tonight on "nightline," that's the way it is. from covering kennedy's assassination to challenging the vietnam war, he changed the face of television and became the most trusted man in america. tonight, broadcasting legend walter cronkite has passed away at the age of 92. the snake wranglers. they're beautiful, they're powerf powerful, but one sudden strike can be lethal. and suicide attack. terrorists posing as hotel guests targeting western tourists with homemade explosives. and one attack is caught on

tape. captions paid for by abc, inc. good evening. with his honest delivery and deeply resonant voice he transformed television news and became the most trusted man in america for more than a generation. broadcasting legend walter cronkite died tonight at his home here in new york after a prolonged illness. he was 92. it's unlikely we'll ever see a broadcaster of his stature again. a man who earned the respect of his viewers and the icons he covered and in the process became an icon himself, as john donvan now reports. >> good evening from our cbs newsroom in new york on this, the first broadcast of network television's first daily half hour news program. >> if we assess the career in

strictly commercial terms we'd be saying tonight that walter cronkite once starred in a hit tv show. ratings dominance comparable to "american idol," a following as fierce as oprah. but the show which was a man in a chair -- >> good evening, everyone. here is the news. >> it was the news, and that mattered. and when every night cronkite closed his broadcast by saying this -- >> and that's the way it is. >> for 19 years, when he said -- >> that's the way it is. and that's the way it is. >> people believed it. at a time when america more fully trusted journalists, it trusted cronkite more than anyone else. >> this is walter cronkite, goo night. ha tis about the times and some about the man. walter leyland cronkite was born the son of a dentist and born

well before television. raised in kansas city and in texas, and always interested in the news. he quit college to take a newspaper job and then he paid his journalistic dues. covering world war ii as a wire reporter. landing with the troops on d-day. flying along on bombing missions. he even appeared in a newsreel as the first u.s. newspaper man back from the battles in africa. >> i'm just back from the biggest assignment that any american reporter could have so far in in war. covering the occupation of north africa by american troops. >> though not well known at that point, he was clearly a young man on the move who loved newspapering. but television was just starting to take off then, all across america. the earliest days of what would ultimately become american's major source of news for the next half century. cbs, trying to build on its

excellent news reputation in radio recruited cronkite who took on a variety of assignments. >> we have word that the senate is about to convene. we take you now to rome. >> but it was who are his coverage of the nominating convention that cbs first coined the term anchor. >> here we are, in studio a. >> the roving newspaper man now had a desk job in television, but it was the right kind and it suited him. and shortly afterwards in first world changing story television had ever covered live -- here is a bulletin from cbs news. >> here is cronkite, whose relationship with his viewers was about to change forever. >> from dallas, texas, the flash apparently official. president kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. central standard time. 2:00 eastern standard time. >> here he was in charge, all authority, and now watch.

>> vice president johnson has left the hospital in dallas, but we do not know to where he has proceeded. presumably he will be taking the oath of office shortly. >> the moment became legend. he sat in that chair for most of the next four days and it accomplished the image of uncle walter, disciplined and honest, knowledgeable and direct, and very american. in short, a man americans could trust. >> good evening. president reagan -- >> but some of that also had to do with where the television business was back then. when cronkite was working there was no table news, no talk radio, no internet, just three networks. three anchormen. though for a time nbc had two, but that was it. there were practically no other names in tv news. >> and reporting the 1962 elections, cbs news startled a great many people. >> his style was let's say a lot drier than you would get from

anyone on the news today and faithfully neutral almost all the time. so when he did this broadcast just back from vietnam, and he came out and said this -- >> for it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of vietnam is to end in a stalemate. >> it had such impact that the president of the united states, lynd lyndon johnson is said to have lamented if i've lost walter cronkite, i've lost middle america. that couldn't happen today, one journalist so trusted today, his words could matter so much andh the way it is now ain't the way it used to be. rest in peace, uncle walter. i'm john donvan for "nightline" in washington. >> and late tonight, president obama released a statement after learning of walter cronkite's death. 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. the highest standard for all wh

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they're crafted. it's often said that where there are people there are phobias. we fear ail kinds of things from needles to spiders, to heights to congested spaces. what about snakes? well, in florida with its balmy client and swampy landscape, and some of them have become a serious threat, not only to other wildlife but humans as well. so much is a that hunters have been given the green light to fight back. as jeffrey kofman reports for our series "into the wild". >> you are either going to love these pictures of loathe them. snakes have that effect on

people. especially big snakes like these burmese pythons and boa constrictors. they are not native to the u.s., but here in florida they have made themselves very much at home in the swamps of the ever glades and in suburban miami. uncomfortably close to home. meet the members of miami fire rescue venom one. and should a snake like this show up in your neighborhood, they're on call. >> this is an eight-foot python. >> that is lieutenant lisa wood. like everyone on venom one, she actually loves snakes. >> it's an escad imal. >> why do you say that? >> its temperament is very good anmomost albino animal do not are bright and don't camoufge.y they get eatenen by things. >> and how lg -- >> this snake was recovered three weeks ago. >> yes. miami-dade? >> and what's your theory, how

did it get on to the street >> well, probably just crossing the street to get to the other side. lili the proverbial chicken. >> or maybe e after the proverbl chicken or the neighborhood cat like this python that swallowed a cat here a few years agogo. thor one that expded while ying to eat a six-foot gator. 20 years ago there were no pythons or boa constrictor ins the florida everglades. today they seem to own the place. how many do you figure are out there roughly? >> i don't know that there's any way of estimating the actual number that are out there. i don't think anybody has ever done -- >> a thousand, or thousands? >> probably tens of thousands. but there's been numbers floated much higher than that. i don't know if there's a way to estimate that. >> hundreds or thousands more? >> yeah. >> it's difficult say how they found their way into the everglades. wetlands -- >> there are several theories

