How ‘That’s the way it is’ became Cronkite’s tag line

Throughout his career as a television anchorman, Walter Cronkite had a few memorable run-ins with other powerful figures at CBS News, one of his producers told CNN. Sanford “Sandy” Socolow, who worked at CBS News for 32 years, more than four of them as Cronkite’s producer, said Cronkite ran into trouble soon after he took over for Douglas Edwards in the “CBS Evening News” anchor chair.

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Children forced into cell-like school seclusion rooms

A few weeks before 13-year-old Jonathan King killed himself, he told his parents that his teachers had put him in "time-out." “We thought that meant go sit in the corner and be quiet for a few minutes,” Tina King said, tears washing her face as she remembered the child she called “our baby … a good kid.” But time-out in the boy’s north Georgia special education school was spent in something akin to a prison cell — a concrete room latched from the outside, its tiny window obscured by a piece of paper. Called a seclusion room, it’s where in November 2004, Jonathan hanged himself with a cord a teacher gave him to hold up his pants

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Thousands gather for Steve McNair’s funeral

Thousands gathered Saturday for the funeral of former NFL quarterback Steve McNair, who was killed a week ago. “Steve was like a hero to me and heroes are not supposed to die,” Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young told the crowd, his voice cracking. “He inspired me,” Young said of his longtime mentor

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Michael Jackson’s boyhood home pays tribute

Michael Jackson was the pride of Gary, Indiana, growing up, and on Tuesday his hometown paid tribute to the late entertainer with a memorial and celebration in his honor. They remembered him as not just the King of Pop or the musician who took Hollywood by storm, but as someone with an unmatched enthusiasm and talent for entertaining even as a little boy growing up in this city of about 100,000 in northwestern Indiana, 30 miles from downtown Chicago, Illinois. Jackson’s first music teacher, Anita Hill, spoke of teaching Jackson to sing “Climb Every Mountain,” and remembered him as a “very energetic and wonderful student.” The principal of his middle school remembered how, at Christmastime how Jackson, always jumped up and offered to sing to his class

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Britain: Teacher quizzed after alleged classroom attack

Police in the United Kingdom are questioning a teacher on suspicion of attempted murder after one of this students was allegedly struck in the head with a metal weight. 14-year-old Jack Waterhouse sustained serious head injuries after the alleged attack during a science lesson at All Saints’ Roman Catholic School in Mansfield, central England Wednesday morning

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Drug-fueled gang wars shake Vancouver

When Canadian cocaine smuggler Charles Lai was being sentenced in a Seattle federal courtroom last month, the judge sending him to prison for 13 years offered a small item of good news. At least behind bars, Judge James Robart said, drug smuggler Lai would not become another fatality in Vancouver’s gang wars

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How Sarah Palin Mastered Politics

They called themselves the elite six — and the name was meant to be ironic. This was Wasilla, Alaska, 30 miles north of Anchorage, in the early 1990s — when the sagging economy meant, as a local recalls, “everyone had dust on their ass.” There was nothing élite about this little town on the stretch of highway along the railroad.

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