Germans Spend $4 Billion Euros on Coffee Annually

Coffee beans are seen in a roaster at a stand at the Coffee Fair in Lima, Peru. (Reuters)
Coffee beans are seen in a roaster at a stand at the Coffee Fair in Lima, Peru. (Reuters)
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Germans Spend $4 Billion Euros on Coffee Annually

Coffee beans are seen in a roaster at a stand at the Coffee Fair in Lima, Peru. (Reuters)
Coffee beans are seen in a roaster at a stand at the Coffee Fair in Lima, Peru. (Reuters)

Germans spend over $4 billion euros a year to buy their favorite morning drink: coffee.

A new study by the market research firm Nielsen published Sunday, showed that Germans spent this sum on buying coffee in its different kinds from shops from early December 2017 till early December 2018.

In 2018, Germans bought a slightly lower amount of coffee than in the previous year, with figures falling to 382 million kilograms, 8 percent less than a year earlier, the study noted.

But market researchers see this drop doesn't necessarily mean a decline in Germans' consumption of coffee, according to the German news agency.

"According to our assessment, it could be because Germans drink coffee frequently outside home," said a beverage expert at Nielsen.



Explorer: Sonar Image Was Rock Formation, Not Amelia Earhart Plane

A statue of Amelia Earhart at the US Capitol. Nathan Howard / GETTY IMAGES/AFP
A statue of Amelia Earhart at the US Capitol. Nathan Howard / GETTY IMAGES/AFP
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Explorer: Sonar Image Was Rock Formation, Not Amelia Earhart Plane

A statue of Amelia Earhart at the US Capitol. Nathan Howard / GETTY IMAGES/AFP
A statue of Amelia Earhart at the US Capitol. Nathan Howard / GETTY IMAGES/AFP

A sonar image suspected of showing the remains of the plane of Amelia Earhart, the famed American aviatrix who disappeared over the Pacific in 1937, has turned out to be a rock formation.

Deep Sea Vision (DSV), a South Carolina-based firm, released the blurry image in January captured by an unmanned submersible of what it said may be Earhart's plane on the seafloor.

Not so, the company said in an update on Instagram this month, AFP reported.

"After 11 months the waiting has finally ended and unfortunately our target was not Amelia's Electra 10E (just a natural rock formation)," Deep Sea Vision said.

"As we speak DSV continues to search," it said. "The plot thickens with still no evidence of her disappearance ever found."

The image was taken by DSV during an extensive search in an area of the Pacific to the west of Earhart's planned destination, remote Howland Island.

Earhart went missing while on a pioneering round-the-world flight with navigator Fred Noonan.

Her disappearance is one of the most tantalizing mysteries in aviation lore, fascinating historians for decades and spawning books, movies and theories galore.

The prevailing belief is that Earhart, 39, and Noonan, 44, ran out of fuel and ditched their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in the Pacific near Howland Island while on one of the final legs of their epic journey.

Earhart, who won fame in 1932 as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, took off on May 20, 1937 from Oakland, California, hoping to become the first woman to fly around the world.

She and Noonan vanished on July 2, 1937 after taking off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, on a challenging 2,500-mile (4,000-kilometer) flight to refuel on Howland Island, a speck of a US territory between Australia and Hawaii.

They never made it.