Remembering influential archbishop

The Daily Nation

Those who knew him well describe Archbishop Nicodemus Kirima, who died Nov. 27, as a jack of all trades and a master of many. Apart from being a man of the cloth, Archbishop Kirima was known to be at home with accounting, communication, agriculture and philosophy, among other professions. The archbishop chaired a commission to investigate devil worship in Kenya and was a member of the Rome-based Alliance of the Two Hearts International Movement. More info>

Gene study to go on after woman’s death

The New York Times

Federal regulators have given permission for a company to resume a gene therapy study in which a woman died. The company, Targeted Genetics, said the decision by the Food and Drug Administration is effectively an acknowledgment that the gene therapy did not cause the woman’s death. The death had threatened to be another black eye for gene therapy, a field that has not had much success in treating disease. More info>

Whatever happened to Christmas?

WNEM.com

Charles Dickens might have called his famous book “A Christmas Carol,” but a Mount Pleasant, Mich., festival named after him is opting for the word “holiday” instead. In order to get more bang for its buck out of a thinning advertisement budget, the city is changing its Dickens Christmas Festival to the Dickens Holiday Festival because the city wants to put fliers in public schools. For that to happen, the word “Christmas” had to be removed. More info>