NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge has given final approval to a $37.5 million settlement between companies that made government-issued trailers after hurricanes in 2005 and storm victims who claim they were exposed to elevated levels of formaldehyde while living in the shelters. U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt heard testimony Thursday before ruling from […]
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A surprise ruling by a federal appeals court that lets the Army Corps of Engineers off the hook for paying compensation for Hurricane Katrina's catastrophic flooding isn't going over well on the streets of New Orleans. People in southern Louisiana have long taken for granted that the flooding in the wake […]
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Seven years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers was desperately trying to plug breaches in the city's broken and busted levee system. Since those catastrophic days, the Army Corps has worked at breakneck speed — and at a cost of billions of dollars — to install new floodgates, pumps, floodwalls and […]
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Newly downgraded Tropical Storm Isaac plodded its way across Louisiana on the seventh anniversary of Katrina, with officials weighing whether to bust a hole in a levee to relieve some of the water that was spilling over a wall in a rural part of the state Wednesday. Rescues were carried out […]
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — With Isaac bearing down on New Orleans, the city finds itself at a delicate moment in its rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina struck seven years ago. Private and government investment is fueling the push to overhaul some of the city's troubled but culturally rich neighborhoods near the French Quarter, where poor families […]
Isaac is causing panic for those in its path and forcing politicians in the Republican Party to make quick decisions on delaying the start of its party convention. The momentum of the convention has been slowed because of the shift in the start of the event from Monday to Tuesday. Those behind the scenes are […]
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — With its massive size and ponderous movement, a strengthening Isaac could become a punishing rain machine depending on its power, speed and where it comes ashore along the Gulf Coast. The focus has been on New Orleans as Isaac takes dead aim at the city seven years after Hurricane Katrina, but […]
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A New Orleans city councilman has pleaded guilty to plotting to misuse federal money intended to help a nonprofit organization after 2005's Hurricane Katrina and divert some of it to one of his political campaigns. Sixty-three-year-old Jon Johnson faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He said […]
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — More than 3,000 lots flooded by Hurricane Katrina and bought with federal money in an emergency bailout sit idle across this city — a multimillion-dollar drain on federal, state and city coffers that lends itself to no easy solution. An Associated Press examination of the properties sold to the government by […]
BILOXI, Miss. (AP) — An Associated Press investigation shows officials in Mississippi took private property and spent millions of dollars in Hurricane Katrina recovery money on sewage plants that may not be needed for decades. In one case, a legal battle over a small strip of land between an 86-year-old woman, her family and a […]
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The National Parks Service has rejected a push for historic registry status for parts of the New Orleans levees that breached during Hurricane Katrina. The advocacy group Levees.Org has been trying for almost two years to get the sites placed on the National Register of Historic Places. They argued that the […]
