Program Note: Sarah Palin’s former pastor describes how he expects her religious beliefs to influence her decision-making… Watch Rani Kaye’s exclusive report 360° tonight 10 ET.

Randi Kaye | Bio
AC360° Correspondent

Since joining the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin hasn’t said a peep about her religion so we decided to look into her beliefs for a piece on AC360 tonight.

She calls herself a Christian, but identified herself more specifically as a Pentecostal for most of her life. She had been a member of the Wasilla Assembly of God church from the time she was a young girl until 2002, when she left the church to join a non-denominational church that is more mainstream.

The McCain campaign has said Palin doesn’t consider herself a Pentecostal.

Some Pentecostals speak in tongues, and believe in “faith healing” and “end times”, a violent upheaval that will bring the second coming of Jesus and only believers will be saved.

We’ll have an interview with Palin’s pastor from the Assembly of God and let you know if Palin ever spoke in tongues.

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The view from Randi Kaye's windshield as she drives through Gustav to reach Baton Rouge.

Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent | BIO

We are on our way to Baton Rouge to meet some of the folks who evacuated from New Orleans. I’m with my producer, Chuck Hadad.

We flew into Jackson, Mississippi because the Baton Rouge airport was closed. At first, it was just raining… now it’s storming and the wind is rocking our car back and forth pretty fiercely.

At first we thought the drive would be a breeze, but now we’re seeing big downed trees in the road and it’s nearly impossible to see through the rain out the front windshield. We are following our crew which is in the car ahead of us and we can barely see them. At this point, we are still 70 miles away… Not good!

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Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent

I’m here in Orlando Florida covering the Caylee Anthony story. You may know by now she’s the girl that’s been missing for more than two months now.

Her mother, Casey Anthony, didn’t report she’d disappeared for more than five weeks. She’s now in jail charged with, among other things, child neglect.

I just wrapped up an interview with Caylee’s grandparents, Cindy and George Anthony.

They were swarmed by the media, as they a have been, but especially today since they are spending the day driving around a massive mobile billboard with little Caylee’s face plastered on it, asking the question,

“Have you seen me?”

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Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent

What do you think really happened to Caylee Anthony?

She’s the little girl from Florida who her mother says was last seen June 9th. But her mother, Casey Anthony, didn’t report her missing until July 15th.

She’s in jail in Orlando charged with child neglect and apparently is refusing to work with investigators.

First she said she left her daughter with a baby sister at an apartment which police later found out had been vacant for six months. Now she says she knows what may have happened to Caylee but won’t give up any information until she is released from jail. That really puts investigators in a pickle, huh?
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Program Note: CNN’s Campbell Brown investigates the nation’s crumbling infrastructure in a special report, “Roads to Ruin: Why America is Falling Apart.” Special guests include California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. Friday, 8 p.m. ET

Mercedes Gorden in the hospital. She has had nine surgeries since the bridge collapse last year.

Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent

When I came to Minneapolis a year ago to report on the collapse off the Interstate 35W bridge, it was still laying in the Mississippi River. Huge chunks of steel and concrete lay twisted in the water. The cause was found to be a design flaw. That bridge had been built in 1967.

Today, it is a different story. The new bridge spanning the Mississippi is nearly done, two months ahead of schedule. It is a concrete bridge that cost about $250 million to build. If it is done by September 15th, the contractor will get a bonus of $27 million. That’s the good news. The bad news is that many of the victims from that horrible day are still recovering. More than 145 people were injured when the bridge buckled, and 13 were killed. Some of the bodies weren’t found for weeks. Some of the survivors are still dealing with post traumatic stress disorder. They still have nightmares about falling off a bridge.

I spent some time yesterday with one survivor. Her name is Mercedes Gorden. She has had nine surgeries since the bridge collapse.
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Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent

One year ago I came to Minneapolis to report on the Interstate 35W bridge which had collapsed suddenly into the Mississippi River.

It happened during rush hour. Thirteen people died and more than 100 were injured. You may remember the terrifying images of a school bus full off children trapped on top off the bridge and the cars dangling from the bridge.

