In Paris, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy while the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, was expected in Berlin to talk with Chancellor Angela Merkel. The encounter in the German capital came just 24 hours after Mr. Abbas, the leader of the Western-backed Fatah movement which holds sway in the West Bank, joined forces with Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, the Islamist group that many in the West call terrorists.
Mr. Netanyahu, in London to meet Prime Minister David Cameron, labeled the unity deal a “tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism,” illustrating the gulf between Palestinian and Israeli strategies and perceptions. Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction and Israel, like the United States and the European Union, classifies the group as a terrorist organization and refuses any dealings with it.
While Mr. Abbas seemed certain to laud the advantages of Palestinian unity, European aversion to Hamas may well make Mr. Netanyahu’s mission easier, analysts in Paris said, though many European countries, including France, have been largely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
The European diplomacy on Thursday came under the looming shadow of several other events scheduled for later this year.
Later this month, Mr. Netanyahu is to meet President Obama at a time when the American president is buoyed by the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and has emerged as a sponsor of the Arab pro-democracy movements sweeping the region from Libya to Syria to Yemen One result of the changes has been the readiness of the new Egyptian leadership that replaced the ousted Hosni Mubarak to sponsor the Palestinian unity pact.
Beyond that, in September, the United Nations is to consider the fraught issue of declaring recognition of a Palestinian state — a prospect that has galvanized both sides.
During a visit to Berlin in April by Mr. Netanyahu, Chancellor Merkel said she would urge Mr. Abbas not to press for a United Nations declaration of statehood, according to German news reports at the time. In public, she said: “We support a two-state solution, a Jewish state and a Palestinian state” and German diplomats said Berlin wanted a negotiated settlement.
The French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppé, said his government may seek to press Mr. Netanyahu to consider a restarted peace initiative, according to French news reports. “How much will we be able to get him to evolve? You know the man, his character, his determination,” Mr. Juppé said of Mr. Netanyahu. “Our idea is to try a last resort initiative, so that, in the month of September, when the question of recognition is raised, we can say we tried everything.”
While Israel refuses to deal with Hamas, Mr. Abbas says the Palestinians cannot return to peace talks without a halt to all settlement activity by Israel.
posted October 9th 2008 10:32AM 
Late last month, Eye-Fi announced that its wares were finally supporting photo uploads to Apple's MobileMe and the AdoramaPix service, and now, we're seeing that its WiFi-enabled SD cards have a few more tricks up their sleeves. An Eye-Fi Manager update has opened up support for RSS feeds along with Twitter integration, enabling users to let their posse know when they've uploaded new photos for perusal. Additionally, the RSS support allows customers to "publish photos in a live real-time feed via RSS to the aggregator of their choice." Hope you're not a fan of post-processing. 