by Maya Rhodan
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – When Samuel Cephas was a child, he recalls his mother, preaching the importance of a solid education.
“Everything was about education,” Cephas says of his Cuban-born mom. The youngest of four, he remembers taking his schoolwork seriously—from the private school he attended while living in the South Bronx in New York, to the Catholic school and summer programs he enrolled in after his family moved to Connecticut.

Education was his priority.

It was almost natural, then, after his mother died in the late 90s, for Cephas to set out and start a business that allowed him to instill the value of education to children of his heritage in Hartford, Conn.

He began by focusing on American Indian children. Cephas is half Native American, who represent about 1 percent of the population of Hartford, but lived mainly in the inner city.

“When I look at Natives, we were the last of the last,” Cephas says.

REGINA BENJAMIN (Photo:SurgeonGeneral.gov)

by Alison Harding

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin announced late Wednesday that she will step down next month after four years in the post.

by Hope Yen

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a first, America's racial and ethnic minorities now make up about half of the under-5 age group, reflecting sweeping changes by race and class among young people. Due to an aging population, non-Hispanic Whites last year recorded more deaths than births.

These two milestones, revealed in 2012 census estimates released Thursday, are the latest signs of a historic shift in which Whites will become a minority within a generation, by 2043. They come after the Census Bureau reported last year that whites had fallen to a minority among newborns.

An unidentified woman and man walk away from the scene of a shooting after talking to police Thursday, June 13, 2013, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

by Jim Salter

ST. LOUIS (AP) — An argument inside a St. Louis home health care business escalated into gun violence Thursday when a man shot three other people before turning the gun on himself, police said.

The shooting occurred at AK Home Health Care LLC, one several small businesses inside the Cherokee Place Business Incubator south of downtown St. Louis. The shooter gunned down another man and two women before turning his semi-automatic handgun on himself, Police Capt. Michael Sack said.