Sweeteners used in Diet Coke and other light sodas:

Many years ago, cyclamates were the first to be used in diet coke, but it was banned when cancer was found in lab rats consuming the cyclamates. They switched to saccharin and that was banned for about 14 years, but by then diet coke and others started using aspartame. Today there is a great suspicion surrounding the safety of aspartame, to the point that I'm nervous as well. They do have only Splenda diet coke and also Splenda plus acesulfame-k diet coke (I'm not happy with that last sweetener). Since my family has consumed Splenda (sucralose) for many, many years and in quantities most people would not have, I'm more comfortable with it. I'm not saying I know sucralose to be perfectly safe, only that we've not experienced any noticeable ill effects.

As I mentioned before, I do drink diet coke, but have cut down and have it mainly at restaurants when I feel like it, but typically I drink water or use a packet of Splenda-sweetened herbal tea in it. It might interest people to know that a diet coke is coming out using Stevia - possibly by the end of the year depending on FDA approval. This would be interesting to try for sure. I believe it is in a form of Stevia called Rebiana, a more pure form of Stevia without the licorice aftertaste.

Troy Davis Deserves a New Trial

The Supreme Court will decide Monday whether it will take Davis' case. If it doesn't, he likely will be executed, despite evidence of his innocence.

Troy Anthony Davis was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday. Two hours before the state of Georgia was to execute him, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay until Monday. It had earlier agreed to hear Davis' case on Sept. 29, but Georgia set his execution date six days before the hearing.

Davis was charged with killing Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, in Savannah, Ga., in 1989. Davis had gone to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped in a parking lot. Seeing the gun, he said he fled. MacPhail, working security nearby, intervened next, and was killed. Davis, an African-American, claimed his innocence, but was found guilty and sentenced to death. Since his conviction, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony, alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining their testimony. By coming forward and recanting, they face serious repercussions, possibly jail time. Some have identified a different man as the shooter. This man is one of Davis' remaining accusers.

In July 2007, Davis faced his 1st execution date. Just a day before he was to be executed, the Georgia Pardons Board granted a stay of execution for up to 90 days. Then, Davis' attorneys argued before the Georgia Supreme Court for a retrial or for a hearing to present new evidence. The requests were denied, by a 4-to-3 vote. In the same period, the U.S. Supreme Court was weighing whether death by lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment (the court ultimately allowed its use).

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Monday whether it will take on Davis' case. If it decides not to, he very likely will be executed.

Among Davis' defenders is former President Jimmy Carter. He said: "This case illustrates the deep flaws in the application of the death penalty in this country. Executing Troy Davis without a real examination of potentially exonerating evidence risks taking the life of an innocent man and would be a grave miscarriage of justice." Georgia Congressman John Lewis also supports Davis. I spoke with Lewis at Invesco Field in Denver, just before Barack Obama's acceptance speech. It was 45 years to the date after the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have aDream" speech.

Lewis recalled that historic day: "We were in Washington, more than 250,000 of us, black and white, Protestant, Catholic, Jews, people of different background, rich and poor. ... In many parts of the South, people could not register to vote, simply because of the color of their skin. And we changed that."

Yet this week, in light of Davis' plight, Lewis told me: "In spite of all of the progress that we've made as a nation and as a people, we still have so far to go. The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in every corner, in every aspect of the American society." He went on to say, when I pointed out that Sen. Obama himself supports the death penalty: "It is troublesome. You know ... someplace along the way, some of us must have the courage to say -- and I'm moving closer and closer to this point -- that in good conscience, I cannot and will not support people who support the death penalty. I think it's barbaric, and it represents the Dark Ages. .... I don't think as human beings, I don't think as a nation, I don't think as a state, we have the right to take the life of another person. That should be left for the Almighty to do."

The death penalty is a noxious and racist practice. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, of more than 3,300 people on death row in the U.S., over 41 % are African-American -- more than 3 times their representation in the general population. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973 there have been 130 people exonerated -- people wrongly sentenced to death -- in 26 different states, including 5 exonerated on death row in Georgia. Evidence even suggests that at least 4 innocent people have been executed in recent years. There is no physical evidence in the Troy Davis case. After the stay was announced, Davis asked his mother to have people pray for the MacPhail family, and to keep working to dismantle this unjust system. He told her he wouldn't be fighting this hard for his life if he were guilty. This is a case of reasonable doubt. Troy Davis deserves a new trial.

Source: AlterNet

Iranian parliament approves law on apostasy calling for death penalty

Iranian parliament approved the law calling for a mandatory death sentence for apostates, or those who leave Islam.

APA reports that members of the parliament citing to sharia (Islamic law) made decision on death sentence for men abjuring Islam and life sentence for women. According to other points of the new law, extrasensory individuals, fortune-tellers and homosexuals will also be sentenced todeath. This grave punishment is applied to men and women abjuring Islam. 196 parliamentarians voted for the law, 7 against, 2 abstained. European missionary organizations condemned the decision of Iranian parliament.

2 men converted to Christianity were arrested in Shiraz in May this year. Islamic Revolutionary Court of Iran demands death sentence for them.

Source: Azeri Press Agency

Doctor Who Backstage Competition

Click here to see more pics...