I lived and worked in this city for seven years so it felt very personal to me. I was a reporter here and crossed that bridge hundreds of times. I never expected it would collapse, nor did anyone else. But our infrastructure isn’t what it used to be. I’ve talked the folks who study this stuff.

Most of our bridges were built around World War II. They were designed to last about 50 years. I’m told the average age of a bridge in our country is about 43. Here’s what’s really scary though: the Federal Highway Administration said in 2006, one quarter of the nation’s nearly 600,000 bridges were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Can you imagine?

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Reporter Randi Kaye stuck in the airport.

Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent

Who ever said life in television news was glamorous?

I guess on certain days it might be, but sometimes just trying to get from point A to point B is a nightmare.

I came to Minneapolis on Tuesday so I could spend the next day shooting with Al Franken, who’s running for U.S. Senate in Minnesota.

My flight was smooth as silk. My shoot with Al Franken was great. We went to a county fair, played games, he won me a stuffed animal, and of course we talked politics, and lots of it.

This is of course one of the most watched Senate races in the country and one of the most expensive. Franken has raised more than 11 million dollars. But I digress…

I’m writing today to share with you, and vent, about my trip home. Keep reading

Wanted to share some news with you. The News and Documentary Emmy Nominations were announced today and Anderson Cooper 360° has been nominated for two reports. We share the original pieces below, with a note from ac360° nominees Gary Tuchman and Randi Kaye:

______________________________________________________
EMMY NOMINATION:
OUTSTANDING FEATURE STORY IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCAST
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°

Report: Unapproved Drugs
AC360° Correspondent: Gary Tuchman

The FDA approves all the prescription drugs sold in your pharmacy. Right? Wrong. Many drugs that haven’t been approved by the government have been available for sale for years. And some of them have killed the people who have taken them. Why is this allowed? Our report investigates:

______________________________________________________
EMMY NOMINATION:
OUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM IN A REGULARLY SCHEDULED NEWSCAST
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°

Report: Chicago Police Brutality
AC360° Correspondent: Randi Kaye

Bar fights, allegations of abuse, arrests for stolen merchandise. These are not your everyday criminals, these allegations are against Chicago cops and very little discipline is ever handed down. We investigated why little is done to cops despite getting up to 50 allegations of misconduct. Watch our report here:

Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent

Wait ’til you hear this!

So many of you were fired up about yesterday after I blogged about Army Specialist Jeremy Hall, an atheist soldier who is suing, among others, the Department of Defense and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

We were flooded with responses!

Specialist Hall alleges the military is becoming a Christian organization. He says his religious freedom protected under the First Amendment was violated.

If you missed the original blog, Hall was raised Baptist, said grace before dinner and read the bible each night before bed. Then a friend, a fellow atheist, suggested he read the Bible again. When he did, Hall says he had so many questions that he decided to embrace atheism. He no longer believes in God, luck, fate, or anything supernatural.

That change in Hall’s beliefs, he says, cost him his military career and nearly cost him his life in Iraq. He says his life was so at risk that the army assigned him a full-time bodyguard and even sent him home early from Iraq.

Hall says he was ostracized for not embracing fundamentalist Christianity in the military. At Thanksgiving two years ago, Hall says he was told to sit at another table because he refused to pray at mealtime.

After he was nearly killed during an attack on his humvee, Hall told me, a fellow soldier asked him “do you believe in Jesus now?” Keep reading

Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent

Is the United States Military becoming a Christian organization? That’s what one U.S. soldier tells us.

I met Army Specialist Jeremy Hall in Kansas City a few weeks ago. He’s based at Fort Riley, in Junction City, Kansas about an hour away.

At 24, he’s a remarkable young man determined to complete one final mission. That is to win a lawsuit against the federal government.

Specialist Hall is suing the Department of Defense and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for failing to protect his religious freedom. He says the military discriminates against non-Christians and his rights under the First Amendment were denied.

Hall has served two tours in Iraq as a gunner. He’s back at Fort Riley now only because he says his life was threatened after it became public he is an atheist. Keep reading