and one fact they're here. they're here and gotting anywhere, but one ofhe theories is people letting their pet snakes go. which obviously that could have happened, but another theory is one that i go by is the hurricane andrew sort of theory, where they say right when a hurricane andrew hit in 1992, there was an import of very near the everglades. they had hundreds of these baby pythons that were blown right into the everglades. >> and because a female python 50 eggs or more a year, since hurricane andrew, the python population has exploded. >> you can see the power that they have and they are powerful constrictors. they're not venomous, but you could see their defense right away. >> today, florida declared war on the unwelcome predators of

the everglades, allowing a limited number of bounty hunters to dissect the population. >> we have been doing it out of university of florida and smithsonian institution and they're eating anything out there. as you know, the everglades have a number of threatened species and we are trying to bring the species back. today we have an invasive organism, so this is a serious threat. >> and that is just the beginning of a new assault on pythons. >> 911. >> this is an emergency. >> an horrific death in miami is being attributed to a pet python. >> my little baby is dead. the stupid snake got out in the middle of the night. >> the animal reportedly escaped

and got into the crib of the girl and crushed her. >> the congress of the united states needs to address this problem in law. >> there with senator bill nelson standing up there with a 16-foot python skin, calling for the ban on the import of all exotic snakes. >> it's just a matter of time before one of the snakes gets to a visitor in the florida everglades. >> make him feel secure. >> make him feel secure. >> what about me, don't i get to feel secure? >> make him feel secure so he won't feelike he'll fall. >> men and women say a ban on exotic imports won't work. what may work is a new florida law that requires owners of the exotic pets to register them and have a microchip implanted under the skin. they say that law should become standard across the country. >> banning the snake is not going to get rid of the trade, it will push them underground.

one thing to remember about the child that was killed by the snake, allegedly, that was improper, irresponsible snake keeping. it had -- he was keeping it illegally, and keeping it in a fish tank. they're for fish, not for snakes. >> it is not going to be easy and may be impossible. properly regulating snakes as pets and purging them from the everglades. >> i think i'm going to stick with our house cat mia. our thanks to jeffrey kofman. when we come back, i'm yours and he's ours. songman jason mraz is tonight's "playlist". what's up, smart? being smart. yep. just booked my 10th night on hotels.com, so i get a night free. you. me. getaway. really? #where? anywhere you want. a bed and breakfast?

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t 32 years old, the on la lair -- the popularity of singer/songwriter jason mraz continues to hit new heights here in the united states and around the world. his sound combines everything from reggae to rock, a kind of musical mosaic that not surprisingly was influenced by a wide range of artists as he explained to us tonight in tonight's "playlist". ♪ ♪ open up your mind and see like me ♪ ♪ open up your minds and then you're free ♪ ♪ and look into your heart and you'll find love love ♪ >> the day i wrote "i'm yours" i was in my room, and the sun wash

ining and the song came out. it was about surrendering to .omething greater than yourself twa t'thinking i wantedo write a regg sg,aeon but other genres can appear just out of nowhere. ♪ i am the eye in the sky >> the earliest music i remember from growing up, i actually recalled hearing alan parsons "i can read your mind". maybe it was on the radio a lot when i first started to pay attention to music. my mom picked up from my school, she s rocking to alan parsons, nom t sure. but i did find myself going on a quest a few years ago to put that music on my ipod, the songs that in ueedflnc me that i had the earliest memory of. ♪ i think my fans would be surprised to know that i still crank out p.m. dawn in my car. "set adrift on memory bliss", i probably lost my virginity to

that song. it was all rapping and harmonies ether.cong t and for me. that was doing it in thosesayngd anthd eyilstdo l .l i put it on from time to time. olr inmylfse stillle .esting atin c tclinito ♪ when i was in high school and college, dave matthews had gone from local band in virginia to really blowing up. and there's quite a few songs certainly in his -- certainly from his earlier catalog that i'm moved by. i still get starstruck when i enwh io sh da owith him.orew i ilm faa l nm . have him on in a different place, you know? ♪ there was a song by imogene heap

called "hide and seek". it's her accompanied with herself using modern technology, if you will, and she creates sounds and chords that i didn't know existed. d y evme iti heatiit, it lines a fire in me. -- it lights a fire in me. it makes me stoked to be a nger and makes me really excited to be workinon my next thing. ♪ i like to think of myself as a romantic. my favorite is maria callas performing. so if you can find that, you will weep. it needs to be on while you're cooking or while you're loving. it needs to be on any moment when you want to enhance your life romantically. ♪

>> i like singing live to singing in the shower, right, you've got this opportunity to hear your voice. echoing and resonating in this room. but imagine it that that shower is radio city music hall and yo hoec hais tt bi t er tyoupretot hh no k w? ♪ l

in jakarta, indo- -- indonesia, nine are dead, 52 are injured in coordinated suicide blasts that target paired of upscale hotels. a four-year lull in terror attacks was over. clarissa ward is in jakarta. >> martin, police here now believe that the suspected bombers were actually guests in the marriott hotel and that they detonated their bombs using homemade explosives that the police found in their rooms, number 1808. the marriott surveillance camera captured the final moment, leading to the deadly attack. a man pulling his suitcase before a blinding blast sent