Apr 12: New Clues Emerge in Post-Katrina Vigilante Shooting at Algiers Point
A.C. Thompson and Brendan McCarthy, ProPublica and The Times-Picayune: "Three days after Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into a ghost town, somebody shot Donnell Herrington twice in Algiers Point, ripping a hole in his throat. Herrington, who is African-American, says he was ambushed by a group of armed white men who attacked without warning or provocation."

Mar 16: Katrina's Toxic Legacy Lives
Eugene Robinson: "The Obama administration is making a big health care mistake. I'm not talking about the final push for comprehensive reform legislation, which is righteous and necessary. I mean the sale of more than 100,000 contaminated trailers and mobile homes - a move that could make people sick."

Jan 4: The New Katrina Flood: Hospital Liability
Sheri Fink, ProPublica: "Three years before Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans, a senior executive at Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital assessed its vulnerability to the sort of flooding that had been long feared there. His conclusion is now evidence in a lawsuit against Methodist that could have significant implications for hospitals nationwide."

Dec 16: Did New Orleans SWAT Cops Shoot an Unarmed Man?
A.C. Thompson, Brendan McCarthy and Laura Maggi, ProPublica and The Times-Picayune: "The tip came in on the morning of Thursday, September 1, 2005, as disorder was spreading through the devastated city: Somebody had stolen a Kentwood Springs bottled water truck and was luring in thirsty flood victims with a promise of free water. As people approached the truck, they were being attacked and robbed."

Dec 15: The Dream of a New Urban Farm in New Orleans
Kari Lydersen, ColorLines: "Tung Duc Tran's backyard is a lush tangle of life. On a steamy New Orleans summer day, Tran, 80, leaves the cool of his small home to stroll under the trellises hung with bitter melons and fuzzy squash shading an assortment of carefully tended crops. The garden consumes the modest yard sloping down to the Maxent Lagoon, a canal whose waters are nearly obscured by an explosion of aquatic vegetation laced with a few old tires and other trash."

Nov 19: Army Corps Liable for Katrina Damage, US Court Finds
Patrik Jonsson, The Christian Science Monitor: "Confirming what many New Orleanians already knew in their hearts, a federal judge ruled late Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers - and thus the US government - is liable for a big chunk of the damage caused when hurricane Katrina pushed ashore on Aug. 29, 2005. The landmark ruling awards $719,000 to four plaintiffs from the city's Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish who filed suit in 2006 ... More important, the ruling - which called the Army Corps 'myopic' in its maintenance of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal (aka Mr. Go) - now puts pressure on President Obama to help the region settle claims that could reach into the billions of dollars."

Oct 29: Reinventing Paradise; New Orleans and the Invisible Coast
Robert Corsini, Truthout: "The great and growing global angst among all peoples has everything to do with how we build and maintain our paradise on earth. And today as we live in an era of profound uncertainty, strange and complex states of war, climatic flux and economic dystopia, how different locales wealthy or not, rethink, redesign and rebuild their lives with an eye toward a different future is the issue before all humanity. Can a greener, less greedy, less angst-filled world be reinvented? Can we learn from our mistakes and live with compassion for all, or do we descend further into chaos and ultimate irrelevancy?"

Oct 20: Discriminatory Housing Lockouts Amid Post-Katrina Rebuilding
Jordan Flaherty, ColorLines: "Rebuilding efforts in St. Bernard Parish, a small community just outside New Orleans, have recently gotten a major boost. One nonprofit focused on rebuilding in the area has received the endorsement of CNN, Alice Walker, the touring production of the play The Color Purple, and even President Obama. But an alliance of Gulf Coast and national organizations is now raising questions about the cause these high-profile names are supporting."

Oct 16: Obama in New Orleans: The callous face of the US ruling elite In a brief, three-hour stopover in New Orleans en route to a fund-raising dinner with millionaire Democrats in California, President Barack Obama made perfunctory promises to the people of the devastated city.

