A day after Israelis raided the Gaza Strip, even ramming the boat occupied by former Georgia Democrat Cynthia McKinney, the African Union Israel’s actions, calling on the United Nations Security Council to force the Jewish state to back down. “The (AU) Commission strongly condemns the ongoing air raids on the Gaza Strip by Israel since 27 December,” the union said in a statement. “This massive and disproportionate attack constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law and will further aggravate the suffering of the civilian population, which, as a result of the siege imposed by Israel, has been faced by shortages of food, medicine and fuel.” The African Union urged the Security Council and members of the Middle East diplomatic Quartet “to fully assume their responsibilities toward the civilians in the Gaza Strip by compelling Israel to an immediate ceasefire.” It also pleaded with the nations of the world to increase medical and humanitarian aid to victims of the attacks. On Monday, McKinney, the 2008 Green Party candidate and the first African-American woman elected to Congress from the state of Georgia, joined more than a dozen high-profile leaders who headed to the region aboard a medical supply ship on a humanitarian mission. The yacht, owned by the U.S.-based Free Gaza Movement, collided with an Israeli gunboat, which had fired machine guns into the water to stop the vessel’s progress, FOX News reported. At least 360 Palestinians, including more than 50 civilians, have been killed in the raids, according to officials.

Heavy people get heart attacks 12 years sooner. The fatter you are, the more likely you are to have a heart attack earlier in life, a new study shows. “Basically, it is showing that as people got progressively more obese, the rate at which they had heart attacks early went up dramatically,” said Dr. Eric D. Peterson, a professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center’s Division of Cardiology and a member of the group reporting the findings. Cardiologists at several institutions studied data on more than 111,000 people who had heart attacks, looking specifically at body mass index (BMI), a measure of obesity, HealthDay reports. Someone with a BMI of 30 or above is regarded as obese; a person 5 feet, 7 inches tall who weighs 192 pounds has a BMI of 30. The average age of a first heart attack for people with a BMI of 18.5 or under was 74.6 years. For people with a BMI of 40 or over, it was 58.7 years. The age at which a first heart attack occurred went up steadily with increasing BMI – 3.5 years earlier for a BMI of 25 to 30; 6.8 years earlier for a BMI 30 to 35; 9.4 years for a BMI of 35 to 40; and 12 years earlier for a BMI 40 or higher. “The news here is that heart muscle in obese diabetic individuals can be mobilized by eating less,” said Dr. Heinrich Taegtmeyer, professor of medicine in cardiology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston and co-author of an accompanying editorial comment.

Vital Signs: The lack of sports in school is showing up in strange ways. Vital Signs has more.