The Swedish national hockey team failed to win the title of Olympic champion for the second time in a row. In the quarter finals of the 2010 Games in Vancouver, the Swedes lost to the Slovak team with a score of 3:4, the official website of the Olympics reports. Thus, both semi-final pairs were determined in the Olympic tournament: USA - Finland and Canada - Slovakia.

for the position of head coach of the Russian national football team Guus Hiddink Seven or eight people are vying , said the President of the Russian Football Union Sergei Fursenko . He is quoted by RIA Novosti . “The process of searching for a coach is underway, and an appropriate candidate is being selected. There are seven or eight possible candidates,” Fursenko said.

Christie's auction house managed to reach an agreement with the former owners of Titian's painting "Salome with the Head of John the Baptist", who lost millions of dollars due to a mistake made by the house's experts, The Daily Telegraph reports . Experts made a mistake in the attribution of the painting when it was sold in 1994, as a result of which the painting was sold much cheaper than its true value.

Rospatent revoked the protection of the trademark “Cod Liver,” the rights to which belonged to the state. Kommersant writes that the state company Soyuzplodoimport, which owns the main Soviet brands, may lose other brands, the licensed production of which has not yet been established. Soyuzplodoimport registered the “Cod Liver” mark in 2003, but never entered into any agreements with enterprises that continue to produce these canned foods.

On February 24, Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana appealed to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with a request to intervene in the country's conflict with Great Britain over Falkland Islands oil. reports this AFP . According to the news agency, the head of the Argentine Foreign Ministry said that the department appealed to the UN Secretary General with a request to force Great Britain to refrain from unilateral actions.

25.02.2010, 18:26:34 version Print | PDA/PDA Screenshot of Alpha Protocol Alpha Protocol game will be released at the end of May Video Trailers for the game Alpha Protocol 05.28.2009Sega will release a new RPG in the spring of 2010 Alpha Protocol will hit European stores on May 28, 2010, Eurogamer reports. The North American release of the project will take place on June 1st. Initially, the game, which is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment, was supposed to be released in February 2009.

The leader of the Party of Regions of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, read out the presidential oath on February 25, 2010 and signed its text. Before the oath of office, the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Shapoval, announced the results of the last elections in Ukraine, reports Korrespondent.net . Yanukovych read the text of the oath, placing his right hand on the Constitution of Ukraine and the Gospel.

Gazprom may get rid of its stake in the country's largest independent gas producer Novatek. newspaper writes about this The Vedomosti . Gazprom now owns 19.4 percent of Novatek shares. The concern can exchange part of its stake in this company for 51 percent of the shares of Sibneftegaz, which are controlled by Gazprombank, and then merge it with Northgas and Purgaz.

The Brazilian Catholic Church has filed a lawsuit against Columbia Pictures over the depiction of the destruction of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro in the disaster film "2012." reports this AFP .

The Investigation Department of the Internal Affairs Directorate for the Khabarovsk Territory opened criminal cases into the theft of funds from shareholders in housing construction in Khabarovsk. reports this RIA Novosti with reference to the management.

The number of inspections carried out by internal affairs bodies in small and medium-sized businesses has decreased by a quarter. This was stated by the First Deputy Head of the Department for the Protection of Public Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Police Major General Andrei Lapin, Interfax reports .

German alpine skier Victoria Rebensburg won gold at the 2010 Olympic Games in the giant slalom discipline. Rebensburg, with a total of two minutes and 27.11 seconds, brought her country its eighth gold medal at the 2010 Olympics. Tina Maze from Slovenia took second place, losing 0.04 seconds to the winner. The bronze medal was won by the Austrian representative Elisabeth Hergl, who was in the lead after the first attempt. Gergl lost to Rebensburg by 0.14 seconds.

The standard bearer of the Russian team at the closing ceremony of the 2010 Olympics will be speed skater Ivan Skobrev, RIA Novosti reports . According to Skobrev, he was informed “from the team headquarters” that he would be the one to carry the flag of the Russian team. At the Games in Vancouver, the speed skater won two medals - silver and bronze. Skobrev won the silver award at a distance of 10,000 meters, and the bronze award at a distance of 5,000 meters.

German Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor Guido Westerwelle announced the launch of the "German - Language of Ideas" ("Deutsch - Sprache der Ideen") campaign , aimed at popularizing the German language abroad and strengthening its international status, Stern reports. The German authorities are concerned about the fact that since 2005 the number of foreigners studying German has decreased by 2.5 million people: from 17 million to 14.5 million.

The Lower Merion school district, located in southeastern Pennsylvania, is one of the richest in the United States, and every high school student there receives a MacBook laptop. It would seem that there are all the signs of prosperity and progress, but they say that the district administration is trampling on the boundaries of the privacy of students and using computers, or rather, web cameras installed on them, for surveillance.