FRANCE: Determined to get a decent night's sleep, French President Jacques Chirac ordered his Airbus pilot to perform a 2,000-km (1,250-mile) time-killing tour of France before heading to Russia to see Mr Vladimir Putin last week.
The weekly Investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaine said Chirac took off shortly before midnight from Paris but did not want to turn up in Russia three-and-a-half hours later, as would have happened had the plane flown directly to its destination.
Instead of going east, Chirac got the pilot to fly north to Jersey, south along France's Atlantic coast, then over the Pyrenees and back up to his departure point in Paris, before heading to Russia.
Chirac met the Russian president and German Chancellor Mr Gerhard Schröder in Sochi, south-west of Moscow on Monday of last week. The weekly said it gleaned its tale of Chirac's itinerary from a member of the unit that handles air transport logistics. Journalists who left Paris after Chirac say they landed in Russia more than two hours before him. Never scared to take a crack at Chirac, the Canard presented a graphic of the high-flying detour, replete with cartoon sketches of Chirac swigging beer in his pyjamas before settling into bed.