N.O. Sanity, No Peace: Hurricane Katrina and the Mental Health Care Crisis
Rob Corsini, Truthout: "The impact of Hurricane Katrina and subsequent human failures instead of engineering and disaster relief four years ago are vast and far-reaching. The only way anyone can begin to grapple with what has occurred along the Gulf Coast is to go there. See it. Feel it. Live a little bit side by side with those fellow Americans who have literally endured hell on earth."

Aug 30: Obama Pledges to Push Ahead With Katrina Recovery
Philip Elliott, The Associated Press: "President Barack Obama marked the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Saturday by pledging to make sure that turf wars and red tape don't slow the pace of the continuing recovery."

Aug 27: Promises, Promises: Early Katrina Praise for Obama
Ben Evans And Becky Bohrer, The Associated Press: "As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to right the wrongs he said bogged down efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. Seven months into the job, he's earning high praise from some unlikely places. Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., says Obama's team has brought a more practical and flexible approach. Many local officials offer similar reviews. Even Doug O'Dell, former President George W. Bush's recovery coordinator, says the Obama administration's 'new vision' appears to be turning things around."

July 13: New Evidence Surfaces in Post-Katrina Crimes
A.C. Thompson, ProPublica: "Television news reports are casting new light on the violence that flourished in New Orleans in the anarchic days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The reports - broadcast Thursday by WTAE TV in Pittsburgh and WDSU in New Orleans - focus on two unsolved crimes: the near-fatal shooting of Donnell Herrington, who was allegedly attacked by a group of white vigilantes in the Algiers Point neighborhood, and the murder of Henry Glover, whose charred remains were discovered on a Mississippi River levee. Both victims are African American."

June 2: Gulf Coast Activists Protest at FEMA Headquarters
Maria Recio, McClatchy Newspapers: "With a FEMA trailer parked across the street, a coalition of Gulf Coast activists stood outside the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters Monday to mark the start of hurricane season, to demand Hurricane Katrina rebuilding and to protest the latest deadline for eviction of about 5,000 residents from FEMA trailers."

May 20: GQ Report Blames Rumsfeld for Military Delay After Katrina
The Times-Picayune: "A report on the GQ magazine Web site is quoting an unnamed former Bush administration official as blaming former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for many failures, including a delay in military assistance in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The report says in speaking with the former Bush officials, it becomes evident that Rumsfeld impaired administration performance on a host of matters extending well beyond Iraq to impact America's relations with other nations, the safety of our troops, and the response to Hurricane Katrina."

May 2: FEMA Aid Ends in Mississippi
Anita Lee, The Biloxi Sun-Herald: "Brenda Steele cries as she explains what she will do if FEMA takes the mobile home her husband and children moved into in July 2006, four months before her husband died. 'They start to get it,' she said, 'they're going to have me and the kids in it. They'll pull it down the road with me and the kids in it.'"

Apr 23: Katrina Trial: New Orleans's Truth Commission
Patrik Jonsson, The Christian Science Monitor: "Lorraine Washington left her still-wrecked house in New Orleans East on Tuesday to seek the answer to a question that has plagued her every day since hurricane Katrina sank the Crescent City under a wall of water: Why?"

Feb 28: Guard to Pull Out of New Orleans After 3 1/2 Years
Mary Foster, The Associated Press: "Three and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard is pulling the last of its troops out of New Orleans this weekend, leaving behind a city still desperate and dangerous. Residents long distrustful of the city's police force are worried they will have to fend for themselves. 'I don't know if crime will go up after these guys leave. But I know a lot more of us will be packing our own pieces now to make sure we're protected,' said Calvin Stewart, owner of a restaurant and store."

Dec 24: Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina
Bill Quigley, Truthout: "The US has committed nearly three trillion dollars to the financial bailout so far. The Federal Reserve has made more than $2 trillion in emergency loans and another $700 billion has been pledged through Congressional action. Much more money is coming."

Dec 22: Man Is a Cruel Animal
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "It was Joseph Conrad I thought of when I read an article in The Nation magazine this month about white vigilante groups that rose up out of the chaos of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to terrorize and murder blacks. It was Conrad I thought of when I saw the ominous statements by authorities, such as International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warning of potential civil unrest in the United States as we funnel staggering sums of public funds upward to our bankrupt elites and leave our poor and working class destitute, hungry, without health care and locked out of their foreclosed homes. We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes."

