Kids won't be the only miserable people during these waning days of summer, when the first day of school lurks like a dour detention officer. The retailers selling students back-to-school clothing, supplies and gadgets will be pretty sad souls too. According the National Retail Federation, the average family with K-12 students will spend $548.72 on school merchandise, a 7.7% decline from 2008. Britt Beemer, founder and chairman of America's Research Group, a retail consulting firm, predicts spending will drop ...

Terrorist groups often boast about their unity of purpose, the single-minded pursuit of their apocalyptic goals. But when it comes to leadership succession, history shows they are rarely united. The death of a charismatic leader often leads to fragmentation and infighting, followed by a loss of focus and effectiveness. Case in point: al-Qaeda's Iraqi arm never recovered from the killing of Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi. Is that the fate now awaiting Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan after the death of ...

The dead always tell a story. And in Mexico that story is the fight for the right to meet U.S. demand for illegal drugs -- a war becoming more violent and ruthless, mostly because of one group. Its name is Los Zetas. Imagine a band of U.S. Green Berets going rogue and offering their services and firepower to drug cartels. That's what happened in Mexico in the 1990s. Commandos from the Mexican army deserted and set up a cartel, known ...

One of the most telling, and overlooked, aspects of the brouhaha over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the particular cast of Gates' defenders. There was Deval Patrick, the fresh-faced black governor of Massachusetts, who called the arrest "every black man's nightmare." There was Vernon Jordan, noting that the event "tells us that the election of Barack Obama did not automatically erase racism." There was former Congressman Harold Ford, moderate to a fault, passionately insisting that once ...

President Barack Obama did his best to keep health-care reform on track with his Wednesday evening press conference, but after months of choosing to let Congress manage the day to day details, there is only so much he can do to speed along the process. He continued that effort on Thursday, dispatching chief of staff and former House Democratic Conference Chairman Rahm Emanuel to Capitol Hill to try to ease the concerns of the group of key, fiscally-conservative Democrats ...

Legendary newsman Walter Cronkite's funeral will be held at 2 p.m. ET Thursday at St. Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan, his family announced. The longtime CBS news anchorman and his family attended St. Bartholomew's, an Episcopal church. Andy Rooney of the CBS show "60 Minutes" and Cronkite's son Chip Cronkite are scheduled to be among the speakers. Cronkite, who was known as "the most trusted man in America," died Friday at age 92. From 1962 to 1981, ...

North Korea on Thursday launched a scathing personal attack on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, raising comparisons with previous colorful comments about the West by the communist regime. At a meeting of southeast Asian nations in Phuket, Thailand, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman blasted Clinton for what he called a "spate of vulgar remarks unbecoming for her position everywhere she went since she was sworn in," according to the state-run KCNA news agency. The spokesman called Clinton "by ...

When David Halberstam wrote his 1979 book, "The Powers That Be," about four powerful news organizations and how they shaped the national dialogue, he focused on three print publications -- Time magazine, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times -- and one television network: CBS. The reason for CBS was obvious. The "Tiffany Network" had the most renowned television news division in the country, and its heart, soul and face was the man whose carefully modulated tones defined its ...

Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman known as "Uncle Walter" for his easygoing, measured delivery and "the most trusted man in America" for his rectitude and gravitas, has died, CBS reported Friday. Cronkite was 92. "Walter was always more than just an anchor. He was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day; a voice of certainty in an uncertain world," President Obama said in a statement Friday. "He was family. He invited us ...

Under swirling clouds, its four-story hull illuminated by lanterns tied to its masts, the massive warship sinks beneath the waves. For more than two centuries, Peter Monamy's dramatic painting was one of the few images available of the tragic end of HMS Victory, which mysteriously disappeared, along with its crew of 1,100 men, one stormy night in 1744. Now, however, shipwreck salvage company Odyssey promises to fill out the picture. On Feb. 2, the Florida-based company announced it had ...