If you are the parent of a student who currently is in 5th or 8th grade, then you could be facing a major decision about which school to send your child to next year ... "Families have a lot of choices in Portland, more than in most places ... The first thing we suggest advise families to do is to find out about their neighborhood school." Here is how it works ...

President Robert Mugabe's regime has renewed assaults on dissidents, a human rights group said Tuesday, even as he faced more international pressure to step down amid a cholera outbreak that has killed nearly 600 people ... A stalled power-sharing deal has left Zimbabwe's leaders paralyzed -- and its people increasingly impatient. Last week saw demonstrations ...

The White House said Sunday it does not expect to make an announcement by Monday on a possible plan to prevent the collapse of the troubled U.S. auto industry.
The Bush administration is considering ways to provide emergency aid to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, which have said they could run out of cash within weeks without government help.
White House officials said they did not expect an announcement on any funding for the companies on Sunday or Monday. The aid probably would benefit General Motors and Chrysler. Ford Motor Co. has said it has enough cash to survive 2009 but asked Congress for a line of credit in case financial conditions deteriorate.
Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said, "I don't think they yet know what they are going to do ...

President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named New York City's housing commissioner to his Cabinet, turning to a former Clinton administration aide to help deal with an issue at the heart of the U.S. economic crisis.
If confirmed by the Senate, Shaun Donovan will lead the Housing and Urban Development Department at a time when the mortgage crisis is being blamed for the financial market turmoil that has dragged the U.S. into a recession.
Obama praised Donovan's record in New York City ..."We can't keep throwing money at the problem, hoping for a different result. We need to approach the old challenge of affordable housing with new energy, new ideas, and a new, efficient style of leadership. We need to understand that the old ways of looking at our cities just won't do ...

Roll over Beethoven -- Chuck Berry's house earns national recognition.
The modest one-story red-brick house in St. Louis where the rock 'n' roll pioneer lived for eight years in the 1950s has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, city officials confirmed Monday....
Berry and his wife bought the house in the city's Ville neighborhood in 1950, and lived there until 1958, when the family moved to a larger home, also in St. Louis. It was in the house that he refined his guitar style and wrote and rehearsed many of his classic songs -- "Maybellene," "Johnny B. Goode," "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Sweet Little Sixteen" ...

ATLANTA (AP) -- The racial gap in colon cancer death rates is widening, a new report says, and experts partly blame Blacks' lower screening rates and poor access to quality care.
Colon and rectal cancer death rates are now nearly 50 percent higher in Blacks than in Whites, according to American Cancer Society research being released Monday.
The gap has been growing since the mid-1970s, when colon cancer death rates for the two racial groups were nearly equal.
"We have seen this enormous progress in Whites. We could be seeing the same progress in Blacks, if we could overcome disparities in access to health care," said Elizabeth Ward, who oversees surveillance and health policy at the cancer society.
Colorectal cancer is the third leading cancer killer in the United States. About 50,000 Americans will die of the disease this year, the cancer society estimates ...

In May of 2006, Oregon Action held the first of five listening sessions on the practice of racial profiling among Portland police. More than two years, dozens of public meetings and thousands of traffic stops later, some say the problem has not gone away. And as the Racial Profiling Committee is dissolved into the newly formed city Human Rights Commission, it remains to be seen if the efforts will produce tangible results. Leading some of this criticism is Ron Williams, the organizer for Oregon Action's multiphase Community Campaign to End Racial Profiling. He says motorists are still being stopped for Driving While Black, despite a commitment by the city to eliminate the illegal practice that many in the police bureau still deny occurs ...

Despite positive academic results from many of Portland's small schools, the educational experiments mounted in mostly minority schools remain a hot point for the district's critics. Test scores show that small schools have boosted academic achievement for many students, but those schools offer far fewer class options -- particularly when it comes to college level credit opportunities. At the same time plunging enrollment has led to the closure of at least one school within a school, and threatens the future of others ...

North and Northeast Portland businesses are barely scraping by during this tough economic season.
However, armed with a new development grant, the North/Northeast Business Association hopes to jumpstart local enterprise with a special awards event as well as fresh resources for small business owners along the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard corridor.
"What we're doing is we're bringing in a majority of the business owners that have gone above and beyond the call of duty," said marketing and business outreach director RJ Floristan. At a gala event Dec. 5 ... the group will bestow special awards to area business owners, and present information about N/NEBA's new initiatives funded by its new state of Oregon Transforming Main Street grant.
"Our focus is the revitalization of this community," Floristan says. "When you drive down Sandy Boulevard you see Welcome to Hollywood, when you drive in the Northwest, you see Welcome to the Pearl District, well when you drive down MLK we want you to be welcomed to the Soul of Portland District ...

AIDS Awareness Training ...
Landlord Study Hall ...
Support for Lions Medical Work ...
Vision into Action Coalition ...