between anti-government fighters and Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria. In both areas, near the border with Iraq, activists said that fighters from Al Nusra Front for the People of the Levant, a jihadi group, were taking a prominent role among the opposition fighters.

The developments came a day after a well-known antigovernment activist was arrested during a bold protest that showed that the nonviolent opposition movement is still struggling to survive even as civil war deepens.

In the old market in central Damascus, the activist, Rima Dali raised a banner calling for “the end of all military operations” — an act of extraordinary defiance during a time of tight security and surveillance in the capital.

Ms. Dali and three other women stood in wedding dresses in the middle of the arched Souk al-Hamediya, usually bustling with spice sellers but apparently nearly empty. Photographs were posted on Ms. Dali’s and other activists’ sites.

“Syria is for all of us,” the banners read. “You are tired and we are tired. We want to live. Another solution ...” A video e-mailed by another activist appeared to show the women being led away by security forces.

Ms. Dali had been arrested in March for standing silently in front of Parliament with a sign reading, “Stop the killing” and calling for “Syria for all Syrians.”

Such acts of civil disobedience have been eclipsed as the Syrian protest movement grew into a civil war that has killed more than 30,000 people but beneath the surface tensions still ripple between rebel leaders and government opponents who favor a less violent approach.

Yet fighting raged in eastern Syria, threatening to engulf displaced people who fled there from other cities, and in the northeast, activists reported tensions between jihadist fighting groups and both pro- and anti-government Kurds. 

In Ras al-Ain, near the Turkish border in northeastern Syria, activists said clashes broke out between antigovernment battalions and Kurds from the P.Y.D., or Kurdish Democratic Union Party. That group has ties to a militant Kurdish group long backed by the Syrian government.

But the conflict was not a clear-cut one between government opponents and supporters, an Arab activist who fled to Turkey from Ras al-Ain said in a telephone interview.

The activist, who gave only his first name, Miral, for security reasons, said that the antigovernment battalions in the area did not represent the mainstream of the Syrian uprising, but were jihadist battalions, including from the Nusra Front. He said they enjoyed strong logistical support from similar groups inside Iraq as well as Arab tribes that straddle the border between the two countries.

He said there was little military reason for a heavy rebel presence in the area and suspected that the fighters simply wanted to establish a base in a remote area of Syria. Kurds and Arabs alike are eager to control the area if the government falls.

Christians and Kurds in the area, he said, had agreed to keep extremists out after some fighters burned shops selling alcohol.

“It’s a conspiracy against the Kurds,” said another Arab activist who fled to Turkey, Sobhi Dawood. He said he was concerned that all sides were building up arms supplies, threatening to fuel “a civil war in the town.”

Because some residents disagree with the goals of the jihadi battalions, he said, it has been hard to recruit locals to fight against the government. He said 62 recent recruits had quit, saying “We are not here to fight against our brothers.”

In Eastern Syria, a McClatchy correspondent in the province of Deir al-Zour reported that rebels appeared to control two of the three oil fields there, siphoning light  crude to burn for heat and to sell, and robbing the government of key revenues.

 In a video posted online, a fighter claimed that rebels had “liberated” an artillery base in Mayadeen, outside the province’s main city, capturing a tank and a tank carrier.

“I hope Assad’s booty and weapons and their money and their land will be ours, God willing,” he said, concluding with a reference to the prophet: “Our master is Muhammad, our commander forever.”

Hajj Abu Bakr, a local activist in Deir al-Zour reached through Skype, said that three battalions, including one from the Nusra Front, had taken part in seizing the artillery battalion.

He said that clashes in the area had continued for 22 days. He said government shelling had intensified after the artillery position was captured, and that a family of six had been killed. Many families from other provinces, such as Homs, are sheltering in the area and he said he was worried that more of the displaced would be injured.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

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Texans playing Lions for a spot in the playoffs

DETROIT (AP) — The Houston Texans have put themselves in a position to be the NFL's first team to seal a spot in the playoffs and to move a step closer toward earning home-field advantage in the AFC.

