About 70 bottles lie mostly undamaged at 50 meters deep [roughly 164 feet] south of the Aland Islands.

“The first bottle was brought to the surface in mid-July,” Rainer Juslin, permanent secretary of the island’s ministry of education, science and culture, told CNN via telephone from Mariehamn, the capital of the Aland islands. “We believe this is the oldest champagne in the world.”

Juslin said that the cargo was aboard a ship believed to be heading from Copenhagen, Denmark, to St Petersburg, Russia, between 1800 and 1830. It could have possibly been sent by France’s King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court.

The German economy, which grew by 2.2% over the three months, helped to drive the zone’s overall growth.

The figures confirmed the eurozone is growing faster than the US economy, which grew by 0.4% during the quarter.

... No great insight was needed to realize that Cash for Clunkers would work a hardship on people unable to afford a new car. “All this program did for them,’’ I wrote last August, “was guarantee that used cars will become more expensive. Poorer drivers will be penalized to subsidize new cars for wealthier drivers.’’ Alec Gutierrez, a senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, predicted that used-car prices would surge by up to 10 percent. “It’s going to drive prices up on some of the most affordable vehicles we have on the road,’’ he told USA Today. In short, Washington spent nearly $3 billion to raise the price of mobility for drivers on a budget.

To be sure, Cash for Clunkers gave a powerful jolt to car sales in July and August of 2009. But it did so mostly by delaying sales that would otherwise have occurred in April, May, and June, or by accelerating those that would have taken place in September, October, or later. “Influencing the timing of consumers’ durable purchases is easy,’’ Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl wrote a few days ago in a blog post looking back at the program. “Creating new purchases is not.’’ Of the 700,000 cars purchased during the clunkers frenzy, the estimated net increase in sales was only 125,000. Each incremental sale thus ended up costing the taxpayers a profligate $24,000.

The money is by no means a sure thing, especially if the unpredictable North Korean dictator rejects any of the stringent oversight conditions attached to money from some of the important donors the U.N. hopes will chip in.

U.S. officials said Tuesday that the two former Detroiters arrested in Amsterdam after suspicious items were found in one of the men’s luggage were probably not on a test run for a future terrorist attack.

But to Yasser al Soofi, a 38-year-old Dearborn insurance agent, the damage has already been done to the two men; Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi, 48, of Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Hezam al Murisi, 37, of Memphis, Tenn. Both are former Detroiters.

Mr Jatuporn said the committee, chaired by Puea Thai MP Torpong Chaiyasarn, will meet Mr Bout in the prison about 10am, with permission from the Corrections Department.

Mr Sirichok’s real intentions in having a meeting with Mr Bout on April 15 were questionable and inappropriate and the Russian’s lawyer had probably not told the truth, he said.

On Tuesday, French Secretary of State for European Affairs Pierre Lellouche and Immigration and Integration Minister Eric Besson traveled to Brussels to defend France’s high-profile campaign of dismantling itinerants’ camps and expelling the Roma living in France without residence permits.j

... Nevertheless, Judge Roberts first stalled the case for nearly a full year, then tried to kill it outright. Mr. Walpin’s appeal, citing the judge’s inexcusably missed deadlines, asked that the case not only be reinstated, but also reassigned to a different judge.

“ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the ‘Reclaim the Dream’ rally and march,” began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.

The quarter-century that began shortly after Ronald Reagan’s election had been widely viewed as a period in which a free-market approach had proved its superiority to state direction of economies. In the -United States, cutting top income tax rates in half, reducing regulatory burdens, and spreading free trade seemed to have produced significant prosperity and remarkable stability. Between 1983 and 2008, gross domestic product grew at an average of 3.2 percent annually. Only once did output fall in a calendar year, and that was by just two-tenths of a percentage point. Inflation, interest rates, and unemployment were tame.1

The FDIC’s latest quarterly banking profile generally shows an industry nursing itself back to health. Total quarterly earnings of $21.6 billion compared to losses of $4.4 billion in the year-ago quarter. And the $40.3 billion that banks set aside for loan-losses is the lowest level since Q1 2008.

But the industry still has a long way to go, and one obvious statistic is that the total number of problem institutions hit a new high in Q2. When this starts coming down, that will be a reason to rejoice.

Sarkozy, who faces mass protests in coming days over his security stance and pension reform, has looked increasingly at odds with his troops since figures like Prime Minister Francois Fillon and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner voiced dissent.

The demolition of illegal camps and repatriation of Roma has drawn fire from the left-wing opposition, members of the Catholic church and rights groups including the United Nations human rights body.

“Somebody needs to send one great big message, bigger than the World Trade Center,” Cromitie, 44, of Newburgh, New York, told the informant, Shahed Hussain, 53, in an excerpt of a recording made while the two were returning from a Muslim conference in Philadelphia in November 2008.