After 113 years, the country's biggest selling beer, Victoria Bitter, or VB, is to be produced in a mid-strength version to keep pace with the country's fast-changing beer tastes. VB, with its distinctive green label, has since 1894 been a staple of hard-drinking backyard barbecues, student revels and football games, not to mention healthy overseas exports. Now brewer Foster's has decided for the first time to produce the beer in a weaker yellow-label version with 3.5 percent strength,...

SCITUATE - A Scituate couple is going to court after pictures posted on the social networking site Facebook.com showed the couple throwing back beers with their 18-year-old daughter and at least 15 of her friends. Teen beer party lands couple in hot water: Police told of party photos posted on Facebook.com. Police said they summoned the Cotters to court because of what appears a violation of the state s social-host law, which prohibits adults from supplying alcohol to minors or knowingly...

LINDEN Pulled pork, potato salad and all the fixings are in the works for the plates that will be served during the annual all-you-can-eat barbecue fundraising event at Linden Elementary School tomorrow. Gosa said the event is a community-based event, in that the athletic booster, school faculty, students, parents and other school volunteers participate in the hosting of the festivities. This event is our primary fund-raiser to support our schools athletic department, Gosa said. In the...

But none matches the sea slugs, insects, raw tripe, blowfish and dog delicacies tasted during research for his latest book, The Year of Eating Dangerously. TOM Parker Bowles describes himself as a "rather windy, five-foot-eleven-and-a-half toff" who would "baulk at chewing on placenta or pig's bollocks" And yet, looking at it from the other side, if you've grown up eating insects there's nothing odd about it -- it's perfectly normal. It's a cheap, sustainable form of protein that is...

They're lighting their homes with smart bulbs, washing their clothes in cold water, using biodegradable and no-phosphate laundry detergents, wiping the floors with solvent-free cleaners and sleeping on bamboo-fiber sheets. Today, however, there are so many hip items in the marketplace - that just happen to be environmentally friendly and ecologically conscious - that you can be a tree-hugger without screaming tree-hugger. Now you can't swing a birch branch without hitting something...

Des Moines police have released the names of a suspect and victim in a stabbing incident triggered by an argument over a beer. Police said they could hear the two men arguing when they arrived at the East 15th Street address. Beechum was standing in a front hallway and Vandeboe was standing in a back hallway clutching his abdomen. Maybe the size of the bond is determined by the quality of the beer. Beechum took the bottle from Vandeboe and grabbed a knife from beside a couch cushion and...

Access Economics director Chris Richardson said that with both sides of politics eager to win votes, and with low inflation dampening another interest rate rise, the chance of a big-spending budget had increased. Macquarie Research head of economics Richard Gibbs said tax cuts would be unwise, and spending should instead focus on areas that boosted productivity such as infrastructure, education and child care. The Reserve Bank is considered all but certain to confirm rates will not rise...

The bill includes the exact same benchmarks that the president called for in January! By threatening to veto his very own benchmarks, the president is holding up money for our troops and unnecessarily dragging out this process. House would provide our troops with the training and equipment they need to do their jobs, but would also provide both the administration and Iraqis with real benchmarks for accountability. As more of our soldiers are injured and more veterans come home from Iraq...

Raleigh House leaders said they hope to unveil their proposed budget sometime this week, but bits of information keep trickling out about their plans. It will be interesting to see if that was a fluke, or will there be a decent raise this year, for those who DESERVE it the most. The proposed numbers shows fairly common legislative funding requests, including $8. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Still can't see why the school needs its own fire...