In brief: Jeb Bush says he’ll decide on a presidential bid this year
WASHINGTON – Jeb Bush says all the speculation about whether he’ll run for president in 2016 is actually getting him more attention than if he had already entered the race.
The former Republican governor of Florida said that’s not by design, and that he’ll make his decision before year’s end.
He told Fox News Channel in an interview airing Sunday that the state of politics is “crazy right now.”
Bush said one factor in his decision will be whether he can deliver an optimistic, hopeful message without getting drawn into a political “mud fight.” He says the other main factor in his decision will be whether it’s OK with his family if he ran.
Bush has antagonized many Republicans by supporting an immigration overhaul and educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade known as Common Core.
On immigration, he said that those who come into the country illegally generally do so because they had no other means to provide for their family, and what they did is “not a felony.”
Rescued family defends trip decision
SAN DIEGO – The parents of a 1-year-old girl who fell ill and had to be rescued from a sailboat attempting to circle the world are defending their decision to sail with children.
Eric and Charlotte Kaufman said Sunday they remain confident they were prepared for the journey and are proud of their choices.
Their statement came hours after U.S. sailors rescued the couple, the baby girl and her 3-year-old sister.
Their sailboat broke down hundreds of miles off the Mexican coast, and the Kaufmans sent a satellite call for help Thursday when the baby fell ill and wasn’t responding to medications.
Four California Air National Guard members parachuted into the water and reached the boat Thursday night. The crew stabilized the girl and stayed with her until a Navy ship arrived.
NABJ co-founder Stone dies at 89
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Longtime journalist and educator Charles Sumner “Chuck” Stone Jr., one of the founders of the National Association of Black Journalists, has died. He was 89.
Allegra Stone said her father died Sunday at an assisted living facility in Chapel Hill, N.C. He’d been a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina for 14 years starting in 1991.
Many who helped launch the NABJ credited Stone as the driving force behind its founding, said the association’s current president Bob Butler.
“Chuck chaired the first meeting and became the first president. He provided the rudder that steered NABJ at a time when being a member was not always easy. Some employers back then told members to choose between their jobs and NABJ,” Butler said in a news release.
After serving as a Tuskegee Airman in World War II, Stone was a writer and editor at influential black publications in New York, Washington and Chicago through the early 1960s, using his writing to urge the Kennedy administration to advance the cause of civil rights. Subsequently, he served as an adviser to U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of New York.