She is a published writer, an accomplished musician, the recipient of a Golden Gavel Award from the Princeton Model Congress, and she's only 16 years old.

Gussie Roc is not only quickly establishing herself as a young writer to watch, but she is also a model ambassador of goodwill who devotes her time to important social causes.

BlackVoices.com recently caught up with Roc, who spoke about what motivates her and why other teens should never give up on their dreams.

The saga surrounding WikiLeaks is playing out like a film -- espionage, blackmail, corruption. In fact, it is a recipe for a great film, and in many ways, we have seen elements of these real events on the big screen. For some, Australian-born Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, is a hero, but for others he is public enemy No. 1, an enemy of the state.

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is back in the news, and this time it's not for shooting someone. The former CEO of Halliburton, a name that has become synonymous with corruption over the past decade, is being sought by Nigerian authorities on bribery charges and "criminal conspiracy."

Last week, it was reported that at least one hundred people perished in Haiti due to cholera. Now, this week, CNN reports that over 1,500 people have perished already in Nigeria from the same intestinal infection. What is shocking is that cholera is an easily treatable condition.

The National Urban League Centennial Conference (NUL) begins this week in Washington, D.C., from July 28th to July 31st and follows the theme Empowerment Time: Past, Present, Future.

The conference will feature such speakers as President Barack Obama (who also spoke at the NUL conference as the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, pictured above), Maya Angelou, Sheila Jackson Lee, Benjamin Jealous, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Soledad O' Brien, Reverend Al Sharpton, and Andrew Young.

The recent oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is another shameful chapter in the increasing number of man-made offenses against the environment.

In late April of this year, an explosion aboard BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig resulted in 5,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil being spilled into the Gulf per day. The Deepwater crisis is considered one of the worst in human history. What is even more shameful is that across the Atlantic, there has been an oil crisis that has been raging for 50 years.

This month, Nigeria's Acting President, Goodluck Jonathan, made a monumental move in naming a woman as head of the country's oil ministry. This is the first time in the country's history that a woman has been appointed to such a position.

The burial chamber of a "mysterious" queen from Egypt's Old Kingdom of more than 4,000 years ago has been discovered outside of Cairo, according to French archaeologists, who made the announcement last week.

The archaeologists announced the finding of Queen Behenu's burial chamber, which contained "Pyramid Texts," consisting of green hieroglyphics picked out on white stone. Though the mummy of the queen had previously been destroyed, the pyramid texts remained. The team are unsure of whether Behenu was the wife of King Pepi I or II - both pharoahs of the Sixth Dynasty.

With the horrors in Haiti, the U.S. Census "Negro" controversy would seem to be a pretty nonexistent issue at the moment...on the surface at least.