A local nonprofit group dedicated to efforts at promoting peace and social justice will hold its annual holiday sale on Saturday.

The Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC) will stage its seventh annual St. Nick Day Sale from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Peaslee Neighborhood Center, 215 E. 14th St., in Over-the-Rhine.

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Released Monday, the FBI’s annual crime report for last year further underscores the fact that imposing capital punishment on criminals doesn’t act as a deterrent to homicides.

The report, Crime in the United States 2008, reveals that in 13 of the 14 states that didn’t have the death penalty last year, the murder rate was below the national rate of 5.4 homicides per 100,000 people.

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Thursday will mark the 64th anniversary since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, obliterating most of the Japanese city and directly killing more than 80,000 people. Within a few months, another 50,000 would die from injuries or radiation poisoning.

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Just two days after he proposed the idea, Cincinnati City Councilman Jeff Berding quietly dropped his proposal to tax panhandlers and require them to wear signs stating how much the city contributes to social service agencies on an annual basis. Despite the sudden flip-flop, Berding's idea has inspired a similar concept targeting City Hall.

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A forum on health care reform featuring people who have been adversely affected by the current system that relies on private insurance will be held Thursday. Entitled “National Health Care Reform: The Time Is Now,” the forum will be held from 6:30-8 p.m. at St. Monica/St. George Parish Center, 328 W. McMillan St., Clifton Heights.

Among panelists who will speak at the forum are uninsured people, small business owners who can't afford premiums for their workers and physicians.

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A group of local people with connections to Iran will hold a rally Saturday at Fountain Square to show support for the dissidents protesting the recent Iranian presidential election.

The rally is scheduled from 4-5:30 p.m.

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The UK furniture store Habitat capitalized on the Iranian political crisis on their Web site using Twitter keywords to lure potential customers who, instead of shopping, were looking for news on more mundane matters — human rights violations, political unrest, that sort of junk.

Has it really come to this?

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The lead feature article in the new issue of The New Yorker focuses on the anti-gang program Cincinnati implemented two years ago. John Seabrook's "Don't Shoot" is a long, well-researched and well-written story about David Kennedy, who devised the "Ceasefire" crime-fighting model in Boston, and his experiences here implementing C.I.R.V. (Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Crime).

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More than 200 people attended Imago’s Earth Spirit Rising conference at Xavier University this weekend, where they were challenged to rethink their actions and their effect on the planet.

Speaker Paula Gonzalez, a Dominican nun and futurist, cast the challenges ahead in stark terms: “We must realize the scale of our times, which is on the scale of transitions like going from hunter-gathering to agriculture, or industrialization. You must take the messages of this conference home in your heart, in your soul, in your gut, and get off your butt and act.”

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When staff writers leave CityBeat they have, in the past, had an opportunity to publish a “so long” piece. It’s usually done as a column or a first-person commentary. My last piece for CityBeat will be a review of a new book that looks at the current U.S. slave market.

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