French President Nicolas Sarkozy broke from his vacation in this leafy lakeside town to deflect criticism about his allegedly lavish US summer break and a controversial arms deal with Libya.
After avoiding a platoon of French reporters for days, a tanned and smiling Sarkozy emerged in front of Wolfeboro's town hall to fend off accusations of a link between a major arms deal struck by European aerospace giant EADS with Libya, and an affair involving foreign medics jailed there.
The recent release by Libya of the six medics, who were imprisoned on charges of infecting hundreds of children with the AIDS virus, was partly brokered by Sarkozy's wife Cecilia.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin confirmed the US$405 million arms deal on Friday and the opposition Socialist Party quickly demanded a parliamentary enquiry to decide if France offered the contracts to Libya to obtain the medics' freedom.
"It was totally transparent," Sarkozy said of the contracts. "EADS has been discussing them, with full authorizations, for 18 months."
"What do they criticize me for? Getting contracts? Creating jobs for French workers?" he said.
Refusing to answer questions in English -- "My English is so bad," he told one non French-speaking reporter -- Sarkozy would not confirm he might meet US President George W. Bush at the Bush vacation home in Maine.
He rebuffed criticism of his stay at an allegedly US$20,000-a-week vacation mansion on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee.
"I have friends who have vacationed here for years. They rented a house and they invited us," he said. "I came on a regular flight. My family came on a regular flight."
"Nine-hundred thousand French go to the United States every year, and I am just one of them," he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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