North Portland Library on 512 N. Killingsworth St. is currently scheduling young readers to participate in their twice monthly Read to the Dogs program. It's just what it sounds like – a very friendly, trained and certified companion dog sits down next to a young person and listens as the kid reads out loud from his or her favorite book. It's a good way to improve reading skills of all kinds with a supportive, special friend ....

The African American Outdoor Society celebrated a year of fantastic events with a dinner at the Audubon Society headquarters in Forest Park. Left to right, Lisa Fisher, Annmarie Rainford, Ellecia and Elliot Williams and their son and daughter, Cameron, 4, and Eva, 6, meet Finnegan the peregrine falcon, with his handler, Jennifer Parks.
Photo by Julie Keefe

The National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women (NOBEL/Women) and its 2008 national president, Oregon State Senator Margaret Carter, are hosting an educational symposium called "Living Without My Sugar!" Diabetes and the Heart, Friday, Nov. 14 from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Embassy Suites, 319 SW Pine St. Portland ...

Tickets for the 6th annual 2009 Portland Jazz Festival are on sale now. The festival runs Feb. 13-22 and celebrates a lifetime of Blue Note Records. Titled "Somethin' Else: Blue Note Records @70," the festival celebrates 70 years of all the artists that have been a part of the legendary record company ...

Poets, performers, teachers, writers – Walidah Imarisha and Turiya Autrey are all that. Now they're becoming promoters. Starting this week, they host a new series of conscious hip hop shows featuring the X-Vandals at shows, film screenings and lectures stretched between Portland and Eugene ...

The nation's unemployment rate bolted to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent in October as another 240,000 jobs were cut. The latest release of information by the Labor Department shows the crucial jobs market deteriorating at an alarmingly rapid pace ...

Rwandan President Paul Kagame said Tuesday his country's sovereignty was violated when an aide was arrested in connection with an attack that set off Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Rose Kabuye, Chief of protocol, was arrested Sunday ...

"No one cares about the children, living or dead," one furious father of children in the collapsed school outside of Port au Prince, Haiti ... 

For president-elect Barack Obama, there will be no time for resting on his laurels now that he has defeated John McCain. Immediately after he is sworn in Jan. 21, Obama will begin one of the toughest four-year tests a president has ever faced in the nation's history ...

Last Thursday at City Hall, 22 youth and grass-roots organizations celebrated their accomplishments and presented the highlights of their projects for the 2008 Rainier Beach and Central District Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. "We've empowered them to provide the programs they see as necessary to the community ...