Tonight new details on the suspected Fort Hood gunman. New suggestions his problems were overlooked and he was promoted due to political correctness. We're keeping them honest. Plus, new data on the number of swine flu deaths. Plus, Anderson and Erica chat with Oscar the Grouch.
Want to know what else we're covering? Read EVENING BUZZ
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Gary Tuchman and Katherine Wojtecki
AC360°
Nathan Halbach is 22, with a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. He knows that "horrible stuff" lies ahead.
His mother, Pat Bond, has been taking care of him full time. But when she needed help, she reached out to the Roman Catholic Church.
After all, his father is a priest.
Nathan was born in 1986, during a five-year affair between his mother and Father Henry Willenborg, the Franciscan priest who celebrated Nathan's baptism. The Franciscan Order drew up an agreement acknowledging the boy's paternity and agreeing to pay child support in exchange for a pledge of confidentiality.
Now her son - the youngest of four children - may have just weeks to live. And when the Franciscans balked at paying for his care, she decided she was no longer bound by her pledge of confidentiality.
"I never asked for extraordinary amounts. I asked for the basic needs and care of my son," Bond said. But she said the church told her, "No, we are not Nathan's biological father, we have no legal obligation to your son."
Maureen Miller
AC360° Writer
Tonight on 360°, We’re digging deeper into the Fort Hood massacre. Suspected gunman Major Nadil Hasan was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder. Were the warning signs missed?
Over the last two years Maj. Hasan's superiors were reportedly worried he might be psychotic. Why didn't they take action? Instead he was recently promoted to the rank of Major. Some who knew him say political correctness played a role. Brian Todd reports on the new developments.
Also tonight, a priest's secret revealed. For years he's kept hidden the truth he fathered a son. The child's mother says church officials agreed to pay child support if she kept quiet. But when he got sick, she claims they largely abandoned them.
And, we have a special treat for you tonight. Oscar the Grouch of 'Sesame Street' fame will stop by to take part in tonight's shot.
Join us for these stories and much more starting at 10pm E.T. See you then!
Ready for today's Beat 360°? Everyday we post a picture – and you provide the caption and our staff will join in too. Tune in tonight at 10pm to see if you are our favorite! Here is the 'Beat 360°' pic:
The Jonas Brothers and Andrea Guasch of the Disney Channel Spain stand on the pitch during a visit to Santiago Bernabeu on November 12, 2009 in Madrid, Spain.

Have fun with it. We're looking forward to your captions! Make sure to include your name, city, state (or country) so we can post your comment.
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Gloria Borger
CNN Senior Political Analyst
The story so far: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does everything in her power to get health care reform passed by keeping her Democratic caucus together.
She keeps liberals by insisting on a public option. She works on fiscal moderates by re-jiggering it. She works on lowering the cost of the package. She pays for it by taxing millionaire couples, appealing to the class-warfare crowd.
And to keep the Catholic bishops (and their moderate allies) on board, she keeps severe restrictions on paying for abortion in the measure. The liberals, of course, threaten to bolt - but it remains in the final package.
This is not legislating; it's whack-a-mole.
The challenge is simply to try and keep your unruly team in line, and maybe pick up a stray vote or two from the opposition. If you succeed, it's not about bipartisanship. It's just salesmanship.
Program Note: Tune in tonight for more on religious preference in the military and whether or not certain red flags regarding Mah. Hasan were ignored. 10 p.m. ET.
AC360°
People who knew and studied Maj. Nidal Hasan say he was a loner who had no luck finding a wife, and a criminal profiler said the Fort Hood shooting suspect fits the profile of a mass murderer better than that of a terrorist.
Investigators are searching for any missed "red flags" that might have prevented last week's fatal shooting, which left 12 soldiers and one civilian dead and 40 other people wounded. However, the FBI has said its investigations indicate the "alleged gunman acted alone and was not part of a broader terrorist plot."
"A lot of people are jumping to the conclusion because this man spouted violent Islamic ideology that this is a terrorist attack," criminologist Pat Brown said.
Since last week's shooting at Fort Hood, Pentagon officials are faced with difficult questions regarding religious affiliation among the ranks.
