STOCKHOLM, Oct 13, 2007 (AFP) - Sweden was coming to terms Saturday with one of the largest demonstrations the country has ever seen -- against growing binge drinking and violence among Swedish youth.

More than 12,000 people swamped the streets of the capital Stockholm on Friday to 'say no to violence' after a teenager was killed by drunken teens at a birthday party a week ago.

Hundreds of other demonstrators showed their solidarity in other Swedish cities, from Gothenburg to Malmo to Kalmar.

SYDNEY, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Australian doctors revealed Wednesday that they drip-fed an Italian tourist a steady dose of vodka over three days to save his life after he poisoned himself.

The 24-year-old man was taken to a north Queensland hospital two months ago after he swallowed a large amount of a potentially-fatal substance found in antifreeze in an apparent suicide attempt.

WASHINGTON, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - US health and safety groups teamed up Tuesday in an effort to keep the legal drinking age at 21 amid a campaign from a small activist group to let Americans legally consume alcohol from age 18.

The advocacy group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the American Medical Association (AMA), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) announced the creation of the Support 21 coalition to fight for the current drinking age law.

WASHINGTON, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - US advocacy group Mothers Against Drunk Driving teamed up Tuesday with the American Medical Association and key safety groups in a joint effort to push for the legal drinking age to be kept at 21.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the American Medical Association (AMA), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) announced at a press conference that they have set up a 'coalition of leading health and safety groups in support of the 21 Minimum Legal Drinking Age Law.'

HELSINKI, Oct 4, 2007 (AFP) - Repeat offender drink drivers in Finland must fit anti-ignition devices to their cars which will only allow them to drive after passing a breathalyser test, the government announced Thursday.

'A driver convicted on more than one occasion for drink driving will have to install anti-ignition equipment to their vehicle in order to keep their licences' under a draft law put forward by the government.

PARIS, Sept 28, 2007 (AFP) - It may be the longest hangover in the history of binge beer drinking.

When a 37-year old man walked into a hospital emergency room in Glasgow, Scotland last October complaining of 'wavy' vision and a non-stop headache that had lasted four weeks, doctors were at first stumped, the British journal The Lancet reported Friday.

HELSINKI, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Alcohol use figures in 80 percent of all murders in Finland, even though violence continues to decline, according to official statistics published Tuesday.

Murders are higher in economically depressed regions of the country and it is normally the people who live in the north and the east of the country who have the higher suicide rate.

Some 111 murders were tallied in 2006 against an average of 130 during the last 10 years, the National Research Institute on Criminal Politics said in its annual report in Finland.

KARACHI, Sept 21, 2007 (AFP) - Pakistani police arrested a number of people Friday after the death toll from a toxic batch of illegally-brewed alcohol rose to 27, officials said.

Hospitals in the southern port city of Karachi have been inundated with nearly four dozen victims who drank the bootleg booze, senior police official Javed Bokhari said.

'The number of confirmed deaths is 27 but it could rise because some victims are still in a serious condition,' Bokhari told AFP, raising the toll from 14 overnight.

TEHRAN, Sept 16, 2007 (AFP) - Iran has seized one million bottles of alcohol and arrested hundreds of smugglers in a border province over the past five months as part of a campaign against immorality, the Fars news agency said on Sunday.

The seizures and arrests came in West Azarbaijan province which borders Iraqi Kurdistan, one of the main sources of alcohol being illegally smuggled into the Islamic republic.

PARIS, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) - Dutch beer group Heineken, which is sponsoring the Rugby World Cup in France, was on Friday ordered to remove promotional material from streets and sidewalks because it infringes laws on alcohol advertising.

A Paris court upheld a plea from the National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction (ANPAA) that World Cup material bearing the name Heineken is in breach of the 1991 so-called Evin Law.

Heineken was given 48 hours to remove the publicity, mostly in the form of banners displayed outside bars and cafes.

BEIJING, Sept 6, 2007 (AFP) - Chinese quality inspectors seized more than 10 tonnes of potentially unsafe alcohol and related ingredients on the first day of a crackdown on producers of dodgy spirits, state media reported on Thursday.

Inspectors in the four eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui and Jiangxi raided 144 alcohol production facilities, 23 of which were found to be unlicensed, the China Daily newspaper said.

STOCKHOLM, Sept 4, 2007 (AFP) - A Ukranian pilot who was due to fly 157 passengers from Stockholm to Tenerife on Tuesday was replaced at the last minute after ground crew smelled alcohol on his breath, Swedish media reported.

'The airline flew in a new pilot and the plane is expected to take off in the evening,' Stockholm-Arlanda airport spokesman Jan Lindqvist told news agency TT.

HELSINKI, Aug 28, 2007 (AFP) - Finnish breweries have launched a campaign to tackle the growing problem of young adults' binge drinking, using the slogan 'You're a jerk when you're drunk!' to get them to drink in moderation.

'We want to change attitudes to encourage responsible drinking. We have been fighting alcohol abuse and underage drinking for a long time,' the head of the Finnish federation of brewers and soft drink producers, Timo Jaatinen, told AFP on Tuesday.

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) - South African Airways, the country's national airline carrier, announced Tuesday it would stop serving alcohol on domestic flights before midday.

'The move is in line with local and regional trends,' said SAA's head of group corporate affairs Robyn Chalmers. The change would improve service levels on board the aircraft, he added.

'SAA will continue to serve a full bar service after 12 o'clock in both economy and business classess.'

DENPASAR, Indonesia, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) - Dry holidays may be looming for tourists on the Indonesian resort island of Bali with an alcohol shortage already hitting hotels and bars, officials and industry workers said Tuesday.

The shortage comes as the island reported its first human bird flu death on Monday, triggering fears that a tourism recovery, finally gaining momentum in the wake of bombings by Islamic militants in 2002 and 2005, could stall.

SYDNEY, Aug 6, 2007 (AFP) - They may consider it a harmless tipple or the basis of a good night out, but millions of Australians face the lifelong hangover of brain damage due to their drinking, health experts warned Monday.

Alcohol-treatment group Arbias said as many as two million Australians may be at risk of permanent brain damage from heavy drinking, while more than 200,000 were living with the condition undiagnosed.

LONDON, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Drinking wine or beer every day increases the risk of bowel cancer, according to a new study reported Tuesday.

The report, published by the International Journal of Cancer, says that drinking two large glasses of wine or two pints a day increases the risk of this disease by around quarter compared with non-drinkers.

One glass of wine or a pint of beer a day raises the risk by 10 percent.

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2007 (AFP) - A US Air Force physician said Friday astronauts had been drunk while preparing for a shuttle mission and in a separate incident before a Russian Soyuz rocket flight.

The first incident involved preparations for a shuttle mission and a flight with a T-38 supersonic jet used by NASA, while the second case involved a Soyuz mission bound for the International Space Station, Air Force physician Richard Bachman told reporters.

COPENHAGEN, July 27, 2007 (AFP) - Drink 'til you drop: that's the goal for thousands of young Danes each summer as they head off on organised tours to Europe's hot spots for raucous pub crawls in what has become a sometimes dangerous teen holiday ritual.

A 17-year-old Dane died earlier this month after drinking so much at the Sunny Beach resort in Bulgaria that he choked on his vomit.

His death has prompted a heated debate in Denmark, which has the highest number of teen drinkers in Europe.