The all important question for the Doctor Who Children In Need Tour competition was announced on this morning's Chris Moyles show.

Details are as follows:

In the episode The Stolen Earth where in space did the Daleks hide 27 planets?

A) The Horsehead Nebula


B) The Omega Spiral


C) The Medusa Cascade



The number to call with the correct answer is 09013 26 77 88.



Calls cost 75p from a BT landline. Calls from other operators may vary and will be considerably higher from mobiles. 52p per phone call will go to BBC Children in Need. The competition closes at midnight on 6th October and you must get the bill payer's permission to call.
All 100 winners can each bring up to 3 friends or members of their family. All visitors must be aged 5 years or over (groups containing children aged 15 years and under must include an adult). All applicants must be UK residents.

David Wins At TONY's Shadow Emmy Awards

David has won the award for Best Lead Actor In A Drama Series in a poll conducted by Time Out New York.
The reader awards are to recognize the outstanding actors and programmes that failed to receive Emmy nominations in real life.
You can see the full list of winners here.

This election is about trust – and the Maori Party doesn’t trust Helen Clark

Finally, the Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples has come out and said pretty much that this election is about trust, and Helen Clark is the last cab off the trust rank, assuming Peters won't be anywhere near the rank after the election.

Pita Sharples said he was no longer sure if he trusted Prime Minister Helen Clark, and said she was nearing the end of her time.

"She has been a great leader; she has done great things for the country," Dr Sharples said in an interview recorded yesterday for TVNZ 7. "But maybe she is nearing the end of her time."

Recent events in Parliament showed Miss Clark was clinging to power, he said.

"She is appearing quite desperate ... she is behaving like someone who is really, really desperate to get back into Parliament at any cost."

Maori will side with National – as I’ve been saying for the past..oh… 18 months, and it won’t be at the expense of the Maori seats. The Foreshore and Seabed legislation is not on the top of the priorities ,and the Maori seats won't be debated.

What is more important to Maori Party is Maori development and that’s where the Maori Party would like to see some gains. That’s why Maori do not want to go into coalition government but will seek - and get - a cabinet post.

(Note to Michael Cullen: keep up those treaty settlements, but just be aware it won't necessarily get you kudos from Maori. Maori want money, not just in principle agreements and you've left it all too late. As for passing treaty legislation under urgency, why didn't you do it earlier - not three years after the deed of settlement? You have diddled Maori out of a lot of lost interest and have consciously delayed Maori economic development for political gain.)

Oklahoma: Cummings put to death at state prison

A man described by investigators as a cold and evil man was put to death Thursday at 6:11 p.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Jessie James Cummings, 52, was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the 1991 Coal County murder of his 11-year-old niece, Melissa Moody. Cummings claimed that he was victim of a plot between his 2 wives and was innocent of the crimes. Cummings is the 2nd Oklahoma inmate put to death this year. Terry Lyn Short was executed in June for an Oklahoma County firebomb killing.

At the time of the slaying, Cummings was married to 2 women, Juanita and Sherry Cummings. Both women lived with Cummings and had children with him. Prosecutors said Cummings controlled the women and urged them to kill his sister, Melissa's mother. Judy Moody Mayo, 42, was shot by Juanita as she sat in the living room of the Cummings' home. Jessie Cummings was in Oklahoma City with his father at the time of his half-sister's murder. Mayo's body was found near Atoka Lake on Sept. 9, 1991. Melissa's body was found about a month later in Choctaw County.

Prosecutors said Cummings helped the women dump his sister's body in a farm pond near Atoka Lake. After molesting his niece, she was taken to rural Choctaw County and stabbed to death, according to court records. Her skeletal remains were found Oct. 16, 1991 near the bridge over Clear Boggy River in rural Choctaw County.

It would take 3 years for investigators to solve the murders. In 1994, Juanita Cummings went to police and told them about the murder plot. Melissa Moody's body was exhumed and a medical anthropologist determined that she was stabbed to death, confirming statements from the Cummings wives.

Jessie Cummings was convicted in 1996 by a Coal County jury for the death of his sister and niece. The jury sentenced him to death. In 1998, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals threw out Cummings' conviction in his sister's death, saying testimony only from accomplices couldn't link someone to a crime. Juanita Cummings is serving a life sentence after being convicted of murdering Mayo. Sherry Cummings is serving a 35-year-sentencer for allowing child abuse and being accessory to a crime after the fact.

During his clemency hearing in August, Cummings continued to deny his role in the crime and asked the Pardon and Parole Board to give him clemency so we could, "continue to clear his name." The board unanimously denied his request. International anti-death penalty groups had rallied against Cummings' execution, but there were no protestors outside the gate of the prison in McAlester before the execution.

While Cummings denied his role in the crime, Attorney General Drew Edmondson said the state proved its case.

"Cummings was properly convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Melissa Moody," Edmondson said. "Appeals courts at every level have upheld this conviction and sentence. My thoughts are with the family and friends of Melissa and her mother, Judy."

Cummings becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Oklahoma and the 88th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1990. Oklahoma trails only Texas (414) and Virginia (102) in the numbers of inmates executed since the US Supreme Court re-legalized the death penalty in America on July 2, 1976.

Cummings becomes the 24th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1123rd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

(sources: The Oklahoman & Rick Halperin)