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LY BD © oF VEN? UK GROCERY CHAIN BANS ASPARTAME SWEETENER WILDLIFE LAW OFFICERS CRACK DOWN ON HUNTERS lhe UK grocery chain, Iceland, has announced that it is banning aspartame, the artificial sweetener better known as NutraSweet, from its own-label foods. The move follows growing con- cerns among consumers about a possible link between the sweetener and brain tumours. These concerns, spread on the Internet, are hotly dis- puted by NutraSweet's owner, the GM food giant Monsanto. Aspartame is consumed by 250 million people worldwide and has been used in low-calorie food and drinks such as Diet Coke for 20 years. In the US alone, 20 billion cans of soft drink—most containing NutraSweet—are consumed each [ March 1999, 40 officers, divid- ed into 10 four-man teams, swooped in with helicopters in a pre-dawn raid to seize six suspects in Dorchester County, MD, USA. The principal suspect, Robert Gootee, was hauled from his bed and led away in chains. His wife was not allowed to call anyone, and her neighbours were not allowed to come in to comfort her for four- and-a-half hours. Apparently the armed raid was preceded by a four-year investiga- tion. But what kind of offence could have precipitated such drastic action? Gootee was charged with: pos- session of an undersized striped bass; striped bass out of season; untagged striped bass; possession of summer floun- der out of season; failure to tag and check deer within 24 hours; and possession of a loaded weapon in a vehicle. The agents involved were from the state and US Fish and Wildlife Service. And the target for the raid was the Golden Hills Hunt Club. Gootee, the club treasurer, was hauled away with such "evidence" as deer and duck mounts and a framed photograph of his retriever bringing in a duck. Eventually, 24 other club members were charged with related offences, including failure to wear sufficient fluorescent orange clothing while hunting. Are US forests being turned into police states? A report in the September 1999 issue of the usually low-key Field & Stream Magazine would suggest as much: "Looking for firepower, firefights and other fun stuff? Forget the SEALs; Fish and Game is the place to be. "Wardens may be watching too many cop shows. How else can one explain why increasing numbers of them seem to reject their workday reality and the routine of dealing with essentially law-abiding peo- ple in favor of a world in which the every- day sportsman is an ex-army commando ready for a shoot-out or a high-speed car chase? "Recruits to wildlife law enforcement now spend more time learning how to break down the doors of alleged poachers than how to differentiate the various species of sunfish. The April 1999 issue underwater explosions that triggered mini tidal waves at Whangaparaoa, just north of Auckland, in 1944 and 1945, the New Zealand Herald reported on 25 September. Professor Leech's work was considered so significant that US defence chiefs said that if the project had been completed before the end of the war, it could have played a role as effective as that of the atomic bomb. Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are con- tained in 53-year-old top-secret documents released by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. (Source: Sunday Times, Perth, Western Australia, 26 September 1999, p. 32). year. Iceland was the first "green" grocer to ban GM foods from its lines. Its unique stand against aspartame is being closely watched by its larger supermarket rivals. (Source: The Sunday Times, London, 25 October 1999, www.sunday-times.co.uk) TSUNAMI BOMB SECRET IS OUT Teer wartime experiments were conducted off the New Zealand coast to perfect a tidal-wave bomb, believed to be potentially as effective as the atomic bomb. Thomas Leech, an Australian professor at Auckland University, set off a series of DESA VIEW 6 = NEXUS DECEMBER 1999 — JANUARY 2000