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Chechnya is to ban the sale of energy drinks such as Red Bull to under 18s, saying they are un-Islamic and dangerous, health officials said on Monday. The ban would be the latest restriction from authorities in Chechnya, where shops can only sell alcohol during a small morning time frame, restaurants and cafes are shut during the Ramadan fasting month, and women must wear headscarves in state buildings. "Energy drinks are comparable to beer," the deputy minister of health, Rukman Bartiyev, said, adding that they were harmful to health. The proposed ban was met with praise from the more conservative...

Twice on Monday (here and here), I took serious issue with the opening sentences of two Associated Press stories on Uncle Sam's fiscal situation. First, there was Martin Crutsinger's Sunday stinker, which described the level of spending in President Obama's yet to be released 2012 budget as "$3 trillion-plus," timed so that early morning news readers, radio listeners, and TV viewers would hear it. Too bad that the real number, which the AP reporter acknowledged later on Monday, is really $3.73 trillion. If you think that's bad, the administration projects that total spending this year during fiscal 2011 will be...

When 24-year-old Alex Stein is looking for a morning pick-me-up, he doesn't reach for a cup of cappuccino as his parents Len and Berdie did daily while he was growing up in Westchester County, New York - he grabs an energy drink. Coffee just doesn't cut it with him. "The taste is just so bitter - I couldn't have more than a couple of sips of it without needing to wash it down with water," he says. A recent report from Mintel, a market-research firm, predicts that Stein's generation may become coffee-resistant unless marketers find ways to make coffee drinks...

Auburn,CA. A Placer County man has been arrested after he broke into a shuttered bar, reopened the business and started selling drinks to unwitting customers, according to the Placer County Sheriff's department. The Placer County Sheriff's department arrested 29-year-old Travis Kevie of Newcastle after his 4-day stint as the barkeep of the historic Valencia Club in Penryn which had been shutdown for more than a year. Detective Jim Hudson became suspicious after reading about the Valencia Club's re-opening in an Auburn Journal newspaper article that featured a picture of Kevie and identified him as the club's new "owner/operator". Not only...

"It's funny what a wonderful gentility you get in the bar of a big hotel," Ernest Hemingway has Jake Barnes say to Brett Ashley in "The Sun Also Rises." They are sipping nice icy Martinis at the bar of the Palace Hotel in Madrid and marveling at the elegant professionalism of bartenders. "Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite any more," Brett says, and Jake agrees: "No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice." If only that were still true. Once upon a time, hotel bars set the standard for sophisticated drinking, with...

(CBS) A great summer party isn't just about the food. You've got to have great drinks, and you can't spend the whole party making them one at a time. On The Early Show Friday, Andrew Knowlton, restaurant editor of Bon Appetit magazine (www.bonappetit.com), mixed a bunch of delicious summer drinks perfect for a crowd. You can make plenty at once. They're easy to make, and retain their flavor even when made in large quantities. Oh, and they pack some punch, too! TERMINOLOGY LILLET: Aperitif wine produced from a blend of Bordeaux wines, enhanced by liqueurs. APEROL: An Italian aperitif...

LOS ANGELES An airliner bound for New York was delayed nearly an hour Friday after the crew discovered some passengers had carried on drinks purchased at the airport, and the pilot requested the plane be rechecked by security screeners. American Airlines Flight 40 was scheduled to leave for John F. Kennedy International Airport at 11 a.m. and was being boarded when the drinks were discovered. "The passengers were deplaned at the captain's request," said Nancy Castles, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles International Airport. "The liquids were surrendered or tossed or discarded. They conducted a security check of the plane, and...

Wendy's International Inc. (NYSE:WEN - news), the No. 3 U.S. hamburger chain, on Friday said it would remove the term "Biggie" from its french fries and drinks, switching to the well known terms small, medium and large.However, the new designations may confuse some diners who are used to such sizing at other restaurants.At rival McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD - news), the largest burger chain, a 32 ounce soft drink is designated a large. At Wendy's, a 32 ounce drink will now be called medium, instead of Biggie.Wendy's is also adding a 42-ounce soft drink -- the equivalent of 3-1/2 cans of...

