NEW YORK (AP) -- Alicia Keys is heading back to high school. The Grammy-winning singer will visit the Professional Performing Arts School in Manhattan on Tuesday and donate music instruments to its students.

LONDON (AP) -- The soul diva who had Grammy-winning songs and fans around the world died with empty vodka bottles in her room and lethal amounts of alcohol in her blood - more than five times the British drunk driving limit, a British coroner ruled Wednesday.

Disney on Ice's "Toy Story 3" is coming to Portland this weekend and your family could be the lucky recipient of free tickets courtesy of The Skanner News!

Banks' basic thesis is that because Black females are generally better-educated and make more money than brothers, it's silly for them to restrict themselves to a dating pool of just Black men. Besides, he says Black males tend to take them for granted, and to think nothing of sleeping with more than one woman at once.

Kwei Quartey is a surgeon and mystery author whose sleuth, Ghanaian police inspector Darko Dawson, this year solved his second big mystery in "Children of the Street." Quartey's debut novel, a mystery also featuring Dawson, was "The Wife of the Gods."

L PRO will release his new Vertigo CD and Video at Teds Berbatis in downtown Portland  Friday Oct. 15. Don't miss this party and the incredible music from this powerful talent. Vertigo features 5th Sequence, DESTRO, Mic Crenshaw, Arkitek .....

We've been a community chorus for 24 years now; we will continue to be. But we will be doing more with respect to music in terms of helping people to understand and connect with it. As we have been a performing group in the past, we will now expand our teaching. Because we believe the spiritual has to endure whatever they're confronted with in life. That's demonstrated because of enslaved Africans who – we're here because they were able to endure.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Rihanna says she resented Chris Brown for a time, but has put that behind her and is happy that her former boyfriend has found success in music again.

Nevertheless the refiguring of this classic prairie love affair – for the first time ever set in an African American town -- has touched a nerve among Portlanders who've never heard the history of Black cowboys.

ISLAMABAD (AP) -- Carrots haven't worked with Pakistan. Neither have sticks. Now the U.S. has enlisted the power of jazz music to improve relations with Pakistanis at a time when the important alliance has hit rock bottom.