Beer will have to cost at least £1 a can under new government moves to cut binge-drinking. Ministers plan to introduce national minimum prices for alcohol - which would also put an extra £1 on a litre of cider and £5 on a bottle of vodka. Furious PM Gordon Brown ordered tough action after supermarkets ignored alcohol rises in last month's Budget. Some booze is even cheaper now than before the Budget. The new rules would mean no shop could sell discounted drink below a fixed level. Cheap booze sales on the internet and two-for-the-price-of-one deals would also be outlawed. The new scheme, which could be unveiled as early as July, would work by suspending competition rules designed to stop price fixing. - Sunday People
Sales of alcohol-free beer have broken through the £10m-a-year barrier. Tesco sales have shot up 17.6 per cent in the last year - and it's all down to improvements in taste. The supermarket giant has doubled their range to nine non-alcoholic beers to meet growing demand - and plan to add more this year. A spokeswoman said: "When non-alcoholic beer came out in the 80s it tasted thin and metallic, so it was hardly surprising it never really took off. But now it actually tastes like beer." Meanwhile sales of traditional lager fell 4.5 per cent last year - to £2.3bn a year. - Sunday Mirror
A man of 36 has been banned from going into a pub or nightclub - unless he is with his mum or dad. Lee Gooch was given the order by a judge after he fractured a man's eye socket in an unprovoked attack in a bar at Chorley, Lancs, in January last year. He faces jail if he is caught in a pub without his parents. - Sunday Mirror
Five people were taken to hospital after a car ploughed through the front doors of the Railway Inn pub in Lye, West Midlands. A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: "Several people in the car and the pub at the time were injured, but thankfully none of them are in a life-threatening condition." Surveyors will today decide whether the pub will have to be demolished. - Sunday Mirror