A prank on Facebook that’s going viral is saying Canada will change its legal drinking age to 23 in July.
“Stephen harper has decided that as of July 1st 2014 (Canada day) the minimum legal drinking age in canada will be raised to 21. In Ontario, Manitoba, BC, all maritimes, and all territories, this will be raised to 23 (sic),” the prank says. It claims to be from CNN.
The prank was posted on the Sunday Times Daily, a website that allows users to create and share fake news stories.
When one clicks on it, they get a message that says they’ve been tricked. “We are sorry, but you were tricked! It was just a joke!” it says.
Two other bogus stories about the drinking age going up to 25 in the US and the UK also went viral, getting about 10 million pageviews as well as millions of shares and “likes” on Facebook in the past several days.
The Canada drinking age hoax appears to have been posted recently, and it already has 40,000 “likes” and shares on the social media network.
According to hoax-debunking website Snopes, the original hoax about the US drinking age change was “promulgated by a phony, amateurishly written ABC News lookalike article posted on Sunday Times Daily, a web site that allows users to ‘create your own fake news and trick your friends by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network.’”
AP Update: Czech brewer gets Budweiser trademark in Portugal
PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech brewery Budvar says a Portuguese trade court has upheld a decision preventing its rival Anheuser-Busch InBev from registering its beer under the Budweiser name in the country.
State-owned Budejovicky Budvar NP has been fighting with Anheuser-Busch for over a century over use of the Budweiser name. The legal battle continued when Anheuser-Busch was taken over by Belgium’s InBev in 2008.
The Czech company said Thursday the appeals court in Lisbon rejected AB InBev’s challenge to a December trade court ruling because its Budweiser trademarks could be mistaken for those Budvar had already registered in Portugal.
Budvar says the verdict is final. The court could not be immediately reached for confirmation.
AB InBev spokeswoman Karen Couck says the ruling doesn’t affected sales of the company’s BUD brand in Portugal.
