The executives were accused of being part of an operation which mislabelled honey and tainted it with antibiotics in an attempt to avoid import duties.

The case is part of a crackdown on illegal imports of substandard and counterfeit products.

Officials say it is the biggest food smuggling case in US history.

Ten of the suspects were senior executives at Alfred L Wolff, a German company, which allegedly bought cheap Chinese honey and, en route to the US, filtered out “pollen and other trace elements that could indicate that the honey originated from China”, according to the charge sheet.

An interim report by the commission - the EU’s executive arm - says the French policy does not put enough emphasis on the individual circumstances of Roma facing expulsion.

France has expelled nearly 1,000 Roma to Romania and Bulgaria from illegal camps since July.

The crackdown is highly controversial.

Police officers said the bomber was among the 450-strong crowd and had detonated the device on reaching the main square in the city on Friday.

The explosion triggering chaotic scenes, with some people set on fire as others fled or lay on the ground to avoid ongoing gunfire.

The bomb appeared to target the rally being held for al-Quds day, an international event held every year by the Shia community in opposition to Israel’s control of Jerusalem and to show solidarity with Palestinian Muslims.

The announcement by the Bangkok Criminal Court is the latest blow to Washington, which had expected Viktor Bout’s rapid extradition after a Thai appeals court gave its approval on Aug. 20.

Bout, 43, is reputed to be one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers

This is risky for Mr. Sarkozy, who is already facing low approval ratings— between a quarter and a third of French adults approve of his policies, according to various recent opinion polls—less than two years from the next presidential election. Past attempts to shake up France’s generous welfare system have led to mass protests and forced the government to back down.

And indeed, the latest update of the scariest jobs chart ever from Calculated Risk—which shows how deep these jobs losses are compared to past recessions—shows this comeback still isn’t anything like past comebacks, and it will be ages before we get back to even.

The U.S. economy has shed jobs for three straight months, though the losses in August were about half the 110,000 predicted by economists in a Dow Jones Newswires survey.

The unemployment rate, calculated using a separate household survey, edged up to 9.6%, as expected, after holding at 9.5% for previous two months.

The president’s economic team has met frequently in recent days to list ways to bolster the struggling recovery, according to government officials.

On the list of possible actions: additional tax cuts for small businesses beyond those included in a $30 billion small-business lending bill before the Senate. It’s not clear what those tax breaks would target or how much they might cost in lost revenue to the government.

Also in the mix: a possible payroll tax cut for businesses and individuals, as well as other business tax breaks, according to people familiar with the discussions. Currently, income taxes are scheduled to rise with the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts at the end of this year.

According to the Egyptian media, Mubarak will be giving a speech aiming to explain Egypt’s interest, along with all other Arab countries from the area, in promoting serious peace talks between the Arabs and Israelis. The prospect of Mr. Mubarak sitting down to broker or somehow facilitate peace between the Arabs living in Gaza and the state of Israel is laughable. Despite the signed peace treaty of 1979 between Egypt and Israel, during his twenty-nine years ruling Egypt, Mr. Mubarak has never once paid a visit to his neighbor, Israel, because he does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of their country.

The OAG lodged a petition with the Criminal Court yesterday in which it said it had decided to drop the charges against the Russian to help expedite the extradition ordered by the Court of Appeal.

The request to withdraw the charges was submitted by Sopon Kasempibulchai, a public prosecutor attached to the OAG’s international affairs office.

National statistics office INSEE said the quarterly jobless rate in all of France, including overseas territories, declined to 9.7 per cent in the second quarter from an unrevised 9.9 per cent in the first quarter.

Coming ahead of nationwide protests next week over the government’s plans to reform its heavily-indebted pay-as-you-go pension system, the data offered some hope of a boost in consumer confidence that may help to calm current anxieties.

Nkoana-Mashabane told journalists in Cape Town that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was “not impressed” with any activity that undermines efforts to bring constitutional order to Madagascar.

“I don’t think judgements passed in absentia help in resolving problems in Madagascar,” she said.

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.