Kenyan explosion kills more than 100.

A petrol tanker in Kenya turned over while traveling on the road and exploded about an hour later killing more than 100 people and wounding several others, reports CNN. The explosion happened near the town of Molo, about 80 miles from the nation’s capital, Nairobi. Not long after the tanker turned over on the highway, hundreds of people surrounded the vehicle trying to scoop up gas. “People were lining up trying to get the fuel. They were siphoning off petrol for over an hour. Some people had drilled holes in the tanker and were charging a fee for the assembled crowd,” said a member of the country’s Red Cross, Titus Mung’ou. The explosion apparently happened when one of the people lit up a cigarette or somehow started a fire another way near the site of the accident, he said. There were 117 people wounded in the explosion, and the numbers are expected to rise. This is the second large fatality incident to occur in the nation in the past few days. Last week, there was a fire in a Nairobi supermarket that killed at least 27 people and 57 are still missing.

Jamaican workers agree to 20 percent pay cut.

In an effort to save their jobs, people who work at Jamaica’s Berger Paints have opted to take a 20 percent pay cut, effective as of Monday, reports Caribbean Net. The global economic crisis hit several companies in the nation hard, causing them to make cuts in spending including staff layoffs. Hundreds of Jamaicans have been laid off and just the past two months. Two worker unions (the National Workers Union and the Clerical Administration and Supervisory Employees Union) inked the deal with the Berger Paints management. The pay cut would save the company $70 million in six months, according to a spokesman.

13 Die in Kenyan Blaze. At least 13 bodies were discovered in burned-down supermarket in Nairobi, Kenya on Friday. At least 47 people are missing after the horrific blaze, officials report. A rumor that security guards locked people inside the burning structure was being investigated today, authorities add. Cops used tear gas and horses to deter the large crowds of worried family members and friends who lingered around the site in hopes of finding their loved ones safe. The Nakamutt store provided the surrounding community with a wide variety of supplies. The fire’s cause was being investigated.

Congo Doctor is ‘African of the Year’ Dr. Denis Mukwege, who operates a clinic treating rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been named “African of the Year” by a Nigerian newspaper. He says his award of $20,000 will be put toward funding a center to help rape victims come back into their societies, reports the BBC. In the conflict-ridden Congo, all of the warring sides have “declared women their common enemy,” Mukwege said.  His clinic, the Panzi hospital, assists women who’ve been raped with both physical and psychological injuries, including some who have contracted HIV from their attackers. “I am pleased to accept this award if it will highlight the situation of women in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo,” he told the BBC after accepting the award at a ceremony in Nigeria. This is the newspaper’s first African of the Year award. Former Tanzanian leader, Salim Ahmed Salim, was on the newspaper’s selection panel. “This is a person who has been involved in the protection of women under difficult circumstances, often at the risk of his own life,” he told the BBC. Mukwege was also given the Olof Palme prize for outstanding achievement in promoting peace.
Zimbabwe’s Cholera Deaths Near 2,000 The death toll from Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic has reached 1,937, reports CNN. The outbreak of the water-borne disease started in August, and since then almost 40,000 people have been become infected by the illness, according to the World Health Organization. The spread of cholera is preventable, and some health experts blame the Zimbabwean government, led by controversial longtime President Robert Mugabe. The spread of the epidemic, they say, is mainly due to the failure to import enough water-cleansing chemicals. Many residents have had to get drinking water from rivers and wells because the water taps are dry; the nation’s trash-disposing systems aren’t operating. These factors serve only to worsen the situation, as it keeps many from having access to clean water. After Mugabe declared the epidemic a national emergency last month, worldwide charities such as WHO, Oxfam, USAID as well as some foreign governments have tried to help with the situation but there has been little improvement in that span of time.

The Philadelphia mother whose three children died in a raging three-story fire Friday night took time Sunday morning to warn others about the importance of outfitting their homes with smoke detectors. As cries of mourning rose from the pews of Christ International Baptist Church, Michelle Dosso held up pictures of her deceased children, Philly.com reports. “This is Zyhire. He was 1 year old,” Dosso said. “This is Ramere, he was 8. … This is my baby girl, Mariam. She would have been 7 on the 27th. I promised her a party and … she’s going to get it. Don’t let them die in vain. Get smoke detectors. Get it done.” In addition to Dosso’s three children, four adults lost their lives amid the choking smoke of the blaze, even though the fire was brought under control within a half-hour. “Six people were found huddled together at one end of the room; a seventh was found near the basement’s only exit to the outside. Investigators said the interior basement stairs had been removed,” The Associated Press reports. Ironically, fire officials said, there were no alarms in the house, but they probably still would not have prevented the tragedy. A survivor Harris Murphy, 54, told authorities that the fires started when a kerosene heater exploded as it was being refilled with fuel. On Sunday, Murphy told members that he told his friend to have everyone run through the flames, but his friend replied, “The firefighters will come and get us.” The victims died from smoke inhalation before the firefighters reached them.

