The line-up for this year's POH HOP is out. The 12^th annual Portland Oregon Hip Hop Festival – a four-day extravaganza of some of the biggest and most-promising acts in Northwest hip-hop -- promises to be one of the biggest and best. Check back to The Skanner News in the coming weeks for more coverage of the artists featured at this year's festival.

Speaker and author Kevin Carroll will be joining Film Action Oregon at the Hollywood Theatre for a "Pep Rally for the Arts" to celebrate the University of Oregon's invitation to play in the BCS National Championship game.

From artistic expression in Harlem and in Haiti to youthful hopes of overcoming war and poverty in Sierra Leone and Colombia, the third season of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange transports viewers into the lives of men and women from different corners of the African Diaspora.

Tavis Talks about His Latest Special Report

Bruno Mars and Katy Perry are  iTunes best selling songs for Christmas week; Daft Punk and the cast of Glee top the Album list.

If 2010 made you feel like you wanted to hide in a closet and bury yourself under all the coats, then you were probably just trying to escape the storm of sleaze hurled this year by some of entertainment's finest -- or maybe you were just the woman Charlie Sheen called for that infamous late-night hookup.

VIDEOS: The Harlem Gospel Choir, Antoine Dodson, Chimney Intruder, Keyshia Cole, Key of Awesome, Black Eyed Peas parody, Obama signs Don't ask Don't tell, Wikileaks analysis, RIP Magnolia Shorty, Spiderman falls, the eclipse and the solstice, and international stories from Russia Tody, AFP, ABC and AL Jazeera

These are reviewer Kam Williams Best Nonfiction Books picks for 2010

NEW YORK (AP) -- The 1993 killing of a man outside a housing complex was a cold case for years until a suspect appeared on detectives' doorstep last week.
 

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- The latest marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail is dedicated to Roebuck ``Pops'' Staples, a well-known gospel singer and patriarch of the Staple Singers music group.