LOS ANGELES (AP) -- U.S. album sales rose more than 3 percent last year for the first gain since 2004 - a sign that rising digital sales are finally stemming the decade-long decline of compact discs.

Ndour, who made the announcement late Monday on his private radio and TV stations, joins some 20 other candidates already running against President Abdoulaye Wade.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Los Angeles coroner's office says Jamaican-born rapper Heavy D died of natural causes.

AMSTERDAM (AP) -- The editor of a Dutch fashion magazine has been fired after the publication used a racial slur to refer to Barbados-born Rihanna, setting off a social media furor and prompting an outraged response from the singer.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A judge approved a pay bump Monday for the executors of Michael Jackson's estate who turned the debt-ridden singer's portfolio into a business that has earned hundreds of millions of dollars since his death.

LISBON, Portugal (AP) -- Cesaria Evora, who started singing as a teenager in the bayside bars of Cape Verde in the 1950s and won a Grammy in 2003 after she took her African islands music to stages across the world, died Saturday. She was 70.

Seattle's Shyan Selah has officially signed a deal with the Real Hip Hop Network, the first ever 24 hour television network dedicated exclusively to "all things Hip Hop," to license a "behind the scenes" reality show on Selah's life, career and work in the global community. Production and filming of the show will begin January 2012.

Quiz Zilla has created a dope music video that will hook you into a gore-streaked underworld of horror. Watch Quiz perform with M Eighty and the Free Agentz Saturday Dec. 17 in Vancouver, Wash.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A veteran Washington reporter's book about the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act will be released upon the legislation's 50th anniversary.

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Soul singer Howard Tate, who got a second chance at a musical career three decades after being derailed by disputes with industry executives, personal tragedy and drug addiction, has died at age 72.