Houston (9-1) has won four straight and is 4-0 on the road this season, giving the Texans a great shot to be in consecutive postseasons for the first time.

"It shows the progress we've made," said tight end Owen Daniels, who has been with the franchise for seven of its 11 years of existence. "A few years ago, it took us until the end of the season to get that ninth win. We're at that ninth win already.

"We're trying to stack 'em up, but it's good that those are possibilities this early in the season."

Houston needs to win at Detroit (4-6) on Thursday and have a handful of teams lose, or tie, to earn a postseason bid by the end of the weekend.

The Lions, meanwhile, will have to pull off a string of upsets against a slew of good teams to reach the franchise's goal of making it to consecutive postseasons for the first time since the mid-1990s.

Just when it looked like Detroit was living up to the hype generated with last year's breakout season by winning three of four games to climb back .500 earlier this month, the Lions lost two in a row. And that has made last season seem more like an aberration than the start of successful run for a floundering franchise that hit rock bottom in 2008 as the NFL's first 0-16 team.

"We're not thinking about playoffs or anything else," Lions coach Jim Schwartz said. "We're thinking about the Houston Texans and that's plenty for us to think about right now."

Like all good teams, the Texans have proven they can win even when they don't play well.

Houston trailed the lowly Jacksonville Jaguars last week at home by 14 points in the fourth quarter before rallying for a 43-37 win in overtime.

The Texans' defense, which has been among the NFL's best all year, struggled until it made stops when they were needed. It didn't hurt that quarterback Matt Schaub and receiver Andre Johnson had career-best games.

Schaub connected on 43 passes for 527 yards passing, both totals tying for second most in league history, and Johnson set a personal best with 273 yards receiving. His franchise-record fifth touchdown pass was a screen to Johnson, who did the rest on a 48-yard score for the game-winner.

"You just never know in this league week to week what kind of game you're going to be in and we got caught in a shootout type of game with a lot of offense," Houston coach Gary Kubiak said. "We were fortunate enough to find a way to win."

Detroit did enough to lose 24-20 to the Green Bay Packers last week at home, where it had plenty of opportunities to get a much-needed win. The Lions' woes were made worse by a significant injury and distraction.

Left tackle Jeff Backus couldn't finish the first half because of a hamstring injury, which seemed to be in his right leg, and his 186-game starting streak that includes every game of his career is expected to end Thursday.

"It's hard to replace a rock that's been there for 12 years," said veteran center Dominic Raiola. "It's just different without him out there."

Detroit drafted Riley Reiff with the 23rd pick overall this year, planning to groom him as player to eventually replace Backus. The rookie might have to take on defensive end J.J. Watt, who ranks among NFL leaders with 11½ sacks and leads all defensive linemen in the league with 11 passes defended.

Houston, though, won't have to worry about No. 2 receiver Titus Young taking advantage of one-one-one coverage because the Lions announced Monday he would be inactive because of his "unacceptable" behavior during the game against the Packers.

"When you're a player, it's your job to make the team happy," Schwartz said. "It's not the team's job to make you happy."

Lions fans have not been happy when it comes to Thanksgiving Day results.

Detroit has lost a franchise-record eight straight on the holiday — by an average of three-plus touchdowns — and has only one victory in the last 11 games in its annual showcase after winning nine of 12 games from 1989-2000.

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Follow Larry Lage on Twitter: http://twitter.com/larrylage

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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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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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Fighting Continues as U.S. Seeks Truce in Gaza

JERUSALEM — American efforts to help negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militants in the week-old Gaza rocket battle faced a new obstacle on Wednesday when the first bus bombing in years traumatized Tel Aviv, raising the prospect of a new Israeli retaliation just as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was working to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting.

Mrs. Clinton, who rushed to the Middle East late Tuesday in an intensified diplomatic push, conferred with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem and then visited Palestinian leaders in the West Bank before heading to Cairo for talks with the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, whose good relationship with the Hamas government in Gaza has emerged as pivotal to the negotiations. Mrs. Clinton was engaged in intense talks with Mr. Morsi and his aides at Cairo’s presidential offices, officials there said.

