The world's largest coffee chain Starbucks intends to begin test sales of alcohol at its retail locations, reports Reuters . Thus, Starbucks will try to explore the possibility of expansion into a new market. Beer and wine will appear on Starbucks menus at a select number of locations in Atlanta and Southern California by the end of 2012. The company will try to implement a similar practice in its coffee shops in Chicago.

In 2011, the Russian military-industrial complex did not fulfill 84 contracts concluded within the framework of the state defense order. This Interfax was stated by First Deputy Minister of Defense of Russia Alexander Sukhorukov, reports. The cost of unfulfilled contracts amounted to 42 billion rubles. Let us recall that the volume of state defense orders in 2011 amounted to about 580 billion rubles.

The assistant captain of the sunken liner Costa Concordia, Silvia Coronica, told the court that shortly before the accident, Francesco Schettino brought the ship's accountant and head waiter to the captain's bridge. According to her, quoted by The Daily Telegraph, those who came interfered with the captain’s control of the ship, distracting him with conversations.

A resident of Pyatigorsk won 67 million 599 thousand rubles in the Gosloto lottery, writes the local edition of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. The 68-year-old man, who declined to give his name for security reasons, shared the $135 million jackpot of the “6 out of 45” drawing with a Moscow resident (whether the Muscovite received the amount due to him was not specified). The winning combination turned out to be: 30, 2, 39, 45, 5, 29.

Google has asked the Russian companies Mail.Ru Group and Yandex not to use the names "Chrome" and "Chrome" in their browsers. The Vedomosti newspaper reported this with reference to representatives of the Internet giant in its issue dated January 24, 2012. The Google Chrome browser was released in September 2008. Along with it, the developers presented an open source version of the browser, called Chromium.

24.01.2012, 16:26:03 version Print | PDA/PDA Svetlana Peunova. Photo by RIA Novosti, Vitaly Belousov From the planet Nibiru Svetlana Peunova about politics, aliens and moral health Svetlana Peunova is an unusual and undoubtedly talented woman.

The Occupy This Album, recorded in support of the Occupy Wall Street protest, will go on sale in the spring of 2012 , Rolling Stone reports. The album will include compositions recorded by several dozen musicians of varying degrees of fame. In particular, the collection will include tracks prepared by Yoko Ono, Debbie Harry, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, Devo, Thievery Corporation, Mogwai and Ladytron.

The total cost of the 100 most expensive country houses for sale in the Moscow region at the end of 2011 exceeded $2.5 billion. According to the consulting company IntermarkSavills, the average square meter in these households is estimated at $18,920, and the average budget for a transaction with expensive suburban real estate reaches $25.5 million. Almost half of the objects from the Top-100 are located at a distance of less than 10 kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road.

The Swiss Petroplus group, Europe's largest independent oil refiner, will file for bankruptcy. This was reported in the company's official press release . For several weeks, Petroplus managers tried to negotiate with banks to unfreeze the credit line. The company's statement notes that negotiations were unsuccessful, and financial institutions demanded repayment of loans. The amount of debt is about $1.75 billion.

The nominations for the Academy Awards were announced in Los Angeles. The full list of films and filmmakers competing for Oscars can be found here .

24.01.2012, 19:02:57 version Print | PDA/PDA Rally of the "Left" in Berlin. Photo from linksfraktion.de Doesn't inspire confidence Members of the Bundestag were under surveillance by intelligence services German intelligence services admitted that they were spying on Bundestag deputies from the Left faction. It was no secret that they were being monitored, but it had not previously been revealed by whom exactly.

In Ukraine, it was proposed to introduce mandatory fingerprinting for certain categories of citizens. The corresponding bill, as reported by Ukrainian News, was registered in the Verkhovna Rada by a deputy from the BYuT-Batkivshchyna faction Oleg Tishchenko. In particular, it is proposed to take fingerprints from applicants for positions in state authorities or local government.

Russian nationalists agreed with the leadership of a number of regions of the Russian Federation to create an organization that will deal with resolving interethnic conflicts on the ground. reports this Interfax with reference to one of the leaders of the nationalist movement “Russians” Dmitry Demushkin . According to Demushkin, the idea of ​​​​creating the Interethnic Council of Interethnic Harmony (ICMC) was born during a trip of a group of nationalists to Chechnya in June 2011.

The deputy general director of Izhmash and three other employees of the defense enterprise were fired following an investigation into the incident with Kalashnikov assault rifles , which were taken from the plant to a landfill. As RIA Novosti reports , the head of Izhmash, Maxim Kuzyuk, told reporters about this. “In total, 4 people were fired, not counting the security guards,” the general director said.

The Omani government has sent a request to the British company BAE Systems to sell 12 Eurofighter Typhoon Tranche 3 fighters, Defense News reports. According to the British company, negotiations on the sale of equipment will be completed by the end of 2012, and deliveries of new aircraft will begin 36 months after signing the contract. The amount of the potential transaction has not been specified.