ABC World News is the flagship daily evening program of ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting Company television network in the United States. Currently, the weekday editions are anchored by Diane Sawyer and the weekend editions are anchored by David Muir. The program has been anchored at various times by a number of other people since its debut in 1953. It also has used various titles, including ABC Evening News from 1970 to 1978 and World News Tonight from 1978 to 2006.

The ABC first began a nightly newscast in fall 1953 with John Charles Daly as anchor of the then-fifteen-minute John Charles Daly and the News. Daly, who also hosted the CBS game show What's My Line? contemporaneously, anchored the news until 1960 with multiple hosts and formats succeeding him. Anchors during the early 1960s included^{[clarification needed]}Alex Dreier, John Secondari, Fendall Winston Yerxa, Al Mann, Bill Shadel, John Cameron Swayze (formerly of NBC), Bill Laurence, and Bill Sheehan. In 1962, Ron Cochran was made full-time anchor, serving until 1965. Then, in 1965, a twenty-six-year-old Canadian, Peter Jennings, was named anchor of Peter Jennings with the News.

World news or international news or even foreign coverage is the news media-jargon for news from abroad, about a foreign country or a global subject. For journalism, it is a branch that deals with news either sent by foreign correspondents or news agencies, or — more recently — information that is gathered or researched through distance communication technologies, such as telephone, satellite TV or the internet.

Although in most of the Anglophone world this field is not usually regarded as a specific specialization for journalists, it is so in nearly all the world. Particularly in the United States, there is a blurred distinction between world news and "national" news when they include directly the national government or national institutions, such as wars in which the US are involved or summits of multilateral organizations in which the US are a member.

Actually, at the birth of modern journalism, most news were actually foreign, as registered by the courants of the 17th century in West and Central Europe, such as the Daily Courant (England), the Nieuwe Tijudinger (Antwerp), the Relation (Strasbourg), the Avisa Relation oder Zeitung (Wolfenbüttel) and the Courante Uyt Italien, Duytsland & C. (Amsterdam). Since these papers were aimed at bankers and merchants, they brought mostly news from other markets, which usually meant other nations. In any case, it is worthy to remark that nation-states were still incipient in 17th-century Europe.

David Muir (born November 8, 1973) is an American journalist and anchor for ABC News, the news division of the ABC broadcast-television network based in New York City, New York.

Muir attended Onondaga Junior-Senior High School in Nedrow, a suburb of Syracuse, New York. He then attended Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1995. Following graduation, he attended the Institute on Political Journalism at The Fund for American Studies, affiliated with Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. He also studied at the University of Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain.

Muir spent five years as an anchor and reporter at WTVH television in his hometown of Syracuse. While in Syracuse, he filed reports from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel, as well as from the Gaza Strip following the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel. The reports earned him top honors from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. The Associated Press honored him for Best Enterprise Reporting and Best Television Interview. The Syracuse Press Club recognized him as anchor of the "Best Local Newscast" and he was voted one of Syracuse's "Best Local News Anchors."

Lila Diane Sawyer (born December 22, 1945) is the current anchor of ABC News' flagship program, ABC World News. Previously, Sawyer had been co-anchor of ABC News's morning news program, Good Morning America (GMA).

Born in Glasgow, Kentucky, Diane Sawyer is the daughter of Jean W. Sawyer – an elementary school teacher – and Erbon Powers "Tom" Sawyer, a judge. Soon after her birth, her family moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where her father rose to local prominence as a Republican politician and community leader; he was Kentucky's Jefferson County Judge/Executive when he was killed in a car accident on Louisville's Interstate 64 in 1969. E. P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park, located in the Frey's Hill area of Louisville, is named in his honor.

Sawyer attended Seneca High School in the Buechel area of Louisville. In 1963, she won the "America's Junior Miss" scholarship pageant as a representative from the State of Kentucky.

During the period from 1962–1965, Sawyer was "America's Junior Miss" touring the country to promote the Coca-Cola Pavilion at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair.

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.