The Tel Aviv bus bombing, which wounded at least 21 Israelis in an act that at least two Palestinian militant factions took responsibility for, resurrected fears in Israel of past Palestinian uprisings. It followed Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Wednesday on government buildings in Gaza and suspected smuggling tunnels under Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, among other targets.

The back-and-forth attacks emphasized the underlying problems in finding any lasting solution to a conflict rooted in deep-seated hostilities and mistrust between Israelis and Palestinians.

Egyptian and American officials in Cairo said negotiations over a cease-fire, which the Egyptian media and Hamas officials had said was on the verge of completion Tuesday, had been hung up on a number of issues, including Hamas’s demands for unfettered access to Gaza via the Rafah crossing 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.

Around noon on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas government media office, a bomb hit the house of Issam Da’alis, an adviser to Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister. The house had been evacuated. Earlier, a predawn airstrike near a mosque in the Jabaliya refugee camp killed a 30-year-old militant, a spokesman said, and F-16 bombs destroyed two houses in the central Gaza Strip.

There were 23 punishing strikes against the southern tunnels that are used to bring weapons as well as construction material, cars and other commercial goods into Gaza from the Sinai Peninsula.

Within Gaza City, Abu Khadra, the largest government office complex, was obliterated overnight. Businesses were also damaged, including two banks and a tourism office, and electricity cables fell on the ground and were covered in dust.

Separately, a bomb dropped from an F-16 created a 20-foot crater in an open area in a stretch of hotels occupied by foreign journalists. Several of the hotels had windows blown out by the strike around 2 a.m., but no one was reported injured. By morning, the hole in the ground had filled with sludgy water, apparently from a burst pipe, appearing almost like a forgotten swimming hole with walls made of sand and cracked cinder block.

Surveying damage near a government complex, Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said Gaza civilians were “in the eye of the storm,” and accused Israel of “inflicting pain and terror” on them. Israeli officials accuse Hamas of locating military sites in or close to civilian areas.

Overnight, as the conflict entered its eighth day, the Israeli military said in Twitter posts that “more than 100 terror sites were targeted, of which approximately 50 were underground rocket launchers.” The targets included the Ministry of Internal Security in Gaza, described as “one of Hamas’s main command and control centers.”

While there was no immediate or formal claim of responsibility for the bus bombing in Tel Aviv, a message on a Twitter account in the name of Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip, declared: “We told you IDF that our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are, ‘You opened the Gates of hell on Yourselves.’ ” The letters I.D.F. refer to the Israel Defense Forces.

On several occasions since the latest conflagration seized Gaza last week, militants have aimed rockets at Tel Aviv, but they have either fallen short, landed in the sea or been intercepted. Hundreds of rockets fired by militants in Gaza have struck other targets.

But the bombing seemed to be the first time in the current fighting that violence had spread directly onto the streets of Tel Aviv.

On Tuesday — the deadliest day of fighting in the conflict — Mrs. Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push for a truce.

Her visit to Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas placed her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands.

Before leaving for Cairo, Mrs. Clinton visited the West Bank to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, which is estranged from the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip and has increasingly strained ties with Israel over a contentious effort to upgrade the Palestinian status at the United Nations to that of a nonmember state. Mrs. Clinton is to meet again with Mr. Netanyahu before heading for Egypt, the reports said.

Mr. Abbas’s faction is favored by the United States, but it is not directly involved in either the fighting in Gaza or the effort in Cairo to end it. Like Israel and much of the West, the United States regards Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The Israelis, who have amassed tens of thousands of troops on the Gaza border and have threatened to invade for a second time in four years to end the rocket fire, never publicly backed the idea of a short break in fighting. They said they were open to a diplomatic accord but were looking for something more enduring.

“If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this problem through diplomatic means, we prefer that,” Mr. Netanyahu said before meeting with Mrs. Clinton at his office. “But if not, I’m sure you understand that Israel will have to take whatever actions necessary to defend its people.”

Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. 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 and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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