Now Mr Sarkozy faces the launch of a 150-page comic book of his life, depicting him as a tracksuit-clad exercise freak obsessed with his TV ratings. La Face Karchée de Sarkozy, published next week, takes its title from Mr Sarkozy's comments at a troubled housing estate during the Paris riots last year, when he vowed that "the louts will disappear" and the suburbs would be cleaned with a Kärcher, a brand of power-hose.
Mr Sarkozy is the first French politician to be turned into a comic strip. The authors, a journalist, lawyer and cartoonist, described it as a "comic book investigation" based on documents and interviews, although Mr Sarkozy, currently at the top of the opinion polls, did not cooperate.

The story starts in 2098 when a student writes a thesis on the "fascinating political phenomenon" of Sarkozyism. From his ambitious teenage years to his "vow to crush all opposition" on the right, his life is retraced. At one point he is depicted as a Napoleonic despot in crown and robes standing on a chair and holding court as friends in the media serve as his generals.

"It's sometimes dark, often funny and all true," said the left-leaning Libération.

The overflights began in early morning, concentrated over the capital's impoverished Shiite southern suburbs that were devastated by Israel's summer war with Hezbollah, and lasted around 45 minutes.



In the south, where the French-commanded peacekeeping force is policing the ceasefire resolution that came into force on August 14, the warplanes also carried out low-altitude mock raids, police said.

A number of aircraft also made sonic booms over the southern port city of Tyre, an AFP correspondent reported.

An Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv declined to comment on the continuing overflights. "We do not elaborate on operational activity," he said.

A statement released in the name of the UN special envoy condemned the persistent violations of Lebanese air space.

"Geir Pedersen expresses his serious concern at the continuing overflights by Israel which constitute a breach of Lebanese sovereignty and specifically of Security Council Resolution 1701," it said.

"The UN Interim Force in Lebanon has reported some eight air violations over the past two days which they have observed over their area of operation."

France too spoke out against the overflights.

"We consider them contrary to the spirit and the letter of Resolution 1701," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz has insisted that the overflights will continue until the Shiite militants of Hezbollah halt what he says is arrant arms smuggling in defiance of the UN truce resolution.

That row became very public on Monday with the publication of a plea from French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie against diluting NATO's role into that of a global partnership engaged in ill-defined missions.

On the same day US ambassador to NATO, Victoria Nuland voiced much wider aspirations for the military alliance.



"We want NATO to be able to demonstrate that we have an alliance that is taking on global responsibilities, that it increasingly has the global capabilities to meet those challenges and is doing it in concert with global partners," Nuland said.

The French view was encapsulated in a bylined opinion piece by Alliot-Marie published in the French daily Le Figaro.

"Nowadays some people talk of the possibilities to extend NATO missions in two directions," she wrote, "one is geographic, developing new partnerships with countries, the other functional, operating in the civilian domain, notably in the reconstruction of countries emerging from crisis".

For Alliot-Marie, whose article was entitled "NATO should remain a Euro-Atlantic organisation," the contribution of countries such as Australia and Japan in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) under NATO command in Afghanistan should be recognised.

But that "should not change the fundamental nature of NATO which should be... a Euro-Atlantic military alliance".

The development of global partners for NATO will "dilute the natural solidarity between Europeans and North Americans," and give the impression of "a campaign ... of the West against those who don't share its views".

Her views contrast sharply with those held in Washington which wishes to hand NATO reconstruction missions in Afghanistan. This tactic, the French minister said, meant replacing "organisations which are competent to carry them out, in particular the UN and the European Union".

"To transform NATO into an organisation whose mission is to reconstruct economies and democracies all at once does not correspond to its legitimacy or its means," she added.

This year ISAF forces have been involved in fierce fighting with Taliban militiamen in Afghanistan, particularly in the south of the country. NATO has called on its allies to provide reinforcements, to relieve British, Canadian and Dutch troops, but without much success due to operations elsewhere.

US NATO ambassador Nuland, in her comments just hours after the publication of the Figaro article, opined that between now and the November 28-29 summit in Riga "allies are going to spend a lot of time on wrestling and mud wrestling about the words that we use in our NATO documents and communiques".

"This is going to be a tense conversation," Nuland warned, recognising the differing opinions between the United States and some of its European allies, which she did not name.

"I would argue that the reality of what's going on in NATO is outstripping our ability to encapsulate in the NATO doctrine and theory here in NATO headquarters," she continued, during a conference at the Centre for European

Policy Studies.

The situation on the ground is "outstripping theory most importantly where it counts, in Afghanistan", said Nuland, describing the situation there as NATO's most challenging and most important undertaking.

"So as we struggle at NATO headquarters to reflect in communique language our global partnership ideas, remember that global partnership is a reality and out-of-area is a reality today in Afghanistan."

Mr Lebrot told the New York Times that one employee was discovered to have been a friend of Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who tried to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001. Reid is now serving a life sentence in the US.

Sixty-eight more people had been investigated and cleared, Mr Lebrot added. Around a dozen other workers had been notified that they were considered security risks, but remained in their jobs pending questioning.

The unions representing them said some were still cleaning planes and handling baggage.

French authorities have declined to say what the evidence against the workers is, claiming it would compromise security sources, the New York Times reported.

Unions have filed a discrimination lawsuit over the revocations, and at least 10 airport workers who lost their jobs have sued separately to regain their security clearance.

Muslim organisations and human rights groups have accused the authorities of waging an anti-Muslim campaign in a presidential election year.

The crackdown on airport security was apparently stepped up after the publication of a book by the politician Philippe de Villiers in May.

He alleged that clandestine prayer rooms had been set up beneath airport runways and Islamists were poised to put the premises under Muslim Sharia law.

The politician, who opposes Muslim immigration, claimed to have based the book - called The Mosques of Roissy - on intelligence reports.

Last month, the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said 43 baggage handlers at Charles de Gaulle airport had had their security passes withdrawn. He said he "cannot accept that people with radical practices" work in an airport, adding that it was his "duty to ensure that [workers] do not have any kind of links with radical organisations".

Mr Sarkozy said officials had also closed "seven Islamist, clandestine and illegal prayer rooms" at Charles de Gaulle and at the second Paris airport, Orly.

They carried the study out on mice fed on a diet so high in saturated fats that it was equivalent to eating a cream cake with every meal. Mice on the fatty diet became obese, suffered health disorders such as liver and heart disease and died significantly earlier than mice on normal diets.

But when a second group of mice on the high-fat diet were given resveratrol, a plant extract found in grapes, their health and longevity were almost indistinguishable from normal mice, although they still became obese.

Resveratrol has already been identified as the chemical behind the so-called French Paradox, the phenomenon in which French people have low rates of heart disease even though their diet is traditionally high in meat, cheese and bread.

"What we really would like to be the final answer, and can't quite say yet, is that resveratrol will mimic the effects of calorie restriction - that it's going to trick your body into thinking that you're eating less calories by activating the same enzymes that get activated if you did eat less calories," said Joseph Baur of the team of Harvard.

For 70 years, scientists have shown that animals can live longer if fed fewer calories.