Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who was criticized for remaining on vacation during much of the SARS outbreak in Toronto last month, has been photographed through the week eating beef.
President Vladimir V. Putin enraged Russians by remaining on vacation in Sochi immediately after the accident, and only traveling to the Kursk's base at Vidyayevo, near Murmansk, days afterward.
At the time of his departure, he remained on vacation without a new assignment.
In a measure of how little the latest alerts raised concern in Europe, the European Union's counterterrorism director, Gijs de Vries, remained on vacation.
After meeting President Obama the previous Friday, the pope arrived on Monday in northwest Italy, where he is scheduled to remain on vacation until July 29.
Mr. Putin, who remained on vacation at a Black Sea resort during most of the frantic rescue operation, did not appear in public today.
President Obama returned to the White House on Thursday to resume efforts to end a partisan impasse on a fiscal deal without his wife and daughters, who remain on vacation in Hawaii.
The growing prospect that the crew may be beyond rescue, making the sinking of the Kursk Russia's worst peacetime naval disaster, generated a wave of recriminations through the Russian news media, much of it aimed at the military, but also at President Vladimir V. Putin, who remained on vacation at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
He did not lift a finger, preferring to remain on vacation rather than respond to Richard Clarke's desperate calls for a meeting of "Principals" in national security.
