"Nabil Ali's tuktuk is his pride and joy. The 21-year-old polishes the hub cabs to within an inch of their life and he carries three bottles of dashboard polish on board, in case he needs to spruce up the tuktuk between passengers.
No attention to detail is spared - the windscreen wipers have silver skulls on each blade and to really make his vehicle stand out, he fitted it with an extra-large double exhaust pipe - in pink.
Nabil paid about $800 (£500; 620 euro) for the extras but for him, it is money well-spent. It means more people want to ride with him rather than his fellow tuktuk drivers in Egypt. And that's important. The past year or so - especially during the revolution - has been tough."

Read more

"AS PART of its negotiations with the United States, Israel promised to freeze “all settlement activity” (including natural growth of settlements), a pledge later enshrined in the “road map” agreed upon in 2003. Later, Israel argued that it had arranged a private deal with the Bush administration, in exchange for its withdrawal from Gaza, to allow settlement growth within the “construction line” of such settlements—in other words, to build up but not out.

Daniel C. Kurtzer, then the American ambassador to Israel, denies discussions between the United States and Israel resulted in what he called “an implementable understanding.” But I have a vivid memory of a conversation with him in his ambassadorial office in which an exasperated Kurtzer complained that he had been unable to get any satellite photos or detailed maps from the Israeli government or army showing where these construction lines were."

Read more