CNN news 2008-08-20 加文本

Hope you're having a great day. I am Nicole Lapin at the cnn Center in Atlanta. Here is a look at what's happening NOW IN THE NEWS.

Tropical Storm Fay is battering South Florida with heavy wind and rain right after making landfall this morning. It was downed trees, flooding streets, power outages all in its wake. Now the latest forecast predicts possible tornadoes over the eastern half of the Florida Peninsula.

In Arizona, meanwhile, authorities say they have accounted for those several hikers who had been considered missing after flooding hit a remote part of the Grand Canyon. A sheriff's department spokesman says that 11 people who were the subject of the search were located. (Www.hxen.net)

Well, suspense is rising over who Barack Obama and John McCain will actually pick as their running mates. Both candidates are sharing their plans only with a small selected group of advisors. There are some indications that Barack Obama may make his running mate announcement as early as tomorrow.

NATO's foreign ministers watching the crisis in the Caucasus are now calling on Russia to honor a peace plan. They met in a special session in Brussels today. The NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is now saying that NATO's relationship with Russia now hinges on Moscow's ability to follow through on the cease-fire. Moscow immediately reacted to the NATO assessment and called it "biased". Also Russia says it's holding up its end of the cease-fire deal. Its Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is now saying that the withdrawal of forces has already started and that Georgia needs to reposition its troops as well. 

One day after getting rid of the man they despise, Pakistan's ruling coalition party is wrangling over who is going to replace former President Pervez Musharraf. He resigned yesterday rather than face a probable impeachment trial. Musharraf is expected to leave the country. The new government says there is no immunity deal though. The US weighed in today saying that he's a close ally in President Bush's war on terror and has the right to live wherever he wants.

The budget axe will soon fall on yet another airline. This time it is Continental Airlines. The troubled airline plans to furlough between 140 and 180 pilots. The furloughs are part of a roughly 3, 000 job cut that Continental expects to make this upcoming fall. Now the pilot furloughs will start after Labor Day. Continental says the cuts will help it deal with the fuel costs.

And those are the headlines at this hour. For more on those stories and other news of the day. cnn is always your source online, on TV or on your cellphone. Take care.