Nov 26: Study: Many Kids in Katrina Trailer Park Anemic
The Associated Press: "Dozens of infants and toddlers who lived in Louisiana's biggest trailer park for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina were anemic because of poor diets, at a rate more than four times the national average. About 41 percent of 77 children under the age of 4 suffered from the condition this year, according to a study released Monday by the Children's Health Fund. Most, and possibly all, lived in the Renaissance Village trailer park in Baker."

Sep 8: Displaced Poor Still Arriving in New Orleans as Saints Go Marching In
Bill Quigley, Truthout: "Tears dripped down her face as she searched for her missing suitcase in the busy New Orleans bus station. 'It had my ID, my children's birth certificates, my money and my credit cards,' she softly cried. It was Sunday morning, one week after she was bused out of New Orleans to a military base in Arkansas. She was supposed to be at work. Her three children needed her. But she needed that suitcase."

Aug 31: Mayor Orders the Evacuation of New Orleans
Adam Nossiter and Shaila Dewan, The New York Times: "City officials ordered everyone to leave New Orleans beginning Sunday morning - the first mandatory evacuation since Hurricane Katrina flooded the city three years ago - as Hurricane Gustav grew into what the city's mayor called 'the storm of the century' on Saturday and moved toward the Louisiana coast."

Aug 26: Katrina Pain Index: New Orleans Three Years Later
Bill Quigley, Truthout: "Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast three years ago this week. The president promised to do whatever it took to rebuild. But the nation is trying to fight wars in several countries and is dealing with economic crisis. The attention of the president wandered away."

Aug 14: A Frozen Katrina
Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation: "As John McCain and the Republicans trumpet their election year boldfaced lie-drill now so we can lower prices at the pump today-they continue to ignore a looming energy disaster with lives hanging in the balance. Currently, eight million homes rely on heating oil during the winter months, and last winter’s prices forced too many citizens to choose between heat, food, and medicine."

Aug 4: Out of FEMA Park, Clinging to a Fraying Lifeline
Shaila Dewan, of The New York Times, reports: "Two months ago, as he left the trailer park he called home after Hurricane Katrina, Alton Love, 41, just knew he was on the brink of getting a working car, an apartment and a good job to support the 9-year-old daughter he is raising on his own. Doris Fountain was in a comfortable hotel, waiting on a water heater and an air-conditioner for her once-flooded house in New Orleans. Matthew Bailey had just received his first check - $48 - for selling diet products via the Internet, a source of income he insisted would ultimately pull in $5,000 to $20,000 a month. Their plans, the fragile products of battered optimism, have been derailed by bureaucratic obstacles and the evacuees’ own tenuous abilities to cope."

July 8: Trailer Graveyards Haunt FEMA, Neighbors
Pam Fessler, of NPR News: "After high formaldehyde levels were found in travel trailers used to house the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the federal government said it would use them again only if it had no other choice. Which raises the question - what should be done with the almost 100,000 trailers now sitting idly at sites around the country, at a cost to the government of $130 million a year?"

Apr 3: Scientists Ignored on Toxic Trailers
Suemedha Sood, writing for The Washington Independent, reports, "Senior management at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the toxins arm of the CDC, got slammed today at a congressional hearing examining the agency's response when the government trailers housing Hurricane Katrina victims were found to be toxic."

Apr 1: Big Plans Are Slow to Bear Fruit in New Orleans
Adam Nossiter reports for The New York Times: "In March 2007, city officials finally unveiled their plan to redevelop New Orleans and begin to move out of the post-Hurricane Katrina morass. It was billed as the plan to end all plans, with Paris-like streetscape renderings and promises of parks, playgrounds and 'cranes on the skyline' within months. But a year after a celebratory City Hall kickoff, there have been no cranes and no Parisian boulevards."

