taking place. >> he brought along his car to show the kids can they were wild. >> that was the best part. >> yeah. that's going to do it for us and diane sawyer coming up next. thank you for watch appreciate your time and hope to see you in half an hour. this is "world news." tonight, hurricane irene heading hard for our coast. we're tracking this monster storm. as hundreds of thousands are on the move. millions are preparing to evacuate. major american cities under threat. we have the latest forecast tonight. manhunt. fierce fighting as rebels try to corner moammar gadhafi. as the gun fights ranl, our reporter goes inside the tyrants secret world. did gadhafi use these tunnels to escape? healthy bonus.

bosses paying employees to lose weight. how mumu would it take for you to join in? and hometown heros. the 13-year-old leading an army of volunteers. the preacher trying to help. americans rising to the challenge, fighting hunger in surprising new ways. good evening. it's coming. we know it. an so many of us are bracing tonight for hurricane irene. nearly a quarter of the country under threat from this massive whirlwind of fury. growing now in size and danger nearly 700 miles wide. the winds whipping at 115 miles an hour. the storm is expected to hit our shores on saturday. then swirl right up the eaeast toast. causing havoc from north carolina to new england. so far, six states have declared emergencies. it could be the most destructive east coast hurricane in half a century.

targeting some of america's biggest cities and most popular beaches. hundreds of miles of beaches will be affected. flights, trains, even baseball games have been canceled. more still to come. tonight, our reporters are fanning out for full coverage. from the pa ha mas, where the destruction began. to north carolina, where they're evacuating tonight. to new york city. and our weather editor, sam champion tracking it all with the latest forecast. that's coming right up. we begin with linsey davis in nassau. >> reporter: irene blew into the bahamas with punishing rain driven by wind gusts that topped 125 miles per hour. about two-thirds of nassau is still without power tonight. and two remote communities were reported to have been leveled. we watched this morning as the storm grew in intensity. we have just been getting punished all night. with this cruel wind, rain, and rough surf. nono it's about the cleanup. there are no reports of deaths or injuries, and since the worst

part of the storm passed just east of nassau, many feel they have dodged a bullet. you don't have to look far to see the sheer strength of irene. this boat right here, pushed right out of the water. the concern for the u.s. is that similar scenes of devastation could repeat its up the atlantic coastline. george? >> thanks, linsyn linsey. this is the height of the n. tourist season. no one is on the beaches there now. >> that's right. beautiful, but unusually empty. the roads are clogged with some of the tens of thousands of people trying to get out of the way of hurricane irene. i'll show you why. the storm surge could bring water higher than this life guard tower. >> we're out of here. >> reporter: chasing away

140,000 tourists by land. who plans on leaving today? and 60 ships from the virginia based second fleet by sea. >> the county in the midst of a mandatory evacuation. >> reporter: emergency managers are openly nervous. >> this is a very serious threat. >> reporter: and tomorrow morning, 33,000 locals will be ordered out of dare county, so they're protecting what they can, loading their cars. >> hope it gets better from here. >> reporter: and hauling out boats. those who don't leave -- >> anyone decides they're not going to heed the warning, we're not going to have personnel here available to assist. >> reporter: -- gas stations here, running out of unleaded. atm's out of cash. and one woman, out of a very special night. the tv showed the mandatory evacuation and i just -- i burst into tears. >> reporter: melissa cook was supposed to get married here this weekend. everything is up in the air? >> everything is up in the air. everything from the caterer and the cake. all these details i was working on. everything i had planned and dreamed about. >> reporter: it'll have to be a movable feast, cases of

champagne and all. officials are telling us the folks that got out of here made the right move. we're already starting to feel the outward tentacles of hurricane irene. there are riptides up and down the coast. dozens of people had to be rescued today. >> thanks, matt. as we said, one of the scariest things about this hurricane is that ast zit's zeroing in on so large cities. look at the map. the entire i-95 corridor, tens of millions of people are in irene's path. are the big cities ready for this challenge? dan harris has been looking at that from here in new york. >> reporter: some of the largest metro areas in america in the cross-hairs tonight. philadelphia, population nearly 6 million, boston, more than 4.5 million and the biggest of them all, new york city, with 19 million people. >> i'm always worried about storms. this i-95 corridor is going to go through one of the most pop

