American Morning
Tragedy at Fort Hood
Fort Hood, Texas (CNN) - Officers early Friday raided the apartment of a soldier suspected in the deadly shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, searching for clues as to what caused the military psychiatrist to allegedly gun down soldiers he had taken an oath to help, a police spokeswoman said.
The alleged gunman, identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire at a military processing center at Fort Hood, killing 13 and wounding 30 others, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said.
Hasan, a psychiatrist practicing at Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, was shot multiple times and was taken into custody, ending the shooting rampage Thursday afternoon, Cone said.
In the nearby town of Killeen, a SWAT team and FBI agents were searching Hasan's apartment to help determine what caused the shooting, which military experts called the worst mass shooting at an American military base, Carol Smith, a Killeen police spokeswoman, said early Friday. Read more
Unemployment check extensions are coming
By Christine Romans
The president today will sign an extension in unemployment benefits. Nationwide, it will be 14 more weeks for the jobless.
If you recently ran out of benefits, you can reapply for the extension. If you live in a high-unemployment state, with a jobless rate above 8.5%, you are eligible for 20 more weeks of jobless checks.
Many of you have asked if your state qualifies for 14 or 20 more weeks. Here are those high-unemployment states:
AL, AZ, CA, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KY, ME, MA, MI, MO, MS, NV, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, WA, WV. Also, Washington, D.C.
Ian's Law aims to close health insurance loophole
By Jim Acosta
It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while we get to do a story that has a real life-changing impact on somebody's life. Ian Pearl is one of those stories. He's the disabled man we profiled last month. Living on a respirator with muscular dystrophy, he was just weeks away from losing his health insurance.
His insurance company, Guardian, had canceled his coverage. Guardian had found a loophole in New York state law that allowed the company to drop his coverage as part of a slew of policies it had decided to dump. The Pearl family's lawyer showed us a Guardian company e-mail that had referred to Ian's policy as one of the "dogs." It was a reference to the fact that Ian's care costs a million dollars a year.
Well, one day after the story aired, the company reversed itself, apologized, and restored Ian's policy.
But the story doesn't end there. New York State Senator Eric Schneiderman has now announced legislation called "Ian's Law," which seeks to close that insurance loophole.
Because of Ian's condition, he couldn't make it to the news conference. But he appeared via video conference and announced his intention to see this law passed across the country and potentially on a national level.
Watch Ian speak at the news conference
One thing we didn't get to mention in our piece is that as a kid, Ian was a poster child for people with muscular dystrophy. He later became president of his high school.
Now Ian is a spokesman and leader once again, fighting for health care reforms that protect the disabled from a system that sometimes fails to safeguard this country's most vulnerable people.
Related: Insurance company does an about-face
About this Show
Welcome to the American Morning blog where you can get daily news updates from American Morning's reporters and producers. Join us for "the most news in the morning," weekdays from 6-9 a.m. ET, only on CNN.
On Twitter
