Shannelle County is in her own world. Leaning over the wide steel basin with her eyes barely open, the 18-year-old from Valley Stream beats at its dents with her rubber-tipped drumsticks in a gentle calypso that's eclipsed by the room's loud clanking pandemonium.

As the Notting Hill Carnival enters its final day, police say they are pleased with how it has gone so far.

Jamaican dancehall and reggae artist Beenie Man's Sept. 17 concert at Centennial Hall has been cancelled "due to ongoing concerns and pressures regarding Beenie Man's controversial lyrical content," its promoters say. Centennial Hall staff learned of the cancellation yesterday after only a handful of tickets had been sold.

Soca music has finally been given its own category in the Grammy Awards. This was announced on Friday at a gala cocktail reception for the International Soca Awards at the Trinidad and Tobago Consulate in New York.

MIAMI - Grammy-winning dancehall reggae star Beenie Man won't perform at a concert associated with the MTV Video Music Awards this weekend after gay groups planned a protest over his lyrics, the network said Wednesday.

Gay rights group Outrage! has condemned the Music of Black Origin (Mobo) Awards for nominating two artists whose songs include homophobic lyrics.

A Trinidadian contractor was killed and four of his Trinidadian workmen injured in a freak accident in Miami, Florida, early Sunday morning.

LONDON, August 20: Buju Banton's appearance at the Reggae Jam Festival in Saarbruecken, Germany, on September 3, has been cancelled. Concert appearances in Hamburg and Darmstadt have also been dropped.

A young gay man in Jamaica fled to a nearby churchyard looking for refuge from a chanting mob where, the London Observer reports, they cornered the man and shot him to death just because he was gay.

SAN FRANCISCO - Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc. are not liable for the swapping of copyright content through their file-sharing software, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in a blow to movie studios and record labels.