covers up in the air. a stunning turn of vaccines for two american hikers locked up in iran. the two have both been sentenced to eight years behind bars. the news dealing a major blow for the two that many thought would be freed in the recent weeks. the pair have been held for more than two years but now they have 20 days to appeal before they are locked up even longer julie banderas has more. julie: the state department which has repeatedly called for the release of these two men releasing a statement that reads in part, we are working to confirm these reports and are in contact with the swiss protecting power. they have been in prison too long and time to renight them with families. despite the calls for leniency they have been remitted three years and five years in prison on charges of espionage. independent the islamic law, spying is punishable by death. pair both just 29 years old were arrested two years ago along with sarah shourd for illegally entering iran on an u
we saw cars heading in the opposite direction and leaving the city throughout the day, but if khadafy is planning to leave, his forces are still fighting heavily. in zawia we saw exchanges of rpgs and mortars and rockets coming in and street-to-street fighting and no evidence that he is, that we could see anyway that he is planning to leave the country. all right. nbc chief correspondent richard engle on the ground for us in libya. thank you, richard. and now the wall street where the stocks are bouncing back and forth between positive and negative territory today after yesterday s 420-point sell-off, and right now the dow is down 78 points, an med meant, another bank of america announces that it plans to cut 3500 jobs this quarter on top of the 2,500 jobs cut earlier in the year. the new york times reports that thousands of more job cuts at bank of america may be coming down the pike. joining us now is melissa
refinery 30 miles out of the capital city of tripoli, and now we are learning that moammar khadafy may be preparing to flee the country with his family. richard engle is in libya and joins me with the latest update on that report that moammar khadafy could be leaving in days? reporter: we didn t see any evidence of that today. what we saw instead is khadafy forces fighting heavily in a town that is 30 miles outside of tripoli. the rebel forces have taken control as you mentioned of that oil refinery just on the outside of zalia, which is an important victory for them and what is more important is that they control the roads in and out of tripoli and they have cut off the supplies of most of the basic goods like food and fuel, and the situation in tripoli is getting much more dire. people are leaving the city.
to us how the judge came to this ruling all of the years later? well, they have had a number of appeals these three, and finally last fall the arkansas supreme court said there should be a new hearing because of some problems with the original trial. dna evidence was offered that provided no match whatsoever between the crime scene and these three defendants, and there were allegations that the supreme court in arkansas found troubling about juror misconduct and police misconduct and what the defense attorney said here is that the i case had no case, and no physical con ynection between these three men and the crime, and they came up with a theory of a satanic killing, and the evidence of that was also very weak. so what you had tamron was a problem for both sides. the defense wanted out, and they wanted the three men released, and all this state would agree to was a new trial in which the defendants would then have to take another gamble at whether they would get convicted
that you re looking at? i think it s the two major themes that have been rocking the markets for several weeks now. it s europe and the u.s. economy in. the case of europe you had a flare up of conference about the financial stability of their banking system. there was a report in the wall street journal that the federal reserve is scrutinizing the american subsidiaries of some european banks to make sure they re adequately funded. in europe there have been comments and rumors to the effect that some banks are having a bit of trouble to raise all the funds they need to fund their operations. in the united states we had reports that the u.s. economy is slowing down. since when did what happened in philadelphia mean so much for the economy? right now people are very sensitized to the risk that the u.s. is not just going to slowly, but sliding back into recession. they re scrutinizing every data point for that answer. the data points you were look up, some bump up in infla