Free Republic

The artificial sweetener aspartame might soon be declared a “possible carcinogen,” or cancer-causing agent, according to a leaked report from the World Health Organization. Aspartame is used in Diet Coke, Coke Zero, chewing gum, diet Snapple, breakfast cereals, ice cream and many other common food and drinks. It’s also sold as NutraSweet, Equal and Sugar Twin. The news about the possible move by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, first reported on Reuters, met with quick resistance from the food industry. “… [T]his leaked opinion contradicts decades of high-quality scientific evidence,” International Council of Beverages Associations executive director...

One of the world’s most popular weed killers—and the most widely used kind in the U.S.—has been labeled a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The decision was made by IARC, the France-based cancer research arm of the World Health Organization, which considered the status of five insect and weed killers including glyphosate, which is used globally in industrial farming. […] The new classification is aimed mainly at industrial use of glyphosate. Its use by home gardeners is not considered a risk. Glyphosate is in the same category of risk as things like anabolic steroids and...

The graph shows the Arctic Sea Ice Extant (in square kilometers) for 2013, 2011, 2007, and 2012. Arctic Sea Ice Extant has almost reached the minimum (which usually occurs around mid-Sept) for this year. In a December 2007 article appearing in National Geographic News, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally predicted that the Arctic would be ice free in the Summer of 2012, That did not happen, as the graph shows, and this year the Summer minimum will be significantly higher than it was in 2012, as well as being higher than it was for 2007 and 2011.