60 Minutes Television Program

Granting the wish of right-to-die advocate Jack Kevorkian, Michigan prosecutors charged the retired pathologist Wednesday with first-degree premeditated murder and with assisting in a suicide after he euthanized a terminally ill man whose last moments were broadcast on national television.

The death of CBS News' pit-bull reporter Mike Wallace marks not only the passing of a broadcast lion but in many ways also the brand of journalism he helped to define. Wallace, 93, died late Saturday at a care center in New Canaan, Conn., where he had been staying for the last few years. CBS plans an hourlong tribute to Wallace and his career on "60 Minutes" next Sunday. In announcing his death, CBS lauded the brazen tactics that it said had made Wallace a household name "synonymous with the tough interview -- a style he practically invented for television more than half a century ago. " "All of us at CBS News and particularly at '60 Minutes' owe so much to Mike," Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and a longtime executive producer of "60 Minutes," said in a statement released Sunday.

A federal judge Thursday rejected a Los Angeles-area dentist's suit to bar the scheduled Sunday broadcast of a "60 Minutes" interview he claims he was deceived into granting. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. means that CBS can air the segment, titled "Drilling for Dollars," in which television reporter Diane Sawyer confronts Dr. Howard M. Stein with accusations of malpractice and fraudulent billing.

Discussing in strikingly personal terms his order to escalate the war in Afghanistan, President Obama said Sunday that sending 30,000 new combat troops was the hardest decision of his presidency so far. Obama called his Dec. 1 speech at West Point announcing the deployment the "most emotional speech I've made." "I was looking out over a group of cadets, some of whom were going to be deployed in Afghanistan," Obama said in a "60 Minutes" interview taped Dec. 7 and broadcast Sunday night, for which CBS provided a transcript.

Andy Rooney solemnly returned to "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, emphasizing that he was not a racist and saying that he had not intended to hurt homosexuals with a statement he had made about gays during a CBS-TV special program. The "60 Minutes" commentator was reinstated by CBS News three weeks after being slapped with a three-month suspension over remarks about blacks and gays attributed to him in The Advocate, a Los Angeles-based gay magazine.

A former Arkansas state employee whose lawsuit alleging marital infidelity by Bill Clinton helped trigger a crisis for the Arkansas governor's Democratic presidential campaign announced Saturday night that he will drop the suit, saying the media "have made a circus out of this thing, and it's gone way too far."

The death of CBS News' pit-bull reporter Mike Wallace marks not only the passing of a broadcast lion but in many ways also the brand of journalism he helped to define. Wallace, 93, died late Saturday at a care center in New Canaan, Conn., where he had been staying for the last few years. CBS plans an hourlong tribute to Wallace and his career on "60 Minutes" next Sunday. In announcing his death, CBS lauded the brazen tactics that it said had made Wallace a household name "synonymous with the tough interview -- a style he practically invented for television more than half a century ago. " "All of us at CBS News and particularly at '60 Minutes' owe so much to Mike," Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and a longtime executive producer of "60 Minutes," said in a statement released Sunday.

CBS News anchor Dan Rather's 2 1/2-hour talk with Bill Cosby revolving around the murder of the comedian's son will be edited down to air Sunday as a standard-length segment on the network's "60 Minutes" newsmagazine. Spokespersons at CBS News said the "60 Minutes" story on Cosby, which will run 11-12 minutes, will be an extension of segments of the conversation that aired last Monday on "CBS This Morning" and "The CBS Evening News."

Three weeks after being slapped with a three-month suspension over remarks attributed to him about blacks and gays, "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney was reinstated Thursday. He will be back on the air Sunday. "Andy Rooney and I have discussed at length the events that led to his suspension as well as the debate that has ensued over the past month," CBS News President David Burke said in a statement announcing his decision to rescind his earlier discipline against the 70-year-old newsman.

Jeff Fager lives in a place that CBS colleagues of the heir apparent to run "60 Minutes" jokingly refer to as "FagerWorld." It's a place of happy families and enchanted careers, "where even the in-laws are beautiful," says Fager's boss, CBS News President Andrew Heyward, and "your show gets a time period move and the ratings go up instead of down." Now he's been given the job of running the oldest, most influential of TV news magazines.

President Obama on Sunday dismissed the uproar over Rep. Joe Wilson's heckling during the president's Wednesday speech to a joint session of Congress, suggesting it was only a distraction -- even as some members of Obama's party threatened to punish the South Carolina Republican. "This is part of what happens. I mean, it becomes a big circus instead of us focusing on healthcare," Obama said in an interview on the CBS news program "60 Minutes." Obama noted that Wilson later apologized, which "I appreciated."

When it comes to reporting news, and even the less-urgent doings of the world, plainness is a virtue. The awfulness or delight of any truly awful or delightful story will speak for itself; complex issues do not benefit from screaming. The stopwatch that ticks through the CBS television newsmagazine "60 Minutes" perfectly encapsulates the straightforward, unadorned approach that the program -- created by Don Hewitt, who died Wednesday at age 86 -- has maintained since it went on the air in 1968 (a year in which there was much screaming, from many sides)

Amid all the applause, Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III did take a little flak when he backed out of a promise to first appear on NBC's "Today" in favor of CBS' "60 Minutes." The official reason was a request by the pilots association to hold off until the investigation into the water landing of US Airways Flight 1549 progressed, but insiders believed that Sullenberger's publicists had decided that "60 Minutes" was a bigger, better platform. (A book deal is already in the works.

President-elect Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was assembling his national security team as quickly as possible because there potentially could be "times of vulnerability" to terrorist attacks during White House transition periods. In a wide-ranging interview on the CBS News program "60 Minutes," Obama also said that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden remained a "critical aspect" of the war on terrorism. "He is not just a symbol," Obama said.

Obama interview: "60 Minutes" said it would broadcast an interview with President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, on Sunday night. CBS News correspondent Steve Kroft is scheduled to conduct the interview today.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an American television interview aired Sunday that Iran was neither building a nuclear bomb nor headed to war with the United States. The president's motorcade arrived Sunday at the Midtown Manhattan hotel where he will be staying while he appears at a series of events including the U.N. General Assembly and a forum today at Columbia University. Ahmadinejad's appearances appear aimed at presenting his views directly to a U.S.

"This is so much better than the 'wrap' party for 'South of Sunset,' " quipped Howard Stringer, president of the CBS Broadcast Group. No fooling. The CBS detective series was canceled after one episode last month. The party Stringer was attending here Wednesday night was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of "60 Minutes."

On the screen was Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes," the biggest of the big stars on the biggest, most profitable CBS series of them all. There he was in his protective vest one Sunday last September, inside maximum-security Pelican Bay, California's controversial high-tech dungeon that houses the worst of the state's bad apples, asking tough questions about alleged inhumane treatment.

Faced with the need to replace Ed Bradley in midseason, "60 Minutes" won't even bother. His workload will be spread around, and, in a unique arrangement for the CBS program, his top producer will run a reporting unit for stories available to all on-air correspondents. "It's a long-term project to find the next full-time person who can show the abilities that are expected of a '60 Minutes' correspondent," said Jeff Fager, the show's executive producer. Even before Bradley's death Nov.

"60 Minutes" will give its late correspondent Ed Bradley a send-off on Sunday with an hourlong tribute that features interviews with close friends and a solo by jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. Bradley, a 26-year veteran of the CBS newsmagazine, died Thursday of complications from leukemia. Sunday's special includes Steve Kroft's interviews with some of Bradley's closest friends, musician Jimmy Buffett, journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Marsalis.