lated areas on the east coast. i'm concerned. >> reporter: tonight, many of the forecast models show the center of the storm marching straight through new york city. there are dozens of these models and they do change quite a bit. one this morning had the center of the storm coming up fifth avenue, past the iconic lions of the public library. and then, right up the west side of central park. so, is a city like this, which has only seen five hurricanes since 1851, truly ready for this storm? experts say the sky scrapers are built to withstand hurricane-force wind. but the flooding is the real problem. in major hurricane in 1821, all of lower manhattan was under 13 feet of water. >> i would like to give you an update for how we're preparing. >> reporter: the mayor came out today to say they're pre-positioning the boats. >> we hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

i think that's what this city is ready for this weekend. >> reporter: but critics say the unlikely event that they had to order a major evacuation, the plans are unsufficient. you don't think they're detailed enough to handle the worst case scenario? >> i do not. >> reporter: most new york city apartment dwellers are not ready. if we were here, we would want to get away from the windows. where would you go? >> so just taking a quick look around here. where i would go is right here. we would walk over this way and find ourselves in a place that is not in the direct line of sight of a window. >> reporter: the doctor has simple advice. you need enough food, water, medicine on hand for at least three days. one more piece of news, breaking news. the mayor has announced a mandatory evacuation for senior citizens in low-lying, flood-prone areas of the city. that includes where i am right now. there could be more to come. >> it's already begun, dan

harris, thanks. now, let's wrap this up with our weather leader, sam champion. no one knows this forecast better than you. take us through it day by day, hour by hour. >> there are serious side effects with this storm track. this is what the hurricane center has. it starts, rig on the edge of north carolina. by 2:00 saturday afternoon, it's there on the outer banks. then it continues to take it through the major cities on the latest path. major new england cities. >> we have talked about this. we showed the map. in dan's piece. new york could get hit very, very hard. we have seen mayor bloomberg order evacuations. >> you take the center of the storm over new york city at any point. it hasn't happened since the 1800s, like 1821. here's the spaghetti models. we're going to show you the path and some others. let's get to new jersey. right along atlantic city. if you get down, most of the tracks are off to the side. reliable tracks go right over atlantic city. 5 to 10-foot storm surge.

20 to 25-foot waves. about 4 to 6 inches of rain. get up a little bit. back over through new york city. a lot of the paths are trending out toward the eastern end of long island. the reliable paths are m mtown. one is following the east river. back up and looking over toward boston, another city people are concerned about. here, a different situation entirely. boston is on the east side of most of the tracks. that means they'll get the worst part of what will be a tropical storm then, seeing about 60 to 70-mile-an-hour winds. >> in new york, right over the empire state building? >> practically right over it. >> stay with us online, on the radio and right here for all the latest on hurricane irene. now to libya. where deadly fighting continued today. for several hours, the rebels hunting for moammar gadhafi thought they had him cornered. but he's not been captured yet. with the capital of tripoli

dominated by his opponents, jeffrey kofman got an extraordinary look inside the one-time dictator's secret and opulent world. >> reporter: for a few hours this afternoon, they thought they had found gadhafi. rebels descended on a building on his compound. he was nowhere to be seen. but yet again, he surfaced on radio, calling on his supporters to rise up and cleanse the capital of rebels. not very likely. so where is he? we know that he has built an elaborate and expansive system of bunkers and tunnels not just under the compound, bab al aziziya, but under the city. let see what's down here. gadhafi spent staggering millions on his fortification. a crazed obsession with security and escape. this part is not very far. under ground. obviously, electctc lights here. he traveled through these tunnels in a golf cart. it's clear already that this

goes very, very extensively under the whole compound. if gadhafi wanted to get anywhere undetected,d,e could. he could come up to the surface and disappear just as quickly. there's a bedroom. carpet included, phone at the ready. an office with more phones and radios and desks. now we're coming up into what is clearly one of his houses. an opulent mansion, now just a burned out hull. we found men looking, looting, men venting their anger at gadhafi. so far, he's escaped capture. but as rebels begin to scour these tunnels, he'll have fewer places to hide. jeffrey kofman, abc news, tripoli. now to the resignation heard around the world. the news that steve jobs, the godfather of the ipad, iphone, and ipod, is stepping down from apple. it touched quite a chord today.

