We just outside town of Bin Jawad, and after that, the road leads straight to Sirte, passing us by, transporters carrying tanks on top of which sit teenager rebels cheering as they head for what they hope would be the final battle of this war. But rebels are making slow progress. The loyalists are proving a stubborn enemy. One rebel commander told me the only explanation he had was that many of Gaddafi’s fighters were still unaware of what changed in the past couple of days. 

 

The BBC’s Paul Wood reporting from Libya.

 

Hurricane Irene is continuing to churn toward the East Coast. The National Hurricane Center says there’s little certainty where the storm will make landfall though North Carolina has already ordered evacuations in the outer banks and the Navy is moving ships out of Hampton Roads in Virginia. The current track projects Irene would hit just east of New York City sometime Sunday. Charles Lim of member station WUSA2 is at the point lookout on Long Island. 

 

 

Forecasters are expecting a big storm and warning residents in the mid-Atlantic to New England prepared for heavy rains and high winds. Long Island has 3 million people living on it and only a handful of bridges to get them off. So far no mass evacuation has yet been ordered and if the order does come, official said it would likely be localized, asking residents on south shore to find refuge on the Jonny’s Island’s north coast. But Kenbridge beach had been ordered to leave, which has Julie McMillen and her family packing up early.

 

 

“It’s been a great vacation week, we stuck out through all the storms. At this moment we are going to go home so.”

 

 

With rough seas, locals chased swimmers out of the water leaving only the hardest fishermen left on the beach. For NPR News, I’m Charles Lim on Long Island.

 

 

Delta Airline says it would buy 100 new jets from Boeing. NPR’s Wendy Kaufman reports its multi-billion dollar order for the aerospace company.  

 

 

The Delta order is a big win for Boeing bidding out European rival Airbus. The 2 airplane makers compete aggressively for just about every major order. The deal involves 100 737- 900ER jets. It’s a long-range single-aisle aircraft which carries up to 180 passengers. Delta will use the new more fuel-efficient planes to replace its agent fleet of Boeing 757s. All the planes will be delivered to the Airline by 2018. As listed prices, the deal is valued more than $8.5 billion though airlines rarely, if ever, pay the sticker price. Wendy Kaufman, NPR News, Seattle.

 

 

Just before the close on Wall Street, the Dow was down 171 points at 11,150; the NASDAQ was down 46. This is NPR News.

 

 

Homes in some stage of foreclosure or already bank-owned, accounted for nearly 1/3 of all home sales in the second quarter of this year. That’s according to Realty Trac. Rick Sharga is senior vice president.

 

 

“The banks appeared finally to be willing to take some marginal discounts earlier in the process and execute short sales rather than go through a whole foreclosure process we possess the property and sell it at later day in the market at probably a great loss.”

 

 

Realty Trac keeps a data base of the nation’s foreclosures. 

 

 

In Syria, a well-known cartoonist who compared the Syrian President to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has been dragged from his car and severely beaten. NPR’s Kelly McEvers reports.

 

 

Activists and relatives say 60-year-old cartoonist Ali Ferzat had his hands broken and his beard burnt by masked men. His assailants then put a bag over his head and dumped him on the side of the road. Photographs the artist posted online showing him with bandaged hands and bandage over one eye. The UN says some 2200 people have been killed in a brutal crackdown on anti-government protestors in Syria. Activists say thousands more have been detained and tortured. A UN team is in Syria to investigate but activists say they’ve not been able to enter towns that have the worst stories to tell. Kelly McEvers, NPR News, Beirut.

 

 

African Union leaders are pledging more than $350 million to tackle the famine in the Horn of Africa. At a summit in Ethiopia today 21 AU countries said the money is to help some 12 million people in desperate need of emergency food aid.