Philly seems to be doing all it can to live up to its infamous reputation as “Kill-adelphia.” Three shootings in the City of Unbrotherly Shove Sunday left three people dead and another three in critical condition. All of the victims were males, and all were shot on the street, The Philadelphia Daily News reports. In a related incident, a South Philadelphia man, angry because a father and son were talking during a Christmas showing of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” whipped out a .380-caliber gun and shot the father, police said. Charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and various weapons violations in that case was 29-year-old James Joseph Cialella Jr. There have not been any arrests in the three shootings that left three dead. In recent years, Philadelphia has earned the dubious distinction as one of the bloodiest cities in America, averaging more than a homicide a day. So far this year, there have been 329 homicides in Philadelphia, compared to 392 in all of 2007, The Daily News reports.

One child dies, one wounded in civilian Congo camp. A 5-year-old is dead while a 7-year-old recovers from bullet crossfire in the Congo where they’d been displaced by war. The girls were at a civilian camp Friday where many of 250,000 people have fled this year due to battling between government and rebel troops. A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner (UNHCR) for Refugees says it doesn’t appear that the girls were targeted. But a woman was raped by armed men near the civilian area this week. “We remain extremely concerned for the safety of the displaced Congolese population in Kibati as the civilian character of these two UNHCR-run camps north of Goma is continually violated,” the UNHCR said in a statement.

Online Obama T-shirt sales are booming. Walk down the streets of San Francisco, and you’ll see plenty of evidence of Obama’s popularity, mostly in the form of T-shirts, which remain a hot item weeks after the election. “Not too long ago,” said Cowlin, “if you wanted to wear a T-shirt of a candidate, you were pretty much limited to getting it at campaign headquarters. Now, with the Internet, this is the first time they’ve been available on such a large scale.” Urban Outfitters has been selling T-shirts with Obama’s face for months, since well before the primaries. Asked if sales are down now, Caitlin Reno at the Bancroft Street store in Berkeley said, “Oh, no. We’re selling even more now. People are constantly coming in asking for them.”

After deadly shopping day, Wal-Mart reviews Black Friday plans. As shoppers returned over the weekend to the Valley Stream Wal-Mart  where the chaos of this year’s Black Friday resulted in death and mayhem, shoppers echoed the sentiments of the Nassau County Police detective supervising the investigation, who told reporters in the aftermath of Jdimytai Damour’s death that the store could have and should have better prepared for the large crowds that camped out as early as 9 p.m. the night before for the post-Thanksgiving bargains. Read the rest here.  

Iowa café deluged with “Obama cookie” requests

. Ever since word spread about the Obamas’ fondness for Baby Boomers’ chocolate chunk cookies, the small downtown Des Moines restaurant has been bombarded with requests. “Two months ago I was giving these cookies away,” co-owner Rodney Maxfield told The Associated Press. “Now, it’s like, ‘I need two dozen cookies. I need four-dozen cookies.’” Read the rest here.

Recall for infant formula spreads. The finding that laboratory tests have detected traces of contamination in several major brands of infant formula in the United States caused concern and confusion Wednesday, with a national consumer’s group and the Illinois attorney general demanding a Food and Drug Administration recall. But the federal agency says it had released inaccurate information on what chemicals were found in which top selling products. As worried parents called manufacturers looking for guidance about the presence of melamine, which had sickened thousands of Chinese babies this year, the FDA reiterated its position that the baby food is safe and parents should continue feeding it to their babies, contending the extremely low levels of contamination do not present a health danger.
South African lives could have been saved. The South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies, a Harvard researchers says. The policies,  which included rejecting antiretroviral drug help from foreign agencies, grew out of President Thabo Mbeki’s denial of the well-established scientific consensus that the HIV virus was the cause of AIDS and the essential role of antiretroviral drugs in treating it.