check out the messages on twitter. a world without steve jobs running apple? what are we going to do? there wewe so many more. that response to a corporate farewell is something we have never seen b bore. abc's neal karlinsky has more. on the visionary man who sparked it. >> reporter: before steve jobs was a modern day thomas edison, he was an adopted kid growing up in cupertino, california. by the time he was 13, seen here in his school yearbook, he was already obsessed with technology, something he reminisced about during his visit to the cupertino city council this year. >> when i was 13, i think i called up hewlett and packard were my idols. i called up bill hewlett and he gave me a job that summer. >> reporter: it turns out talent runs in the family. as an adult, jobs tracked down his biological sister, successful author of "anywhere but here," mona simpson. she remains one of jobs' closest confidants. steve wozniak, the man who co-founded apple with jobs out

of a garage, spoke witit us ove the phone about his friend this morning. >> you have a great incredible person like steve jobs, around other bright people, they pick up from example. his way of questioning things. a lot of the dna will persist in apple for quite awhile. >> reporter: big hits from apple aside, jobs invented the popular vintage game "breakout," he's a zen buddhist and something called a "pescetarian" which means he eats fish, but no other meat. and like his former competitor, microsoft's bill gates, he's a college dropout. >> if you look at jobs and what's he's done, there's only a couple of people in the past hundred d ars that can really be analogous, you've got walt disney, henry ford, and steve jobs. >> remembering that you are going to die is the best way i know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. you are already naked. there is no reason not to follow your heart. >> reporter: his health might not be perfect, but jobs doesn't plan to let up even know, following his heart and changing

the world we live in. neal karlinsky, abc news, los angeles. still ahead on "world news," find out how you can get paid for getting healthy. what was going through president bush's mind on 9/11? we hear from him tonight. and we have good news about brave young boy, 20 minutes underwater limp and lifeless. now a miraculous recovery. a mere rairaculous recovery. well-being. we're all striving for it. purina cat chow helps you nurture it in your cat with a full family of excellent nutrition and helpful resources. purina cat chow. share a better life.

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might even increase your payche paycheck. deborah roberts has their story. >> reporter: a cash reward for slimming down? >> it's a great motivation. >> that's s great incentive. >> reporter: these florida coworkers are happy to take the bribe. losing weight with hopes of gaining a $10,000 prize. a state-wide contest to get people serious about better health. but paying out cash? one study shows that dieters who got paid were nearly four times more likely to lose weight. workplaces everywhere are now offering all kinds of incentives, like in-house gyms and healthy cafeterias. and group challenges like the one at mission produce in oxnard, california, seem to pay off too. 35-year-old sales associate tommy padilla teamed up with coworkers and dropped 30 pounds in his first two months on the job. companies are reaping a benefit, too. some report a drop in workers compensation claims, health insurance filings, and sick days. one corporation, johnson &

johnson, recorded a $250 million savings on health care costs over a decade. incentives make sense, experts say. but some worry that financial rewards may not be the best kind. what's the problem of offering money for weight loss? >> it might be a good jump start for people, but the real issue is maintenance, , aying at a good weight. and financial incentive will not work with that. >> reporter: which is why teamwork may be the real prize for thososwho want to lose weight and keep it off, too. deborah roberts, abc news, new york. and up next, what was president bush thinking when he heard the chilling four words -- america is under attack? words -- america is under attack? [ clears throat ] hop to, gang. it's showtime./ uh, do you know this guy? i'm not gonna cry, am i? only if you don't believe in the power of friendship. really? you guys are good. [ male announcer ] your favorite movies right when you want them. watch unlimited tv episodes and movies instantly/

