Luke Visconti, keynote speaker for the Skanner's 21st annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast, said the key to a thriving economy is the inclusion of people of color into corporate America. Businesses that establish a high level of racial diversity tend to be more successful than companies who do not, he said. In his rousing speech, Visconti called upon policy makers to be more inclusive of differences, more attentive to Iraqi civilian deaths and to quickly rebuild New Orleans.

Instead of selling cookies or setting up for camp, the Girl Scouts in troops 60 and 1501 are visiting the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville — Oregon's only prison for women. Most of the girls are visiting their mothers; others visit aunts, sisters or grandmothers.

WASHINGTON — For all those historians and political naysayers, Sen. Barack Obama's allies like to point out that Abraham Lincoln served just two years in the House before becoming president.
It's a comparison certain to be repeated as Obama, with slightly more than two years in the Senate, continues to align himself with the Civil War president. The senator's expected campaign kickoff is scheduled for Feb. 10 in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Ill. — where both men served in the state Legislature.
Obama filed paperwork for a presidential exploratory committee Tuesday, which allows him to raise money and organize a campaign structure before his formal announcement. He also talked about his plans in a video on his Web site.
If elected, he would be an obvious subject for the history books — the first Black president.

Hundreds of people braved the unusually cold weather on Jan. 15 to participate in the 25th annual Martin Luther King Day Rally and March at Franklin High School. The event is one of the largest and longest continually running King celebrations in the country.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Vowing to keep pressure on lawmakers to do more to help the poor, a few hundred anti-poverty activists marched to the Capitol and rallied on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Speakers invoked the memory of King, saying that by focusing on poverty they were continuing his work.
"If Martin could die for the struggle of the poor, I can live for it," Jeffrey Carrol of VOICES, a Spokane-based anti-poverty group, said Monday.
Carrol, who said he marched in civil rights rallies in Mississippi and Louisiana in the 1960s, led marchers in chants as they walked the six blocks from St. John's Episcopal Church to the Capitol in frigid temperatures.
"We came to let (lawmakers) know that they're not paying attention," Carrol said. "Poor people are dissatisfied."
Jesse Miller, vice chairwoman of the Statewide Poverty Action Network, said the groups were trying to pressure lawmakers to solve some of the root causes of poverty, such as lack of health care and education.

SEATTLE — The Puget Sound area, known for months of off-and-on drizzle rather than subfreezing winter weather, was hit by another round of snow Tuesday, snarling traffic and closing schools for more than 380,000 students.
With snow falling before daybreak across much of the state west of the Cascade Range and one to three inches expected in most areas before noon, traffic snarls developed quickly in the morning commute following the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.

African Americans are under-represented as blood donors and in the National Marrow Donor Program. In blood and bone-marrow donation, ethnicity is critically important in matching blood types and marrow donors for patients with life-threatening diseases.

A self-taught artist, Anamelechi communicates through an art form he calls "communal interactive installations." The Igbos refer to it as "mgbe"-moment, where art, ritual, myth, nature, healing and community converge to connect the living, spiritually, to the ancestors and the earth. Anamelechi describes his expressions as "living art, or art for life's sake,"

Cherie Seymour and Soul Moving performed Jan. 15 in the Concert 4 Peace during Seattle's "Celebrating the Dream" observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the Seattle Center.

Kimberly Howard, left, managing director at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, and Joyce Harris light the candles during the closing ceremony of the cultural center's Kwanzaa celebration on Monday.