California mayor wants reporter’s death re-investigated

. Oakland Mayor Ronald Dellums said Monday he will ask for an outside investigation by either the state or federal Justice Department into city homicide Detective Sgt. Derwin Longmire’s handling of journalist Chauncey Bailey’s 2007 murder, the Chauncey Bailey Project reported early Tuesday. The lead detective assigned to investigate journalist Chauncey Bailey’s killing ignored evidence linking Yusuf Bey IV, former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, to a role in the killing and interfered in two other unrelated felony cases involving Bey IV, according to an investigation by the Project’s Thomas Peele, Bob Butler and Mary Fricker. The Chauncey Bailey Project is a joint venture between the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and more than 20 other news organizations that came together to complete the work of Bailey, an Oakland editor and writer who was gunned down in August 2007. The Bailey Project’s reporting has led to a police internal affairs investigation of that detective, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, and whether his close relationship with Bey IV may have compromised the case, according to InsideBayArea.com. Law enforcement officials said the investigation of the Bailey killing is in crisis. If Longmire is charged with administrative or criminal wrongdoing, the chances of convicting the one person charged, Devaughndre Broussard, might be jeopardized.

Jordin Sparks is to be praise, and criticized for her stand on abstinence. Jordin Sparks made a bold statement when she stood up at MTV’s Video Music Awards on Monday for the Jonas Brothers’ right to wear promise rings, a symbol of their pledge to abstain from sex until marriage. But she also unwittingly chastised any teenager who happens to be sexually active. How? Vital Signs has the details. 

New York City shows largest decline in infant deaths. New York City has made the biggest improvement of all major cities in lowering its infant death rate, according to new numbers from the city’s Health Department. New York’s infant mortality rate fell again in 2007, reaching the lowest level ever recorded. The 2007 rate – 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births, down from 5.9 in 2006 – marked the sharpest one-year decline since 2001, when the city’s rate dropped to 6.1 from 6.7 per 1,000 live births. Of the 128,961 babies born in New York City in 2007, 697 died before reaching a year old, 43 fewer than in 2006. The city’s infant mortality rate remained significantly lower than that of the nation, which was 6.7 deaths per 1,00 live births in 2006, the most recent year on record. The number of local births surged by 3,455 during 2007, and births to Asian women accounted for half of the increase. News reports suggest that many Chinese couples timed their pregnancies to coincide with the Year of the Golden Pig, a particularly auspicious year in the Chinese lunar calendar. Here’s how the numbers break down by ethnic group: The infant mortality rate was 9.8 per 1,000 live births among Blacks, 6.3 among Puerto Ricans, 4.3 among other Hispanics, 3.9 among Whites, and 3.1 among Asian/Pacific Islanders. “We are heading in the right direction, but substantial disparities remain,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, New York City health commissioner. “Infant death rates remain unacceptably high among Blacks and Puerto Ricans and in low-income neighborhoods. We need to expand services for these groups and communities, and we also need to work to reduce inequities that persist in income, education, health care, safe neighborhoods and access to healthy affordable food and regular physical activity.” How did the city improve its numbers? Health officials say the department has been working on many fronts to help women stay as healthy as possible before pregnancy, obtain quality health care during pregnancy, and provide the care and support their babies need to thrive. Its key initiatives include breastfeeding education, safe-sleep education, cribs for families that can’t afford them, and nurse home-visiting during pregnancy and early childhood.

Not all fat created equal. Fat in obese patients is “sick” when compared to fat in lean patients, Temple University scientists say.   The same the cells in diabetics’ fat tissue aren’t working properly and as a result, are sicker than cells found in lean patients’ fat tissue, a study published in the September issue of Diabetes finds. Lead author Guenther Boden, M.D. theorizes that “sick fat” could more fully explain the link between obesity and higher risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Researchers from the departments of endocrinology, biochemistry and surgery at the Temple University School of Medicine took fat biopsies from the upper thighs of six lean and six obese patients and found significant differences at the cellular level. Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is found in every cell and helps synthesize proteins and monitor how they’re folded. The stress that Boden describes causes the ER in fat cells to produce several proteins that ultimately lead to insulin resistance, which has been found to play a major role in the development and progression of obesity-related conditions.

Study: Almost 1,000 People Died In Louisiana From Katrina

On the three-year anniversary of Hrricane Katrina, a new study says the storm caused the deaths of some 986 deaths in Louisiana either directly or indirectly, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in 80 years. Find out more at Vital Signs.