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that america had suffered the worst attack since pearl harbor. >> i had been notified that a plane had hit the world trade center. my reaction was, the weather was bad. or something extraordinary happened to the pilot. the classroom was full of kids. >> read these words the fast way. get ready. >> and i felt a presence behind me. and andy card's massachusetts accent was whispering in my ear, "a second plane has hit the second tower. america is under attack." obviously, i was horrified like everybody else. unlike everybody else, i had a job to do at that particular moment. the first thing leader has to do is project calm. terrororm against our nation will not stand. eventually, september 11th will be a date on the calendar. it will be like pearl harbor day. for those of us who lived through it -- >> oh, my god! >> -- it will be a day we'll never forget. >> and there will be more from president bush tonight on "nightline."

this sunday, george w. bush, the 9/11 interview will air on the national geographic channel. we got great news about the little boy brought back to life after nearly drowning in the pacific nearly three weeks ago. you might remember the images of his friends and family praying as chad ostrander was rescued after 20 minutes underwater. today, he was released from the hospital. his father says he faces a long road. he's speaking simple phrases, eating on his own, and doing puzzles. when we come back, hunger at home, more of our in-depth look at this exploding crisis in america. how some people are taking a stand and how you can help right now. and i'm like, "oh, promise mommy you'll never ever pick up a cigarette." i had to quit. ♪ my doctor gave me a prescription for chantix, a medication i could take and still smoke,

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remember those stunning numbers we first reported yesterday? 1 in 6 americans and 1 out of every 4 children start each day not knowing if they'll get the food they need. tonight, steve osunsi introduces us to some of their good neighbors. >> reporter: magazine mountain is arkansas's highest point, and one of its lowest as well. most families barely getting by. the families are lined up outside their church. >> i pray for all these people in line today. >> reporter: because pastor bob is feeding the town. there's a lot of people in line today. >> oh, yeah. >> yeah, it's lili this every time. >> reporter: bob caldwell travels the state every day geging factories and businesses for the free food he uses to fill these boxes. he and his church spend just $700 a month and feed more than 700 people. it all disappears in a few short hours. >> you have people that knock on the door and say, , preacher, ii

don't -- if you don't help me, i don't eat tonight. that may not bother a lot of people. but it bothers me. >> reporter: gene says he's got only $50 every month for food and gas. >> it makes a lot of difference. a lot of difference. >> reporter: he helps a lot of people? >> yeah, he does. >> reporter: he gave his neighbor, betty, a ride to the church. she told us food stamps only go so far. >> we ate dog food. >> reporter: because you have to? >> because we have to. and we ate out of a dumpster. we sure did. >> reporter: we met other everyday people helping families find meals. in phoenix and san antonio, liz scarpinato helps. with her bags of hope. meet peyton medick. she and her volunteers have collected 60 tons of food, one can at a time over the last five years. >> no matter how much you spread the awareness, you're a hero.

>> reporter: they're all inspiring people, determined to help families move past these desperate times. >> you can see hunger and say, oh, that's sad. but until you do something about it, you'll not make a difference. anybody can make a difference. >> reporter: steve osunsami, arkansas. >> so many of you are making a difference, too. abc news viewers have already contributed more than $132,000 to feeding america. you can do more, text feed to 50555 and reply yes. that will help get food to the children and families in your community and across the country. we have more ideas at our website. abcnews.com/help. that's all for us. thanks for watching. track the latest on hurrane irene at abc.com. tonight unmasking some of the anonymous bart protesters.

they're not giving up, and police are fed up back to court for barry bonds. what he was hoping to hear today from a judge. >> the governor unveils a plan to put california jobs first. hiring incentives he's hiring foreclosing a $1 billion loophole. >> how apple prepares for life without steve jobs. will it be enough to keep the best and brightest from leaving? good evening, i'm dan ashley. >> i'm cheryl jennings. police say they have had it with the bart protest group called anonymous. >> the group that has been shutting down bart stations isn't quite so anonymous tonight. today, san francisco police went public with a list of names and charges facing 35 of the people they'd arrested monday. and you can see that they came from all over the bay area, as well as los angeles, reno, and portland. we are now picking up the story. leanne?