Pentagon statistics compiled in August of this year show that there were 3,409 Muslims in the active-duty military. But since military personnel have no obligation to disclose their religion, many officials believe the actual number of Muslim soldiers could be at least 10, 000 higher than the Pentagon statistics.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, for instance, did not identify with a specific religion on his military record. This made us wonder about the breakdown of religious preference in the military.
More than one quarter of the personnel (26.3%) are identified as having indicated no religious preference or unknown.
Source: U.S. Department of Defense




Benjamin Ola. Akande, PhD
Dean, School of Business & Technology
Webster University
I’ve found racial and ethnic harmony in the most unexpected place, Sesame Street. Sesame Street is a world of respectful puppets and kind friends where everyone owns a piece of the neighborhood. With puppets (including those played by Webster University alumni Matt Vogel and Victoria Rudolph) representing the good in all of us, Sesame Street shows us the value in believing in ourselves and in the resilient energy to overcome, to persevere, and to make a difference.
Kermit the Frog taught us the value of friendship and reminds us all that we were all born original yet we spend the rest of our lives trying to be copies. Kermit challenges us all to strive to stay unique.
Big Bird taught us that we are all birds of different feathers and that life is not about how different we are but the difference we make. Big Bird challenges us all to continue to strive towards building relationships with others and not to confuse our net worth with our self worth.
It is the Count who introduces us to the intricate value of money and warned against the tendency of putting too much value on material things.
Aaron Bernstein, M.D.,
Children’s Hospital, Boston
Faculty, Center for Health and the Global Environment
Sometimes the best perspectives come from far away places and few places are farther from Boston than Singapore, a small yet highly developed island nation in southeast Asia where I spent much of October.
The distance between Boston and Singapore is more than geographic, however. While I was away, H1N1 reclaimed the national spotlight back home. Not a day went by without mention of it in the news. It became the topic of conversation among doctors and patients everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.
While everyone in Singapore knew of H1N1, it was hardly the hot topic it had become in the States. During my stay, the main paper in Singapore ran just one article on H1N1 informing its readership that the first vaccine doses wouldn’t arrive for several more weeks.
To my surprise, the Singaporeans I met took this news in stride. One reason for this is that many Singaporeans perceive (and rightly so) that H1N1 is, in many ways, no worse than the seasonal flu that comes every year. In addition, Singaporeans have endured two much more deadly epidemics in the past decade, making H1N1 pale in comparison. In 1998, the first known outbreak of Nipah virus occurred in Malaysia and Singapore infecting 276 people, 105 of whom died. In this and eight subsequent outbreaks in India and Bangladesh the virus has earned the grim reputation of being one of the deadliest viruses known, with a mortality rate between 40 and 80 percent. Nipah virus resides in bats (the “reservoir”, as bats do not get sick when infected). Bats infect pigs, and exposure to infected pigs causes disease in humans.
Patrick Doherty
Special to CNN
Before President Obama releases his strategy for Afghanistan, he should think twice about fully re-embracing Hamid Karzai.
By rigging the first round of elections with more than a million fraudulent votes, rigging the second round of elections with more than 500 'ghost' polling places to generate another flood of fake ballots and refusing to reform the electoral system, incumbent President Hamid Karzai abused his office to steal a democratic election from the people of Afghanistan.
Despite noises in Washington to the contrary, the thin veil of legitimacy Karzai enjoyed before the August elections is now gone, and the damage to any counterinsurgency strategy is immense. True counterinsurgency operations require the building of confidence and trust among ordinary citizens and their government - trust that it will deliver on whatever small expectations the Afghan people have of Kabul. To the extent that confidence was ever present, it is certainly now shattered.
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- About our show
- Father Henry, a secret father
- Live Blog from the Anchor Desk 11/12/09
- Evening Buzz: Hasan Warning Signs Missed?
- Beat 360° 11/12/09
- Pelosi plays whack-a-mole on health care
- Raw Data: Religious preference in the military
- Sesame Street – A place where everyone owns a piece of the street
- Preventing an epidemic: An eco-perspective
- Obama can't count on Karzai