Here is one question that probably won't cross the minds of Sasha Cohen, Irina Slutskaya and the other Olympic women figure skaters today, even if they fall: Why is ice slippery? The explanation once commonly dispensed in textbooks turns out to be wrong. And slipperiness is just one of the unanswered puzzles about ice. Besides the everyday ice that you slip on, there are about a dozen other forms, some of which experts suspect exist in the hot interior of Earth or on the surface of Pluto. [snip] Ice, said Robert M. Rosenberg, an emeritus professor of chemistry at Lawrence...

People are more likely to pour extra alcohol into short, wide glasses than tall, narrow glasses, a study says. The US researchers from Cornell University asked 198 students and 86 bartenders to pour a shot of alcohol. They found students poured 30% more into the short glasses, while bar workers faired only slightly better at 20%, the British Medical Journal said. The groups poured more than a standard shot measure into both types of glasses. Students also said they thought the tall glasses held more, suggesting they were trying to compensate for size when pouring into the short, wide glasses....

The world of bin Laden: no drinks, no gambling, no pictures of women By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 17/11/2005) Osama bin Laden wants the United States to convert to Islam, ditch its constitution, abolish banks, jail homosexuals and sign the Kyoto climate change treaty. The first complete collection of the Saudi's statements published today portrays a world in which Islam's enemies will take the first steps towards salvation by embracing the "religion of all the Prophets". Osama bin Laden Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden is billed as the first accurate compendium of the terrorist...

The owner of a Portland, Ore., grocery chain has removed Rockstar energy drinks from the shelves. The founder of Rockstar, Russell Goldencloud Weiner, is the son of Michael Savage, the perpetually enraged talk radio host. Brian Rohter, owner of New Seasons Market, told The Portland Oregonian that Mr. Savage did "his best to take apart the fabric of our society and to attack American values." In 2003, MSNBC fired Mr. Savage after he told a caller he assumed was gay to "get AIDS and die." He continues to employ a similar tone on his syndicated radio show. On www.rockstar69.com, Mr....

Drinks companies have been ordered to use uglier men in their advertising campaigns.The Advertising Standards Authority believes "balding" and "paunchy" men would be less likely to encourage women to drink to achieve social success.The new advertising code stresses that links must not be made between alcohol and seduction.A campaign for popular sparkling drink Lambrini has become the first to fall foul of the new rules. The Authority objected to a poster which showed three women "hooking" a slim, young man in a parody of a fairground game. The industry regulator instructed the firm: "We would advise that the man in...

PROVO - There is a new coffee shop in town, but it's no Starbucks. The entry is framed with little white Christmas lights, there are half-a-dozen couches to go along with a few tables, and the walls are yellow, red, green and purple. Opposite a faux-brick wall there is a wall dedicated to nonsense. "Girls are like ladders," one customer wrote. Another scribbled: "I love yellow people." It's all the same to owner Christin Johnson. She's just happy the people who jotted down the messages wanted to stick around in her Vermillion Skies De-cafe and Lounge long enough to pen...

In the third day of a seemingly endless bachelor party in Cabo San Lucas last year, Hal Walker, 33, woke up with a set of classic symptoms. His head ached. Loud noises made him wince. Bright lights hurt his eyes. Mr. Walker's flight home from Mexico to Colorado, where he is now a co-owner of the Island Grill in Fort Collins, left at 8 a.m., and it was all he could do to get to the airport. "If you can find a remedy for hangovers, that would be great," he said, voicing a sentiment familiar to anyone who has imbibed...

BAKER LAKE, Wash. (AP) - Rain-eeeeer .... Bear? When state Fish and Wildlife agents recently found a black bear passed out on the lawn of Baker Lake Resort, there were some clues scattered nearby - dozens of empty cans of Rainier Beer. The bear apparently got into campers' coolers and used his claws and teeth to puncture the cans. And not just any cans. "He drank the Rainier and wouldn't drink the Busch beer," said Lisa Broxson, bookkeeper at the campground and cabins resort east of Mount Baker. Fish and Wildlife enforcement Sgt. Bill Heinck said the bear did try...

Welsh pub offering free drinks for goals against England A Welsh pub has been criticised for handing out free drinks whenever England concede a World Cup goal. The Strand in Swansea gave away 50 shots of spirits when Sweden equalised, and the offer will be on again for the Argentina match. Ray Singh, former Racial Equality Commissioner for Wales, says it's wrong to encourage people not to support England. Mr Singh told the Western Mail: "It brings about divisions between the Welsh and the English." Landlady Julie Jones says English customers accept the free drinks and see the offer as...