good morning. it is friday, august 26th. welcome to american morning. it s all about the hurricane today. i wish i could say happy friday, happy friday for those not living along the northeast coast. and whom it hasn t reached yet. exactly. let s talk about hurricane irene. now said to be a massive and powerful category 2 storm sitting just off the east coast. 50 million people could feel its force by this weekend. new hurricane warnings are now up, they stretch from north carolina to new jersey. states of emergency have been declared as far north as new england. irene totally hammered the bahamas yesterday with torrential rain, 115-mile-per-hour winds, north carolina like i is next. in atlantic beach a surf shop boarding up, mandatory evacuations under way along the outer banks and could be the biggest storm to hit new york in decades. people all the way up the coast are being asked to leave or to get ready. i understand sometimes folks think that people overreac
in tripoli as opposition forces continue their manhunt for the fugitive muammar gadhafi. and hurricane irene churning up the u.s. east coast. hundreds of thousands have already fled. 16 million americans are in the path of this monster storm. we ve got all the angles covered on both stories. right now on world report. it s early morning in tripoli where rebel forces control most but not all of the capital city. there s sporadic but fierce fighting in several parts of tripoli. cnn journalists report hearing a nearly constant chorus of gunfire as rebels root out gadhafi loyalists. that sets up gruesome scenes of bodies strewn across a field. no one knows which side is responsible for the killings. as for muammar gadhafi, nato announced it s helping in the hunt for the libyan leader. on thursday rebels said they thought they had him cornered but were wrong. he is still missing. but another audio recording has surfaced. listen. translator: do not leave tripoli for the rats.
hurricane irene is driving to the coast today with 110-mile-an-hour winds. the storm will go on a climb up the east coast impacting, perhaps, one-fifth of the nation s population. north carolina s outer banks will feel irene s winds by nightfall. the full fury will bear down by saturday evening. the window for preparation is quickly closing. if you are in the projected path of the storm, please listen to your state or local officials. please listen to emergency radio or television. if you are told to evacuate, please do so. irene could make a direct hit on new york city. already the mayor has ordered several hospitals and nursing homes to move patients to higher ground. a broader evacuation may come later today. this animation shows irene s surge which could overwhelm manhattan s subway and tunnel systems. what is your biggest concern? the new yorker. why? because they don t listen. you can always tell a new yorker, but you cannot tell them very much. president
to see how they re doing. a lot of damage. interestingly, jim, one thing to we do e-mailed me this which came from the national emergency management agency hout there where you are. they basically tell us it is the islands where the problems are. a lot of power lines down, a bridge out here and there, a report from cat island that all power lines were down and no telecommunications. so it sounds like the large islands have done pretty well. the smaller islands, either we don t know or they have had some problems. that s right. it s probably going to be another at least into tomorrow where they re able to get a sense. people can only get to those islands it s hard to communicate there. you know the first thing to happen is power is out. they don t even know that they re really facing yet. trying to send out the trucks. really, until tomorrow they can get out there, maybe get some planes out there. it s going to be tough for them to know the real impact on the bahamas.