towards the capital. this is the city of zawiya. on this day, even if you couldn t see the fire fight close up, you could hear its deafening sounds reverberating from the eastern part of the city. just getting too close. there are snipers on the tops of buildings. loud bangs. artillery fire. morta mortars. we ve got to get out of here. despite the major battle going on around him, a rebel fighter, who did not want to be identified to protect his family, was confident of victory. considering the fighting is to fierce here, how long before you think you re able to push into tripoli? hopefully a couple of days. or one week maybe. reporter: you think it s going to be that soon? i think so because we are, we are in control in 80% of zawiya. reporter: but to push forward, they need to secure the whole city where gadhafi s army is doing everything it can to keep hold of this town. why is zawiya so important? because of oil factory. reporter: zawiya has one of the last re
libya s moammar gadhafi on the brink of defeat which is good to hear, but possibly planning a final offensive against libyan civilians which could be chilling. the prospect of a blood thirsty, unpredictable and mentally unstable dictator lashing out, barbara starr broke the story. one u.s. official telling her, quote, he could be planning for a last stand. another saying it could be he could put civilians in the crosshairs. but both officials say they just don t know what form a final offense it might take. recent nato airstrikes are clearly upping the ante. our people there are telling us they are under way again tonight. loud explosions being heard in tripoli within the past hour. opposition forces telling us they re making use of the air attacks to try to make progress on the ground. those forces in zawia, fierce artillery fire could be heard today. opposition fighters telling our reporter they could be moving on the capital within a number of days. that could just be op
elsie granderson, a cnn.com columnist and steve perry an education contributor. the latest act scores show only one in four high school graduates is ready for college. the test used for college admissions shows only 66% of the 2011 class met the benchmark for english. 45% for math. 30% for science. so steve, do these figures accurately reflect student preparedness? it absolutely does reflect how prepared students are because if it were the a.c.t. in and of itself we may be able to write it off. at least one third, one third of children going into college are taking remedial classes. in addition to that, we can look at the state standardized examinations in addition to some of the internationally normalized standardized examinations and what we re finding is that american students are simply not prepared for college. elsie, as students prepare to go back to school, many teachers are not, brutal budgeting season this summer has left most of america in pretty education dire
steven moore and robert reich, labor secretary during the clinton administration. currently he s a professor of public policy at the university of california at berkeley and author of aftershock, the next economy in america s future now out in paper back. ali, what happened today? reporter: we had a situation where it s not just fear we were talking about. this was actual fact. we started this morning with slow bad markets out of europe. then before the markets opened we got this report from morgan stanley which talked about slow growth around the world, telling us things we already knew. but they said we re on the precipice of a recession. they also cited errors in policy making here in the united states and in europe, and they said it s likely that european central bank and the fed would have to get further involved in this economy. now, you know all week we ve been talking about rick perry saying it would be treasonous for the fed to get involved. while his comments ma
jessica, what do you know about the president s plans for next month? after labor day he ll reveal a jobs proposal that will have specifics in the way his critics have been calling for. according to my sources it will be actual legislation. that s real detail. i m told the package will be new initiatives and not a rehash of the policies we ve been hearing him promoting recently like patent reform or infrastructure bank. my sources say there will be proposals in three main categories. targeted tax cuts. another big one for the white house is new infrastructure investment and then long-term help for the unemployed. i should point out this is all being worked out right now. it will continue to be hashed out over the president s vacation. the president is meeting with his top economic advisers tomorrow. i m told it will come up there. republican leaders issued warning shots saying this package should not include any new spending. the president says it will. sounds like we shoul