Howdy, folks! Welcome to this week’s rendition of Booze In The News, where you’ll find the latest, funniest and most obscure newsworthy, alcohol-related bits all in one place.

1. Good news for women oenophiles! According to a recent study, wine may actually help women maintain a healthy weight. The study showed that women who consume moderate amounts of wine regularly gain less weight as they age compared to women who abstain completely. Yet the study found the opposite for men — men who drink over time become significantly more obese than their alcohol-free counterparts due to a greater amount of dehydrogenase enyzme in their bodies, which makes them absorb more alcohol calories than women. Sorry men.

2. In Texas, religious oriented “blue laws” have kept liquor stores from being open on Sundays since prohibition. Yet recently, Representative Ronald Gutierrez has proposed lifting the alcohol sales ban in order to generate more money in taxes for the state. This new legislation is long overdue, according to Gutierezz, but liquor store owners themselves are incredulous, as they fear that being open an extra day will cost them due to employee costs and lack of sales. Looks like in this case both God and Liquor themselves are, in fact, the farthest things from the minds of both liquor store owners and politicians. Good thing we are covering both in upcoming issue #7 of Drink Me!!

3. Wineries = endangered species murderers? Northern California salmon are allegedly threatened by wineries’ practice of pumping water from local stream and rivers in order to take care of their grapes. The salmon apparently can’t survive without water, and the wineries can’t survive without healthy grapes. According to state laws, it may very well be illegal to pump water at all by 2011. The epic battle for survival between fish and fermenter rages on. Looks like this guy could use a drink:

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