both of you. thank you, kyra. we start in texas. exhausted fire crews are battling an enemy is astonishing and relentless wildfires burning somewhere in the state for nearly ten months without any break. today is the 296th consecutive day of work for those firefighters. just in the last week, 120,000 acres have burned. more than 700 homes have burned since sunday and then near austin, a blaze has killed two more people raising the overall death toll to four. jim spelman is in bsatrop near the largest fire in the state. are crews making any progress at this hour? good morning. shift change here. the day crews are ready to head on into the fire. they took advantage yesterday of low winds and cooler temperatures to get in there and get 30% containment on that fire. i thought that was really an incredible amount of progress that they made yesterday, considering how intense this fire was, that it took out 500 homes in about 48 hours of burning time that they were able to mak
thing. cnn newsroom continues right now with randi kaye. hi there, suzanne. thank you. well, three major stories on the radar this hour. starting with a major hurricane. category 3 irene batters the bahamas and eyes the carolinas. chad myers is watching that. a hostage ordeal is over in tripoli, but the fighting goes on, and moammar gadhafi still out of sight. and washington surveys the damage from the earthquake that shook the east coast almost 24 hours ago. i want to start with a huge and still growing hurricane irene. chad myers is watching it all for us. what s it doing now, chad? and exactly where might it be headed? well, it s headed to the bahamas. and right now, if you want to get a map, it s right over crooked island in the bahamas. and later on it ll be going over long island at the bahamas. the irony is that there s the potential, at least in the cone that in four days it could go over long island, new york. right now at 115 miles per hour forecast to get
we have to put ground troops in, overthrow gadhafi. not one american fighting man or woman got hurt. it worked to a t. it s better than getting rid of gadha gadhafi. michael steele? great victory. all the talking heads, republicans and democrats. it reminds me of the reaction of bill clinton in kosovo when everyone said that would not work. we overthrew a tyrant. score one for the president. you know, i m not someone who always says the president is doing a great job, but score one for the president. richard haass. too soon to take out the champaign. yes it s important getting rid of gadhafi. everyone mocked him saying it wouldn t work.
says the reporter who blew the whistle on the uk hacking scandal has been sound dead. his name is john ford, he was found today in his london home. police are calling his death unexplained. this is important because we re going to have much more on this story, got a lot of questions for our correspondent in london, we ll bring that to you coming up. but i want to begin this hour with a warning. i want you to listen to a warning. this is a warning that i m about to show you a video of 16 men being shot to death. i m going give you a moment here right now to go ahead and get the kids out of the room, but this is a video released by taliban insurgents in pakistan and it shows more than a dozen men believed to be pakistani policemen lined up. there they are, against the backdrop of the hillside with their hands tied behind their backs facing several men with rifles on the right side of your screen. this man shouting is accusing them of killing children in a crime against islam. a
doing in libya, if the president said i want to kill moammar gadha gadhafi, that is one thing. for john mccain to suggest that you are an isolationist if you don t want to continue an endless war in afghanistan. what i m talking about and the senator is talking about is actually n endpanling across the grob economically, not militarily. economically. we are spending our money in places where we shouldn t be spending our money. the chinese, as we say time and time again decades investing in africa and south america. investing across asia. we are fighting wars while the chinese are fighting economic battles. george is issuing a dire