days. last night they found him. gentleman vars crittendon is accused of killing a mother of four in atlanta. the fbi arrested crittendon before he boarded a red-eye flight from orange county, california to atlanta. he was in the news about two years ago when he played for the washington wizards. he and a teammate pulled guns on each other in the locker room. the power is still out for about five million customers courtesy of irene. today a white house team will visit some of the hardest-hit areas, including the state of vermont. floodwaters were still cresting there late last night. waters have damaged more than 200,000 in their communities. intense flooding wrecked the town of pratsville in the new york skill mountains. it took crews four trips and a helicopter to get a man out. a reporter told cnn that she can t get out of prattsville now. we ll give you an idea of the flooding so you understand why we were trapped here. if you can follow me over here. can you see wher
cnn s jim spellman is seeing its power firsthand. he s now in the bahamas. we ll try to get jim spellman. we don t have him quite yet because the wind is blowing really, really hard in the bahamas at this moment. let s head into atlanta and check in with jack can jeras. can you tell us the track of the storm? we can, carol. we ve seen more changes and it bridges it closer to hugging the coast of the united states, potentially from north carolina all the way on up northward. i do want to tell people, this is just in. normally we get this 20 minutes before the top of the hour and it literally just came in. bear with me. the hurricane watches you ve been talking about, this is the north carolina coast, from north of surfacy to the north carolina/virginia border. tropical storm watches in addition for that north of modesto beach to surfacy. basically what that means is hurricane conditions are expected in about 48 hours, but tropical storm watch means tropical storm conditions
good morning to you. it is tuesday, august 23rd. this is am: wake up call. i m carol costello live in new york. let s get started with that big storm crashing through the atlantic ocean right now. irene is getting ever more powerful and may be heading toward the united states. people in south carolina already getting ready for irene. the hurricane is near the dominican republic right now. take a look at the storm from the international space station. irene is now a category 2 hurricane, but jacqui jeras says it could become an enormous category 4 later this week as it gets closer to the southeastern united states. it s already left about half of puerto rico without power. cnn will take a closer look at the storm s path in a few minutes. how is the battle for tripoli going anyway this morning? that depends on whom you ask. rebel leaders say they have control over most of the city. there s still some fierce fighting in some neighborhoods. moammar gadhafi s son saif, the o
here, that arrow just refuses to turn green. the s&p lost more than 4%. the nasdaq sank more than that to 5%. it sank 5%. so what has rattled the markets this time? it s a combo platter of bad news, jobless claims are up, existing home sales are down. consumer prices are up and the plfrg industry has gotten weaker. no wonder a top economic adviser is flying to martha s vineyard next week to help president obama with his job proposal. then there was this report from morgan stanley, not paint ag pretty picture for the united states or europe. brace yourself. you re about to hear the r word again. here is our chief business correspondent, ali velshi. it said things we had all sort of thought, but now it was on paper. number one, it said we are dangerously close to a recession. dangerously close. it doesn t say it s entirely likely or it s their base assumption, but dangerously close. it says europe and the u.s. have made policy errors, policy errors. that s the central banks
understand this financial crisis was the worst since the great depression, but ultimately they say, look, he s the president. we think he has good intentions, but we re impatient and we want to see things move faster. i understand that. i m sympathetic to it. we ll keep on putting forward ideas that will be good for the country. we re going to need a partner from congress. on the other side of the political spectrum, listen to what governor rick perry said in iowa and he s not backing off. you might hear him catch more heat for it today. politicians from president obama to rick santorum thought perry went overboard when he talked about the federal reserve and its chairman ben bernanke. listen. if this guy prints more money between now and the election, i don t know what you all would do to him in iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in texas. i mean printing more money to play politics at this particular time in american history is almost treasonness in my opinio