In an effort to help attract the brightest young professionals to Cincinnati, a city councilman is proposing that domestic partners of city employees be granted health insurance benefits. Councilman Chris Seelbach has introduced a motion requesting that city administrators research the issue.   

Collaboration, growth, opportunity and progress are the buzzwords that Cincinnati City Councilwoman Yvette Simpson uses to describe what she wants to foster at City Hall during the next two years.    

Toward the end of the year, in anticipation of the climate summit in Durban, South Africa, a disturbing wave of stories emerged that made our planetary predicament chillingly — and boiling-ly — clear.  

Ohio voters at the polls next fall might get to decide if a fertilized egg should be considered a person from the moment of conception.   

Forget all that hype about 2008 and the presidential election: When local historians gaze back from the future, 2011 in Cincinnati probably will be remembered primarily as the year when true change occurred.   

The haze of the smoke has already crept to the first floor. We’re walking bowlegged up the building’s stairs because the center of the steps is the first part to be weakened by the fire. I have a fire hose under my arm.  

As the weather turns cold and gas and electric bills begin to rise, many local residents worry about how they can afford to keep warm. A local nonprofit organization is trying to help.  

Gas money. That’s why Tina Karle and her husband scrap. They both work, he as a maintenance man, she as a writer of hiking guides, but scrapping is something they do to fill their tanks and make their paychecks stretch.  

On Dec. 2, CUFA achieved a small victory for its so-called “People’s Platform” when City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr. announced his proposed 2012 municipal budget that eliminated a projected $33.6 million deficit while also fully funding all city-operated health clinics, along with the operation of 28 swimming pools, as well as preserving the school nurse program.  

Michael Budkie has lasted 15 years in a career most people wouldn’t touch with a pooper-scooper: He studies the day-to-day life stories of animals stuck in laboratory experiments. 
  

In an age of blogs, tweets, hacks and piles of beans spilled by WikiLeaks, the notion of media censorship might seem dated. But the rundown of stories Project Censored calls attention to this year serves as a reminder that mainstream media outlets favoring the superficial over the substantive don’t give us all the information we need.
  

In Egypt today the downside of revolution is beginning to be felt. During two weeks recently spent there on a tour to see the ancient sights, and then on my own for several days in Cairo, most people I talked to were ready for order to happen, although glad to have moved ahead.  

Last month evangelical leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Values Voter Summit, where disciples of the Pissed-Off Jesus harrumphed about how much America sucked. That’s when the bomb ignited.  

Even as a lawsuit against the city over its “chronic nuisance” ordinance meanders through the federal court system, City Council voted last month to expand the ordinance’s fines, opening a new chapter in the rancorous history of City Hall’s crackdown on troubled housing units and so-called absentee landlords.    

Two-time candidate for Ohio’s 2nd Congressional district David Krikorian has proposed that the state adopt a public banking system in the form of the Public Bank of Ohio (PBO), which would “alleviate the squeeze on credit, greasing the gears of capitalism for small business, the engine of economic growth.”