boeing 777 yesterday. kudos for the cabin crew getting all passengers out. questions as well about what led to all of this as flight 2276 began its takeoff. according to the faa a fire in the left hand engine prompted the crew to abort the takeoff and take steps to snuff out the flames. tonight, however, a source close to the investigation tells us the plane s fire suppression system didn t work. they want to know did it simply not function? or did the fuel line rupture make the fire too big to contain. joining me cnn safety analyst les avat, and analyst and faa accident investigator, excuse me, david sousey. wes, the system that helps put out the flames. how does it work exactly? it is a halon system, activated in the cockpit, anderson. when we get a fire warning, we get an electronic fire bell. we get, one of our instrumentation up front in the cockpit, tells us that we have a
you off and get the lobe lib ya where jim maceda is on the ground in tripoli where in the last minutes we have heard more explosions from western coalition forces and warplanes above. jim, give us a sense of what you re hearing tonight. reporter: hi, peter. about an hour or so ago, first we heard six relatively distant thuds but with a pattern. then it was quiet far while. there was no anti-aircraft artillery fire or very little responding to the first six explosions. e co rndf ur haen aut hfnur afr that tt de ago, again, without any aaa fire. all coming from the general vicinity of that certain suburb. it became a bit more well-known to us because that s where the protests first began a month ago.
andaan andaand adbjabia. but there has been a certain degrading of gadhafi s forces. his tanks were driven out last night of misratah, but then they went back in in the middle of the night. they re back in there today, fighting again. so status quo there in ajdabiya. the battle s gone on for several days. gadhafi s forces still control the inside the interior of that city. the rebels are still on the outskirts. and despite air strikes that have allegedly taken out a number of pro-gadhafi troops, tanks still pound those rebel positions. o seou wre thathe sstuo t weeese t allies need to see a definite withdrawal from. and again, here in tripoli, the feeling is not there s no sense of high alert during the day, savannah, because people here know that the front line right now is hundreds of miles to the east, over by ajdabiya, and for now, it s not moving in that direction. jim maceda in tripoli for us
pentagon. thank you, jim. let s get to libya now. coalition air strikes have provided rebels with some much-needed breathing room, but apparently not the room to advance on tripoli. jim maceda is live in the capital. what are you seeing today? reporter: hi, there. well, here in tripoli, if we can start with tripoli, there were a number of air strikes overnight. a small number of explosions that we heard, even less aaa fire, anti-aircraft artillery fire explosions. was understand one military base was hit just outside tripoli. a number of journalists were brought early this morning to a hospital and shown the remains of 18 individuals. and we were told that thesis were a result of that air strike. but let s look at misratah a
re-election campaign apparently stands to benefit. a neby lead over the yet to be named republican front-runner. reid wilson is editor in chief of national journal s hotline and they join us now. carol, this is your poll. i guess it shouldn t come as a surprise that president obama is the candidate benefiting from the lack of a consensus candidate on the republican side. what did the poll find? well, among registered voters, 47% say they d prefer to see obama re-elected. 37% say they d prefer to see a republican. a very generic, early test. very early test. and when you compare it, i note the write up of this is, when you compare where the president is in terms of his approval rating and the re-elect number, he s close to where president bush was in terms of who wanted to see him be re-elected in april 2003, when bush s approval rating was a lot higher than president obama is now. if you ll remember, that was