Mar 30: Katrina Victims May Have to Repay Money
John Moreno Gonzales of The Associated Press writes: "Imagine that your home was reduced to mold and wood framing by Hurricane Katrina. Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government-provided trailer tainted with formaldehyde you finally win a federal grant. Then a collector calls with the staggering news that you have to pay back thousands of dollars."

Mar 26: Toxic Trailers Redux: When Did FEMA Know?
Deepa Fernandes, reporting for Mother Jones, writes, "Newly found documents show OSHA detected dangerous levels of formaldehyde in trailers used to house Katrina evacuees as early as 2005 -- but FEMA mass distributed them anyway."

Mar 14: Katrina Contractor Has Reaped Millions
The Associated Press reports: "Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of homeowners are still waiting for their government rebuilding checks, and many complain they can't even get their calls returned. But the company that holds the contract to distribute the aid is doing quite well. ICF International of Fairfax, Va., has posted strong profits, gone public, landed additional multimillion-dollar government contracts -- and recently secured a potentially big raise from the state of Louisiana."

Mar 13: Documents Feed Debate on FEMA Trailers
The Associated Press reports, "Federal officials issued trailers to Hurricane Katrina victims even though some workplace safety tests detected high levels of formaldehyde at government staging areas for the structures just weeks after the storm, a lawyer for hundreds of occupants said Wednesday."

Mar 6: Half of New Orleans's Poor Permanently Displaced: Failure or Success?
Bill Quigley writes for Truthout: "Government reports confirm that half of the working poor, elderly and disabled who lived in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina have not returned. Because of critical shortages in low-cost housing, few now expect tens of thousands of poor and working people to ever be able to return home."

Feb 28: FEMA Sticks to Its Guns on Temporary Housing
Suemedha Sood, writing for The Washington Independent, reports: "Earlier this month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Center for Disease Control confirmed a health problem that New Orleans residents have been talking about for almost two years. Studies in 2006 revealed that many government-issued trailers that city residents have lived in since Hurricane Katrina were toxic."

Feb 12: CDC Under Investigation Over Katrina Cancer Risk
Reporting for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Alison Young says, "A congressional committee is investigating 'disturbing allegations' that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suppressed critical information about cancer dangers posed by trailers housing Hurricane Katrina victims."

Jan 17: UN Official: US Neglects Katrina Victims
The Associated Press reports: "A United Nations official who has toured parts of Louisiana and Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina says the thousands of victims of the storm resemble poor people displaced by natural disasters in other parts of the world. 'Whether you're displaced in a rich country or a poor country, what remains the same is you need to get the help, the assistance of the authorities, of the communities, to be able to restart a normal life, and the people I have met are not there yet,' said Walter Kalin, the UN secretary general's representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons."

Jan 16: First Came Katrina, Then Came HUD
Lewis Wallace reports for In These Times: "The temperature in New Orleans was uncharacteristically cold in mid-December, dipping into the 30s. As thousands of homeless people living in encampments huddled in blankets, housing activists from around the country converged on the city to protest the demolition of more than 4,500 units of public housing, once at the epicenter of New Orleans' low-income African-American community."

Dec 28: New Orleans: Locked Outside the Gates
Bill Quigley writes for Truthout: "In a remarkable symbol of the injustices of post-Katrina reconstruction, hundreds of people were locked out of a public New Orleans City Council meeting addressing demolition of 4,500 public housing apartments. Some were tasered, many pepper sprayed and a dozen arrested."

Dec 22: New Orleans police attack residents protesting public housing demolition On Thursday, New Orleans police attacked demonstrators attempting to gain entrance to a city council meeting scheduled to discuss and vote on the destruction of 4,500 units of public housing. The proposed demolition is part of the effort to utilize the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to bring about permanent demographic change in New Orleans, aimed at preventing the return of poor and primarily black residents.

Dec 18: With Regrets, New Orleans Is Left Behind
Adam Nossiter, of The New York Times, reports, "With resignation, anger or stoicism, thousands of former New Orleanians forced out by Hurricane Katrina are settling in across the Gulf Coast, breaking their ties with the damaged city for which they still yearn."

Dec 7: New Orleans Fracas Over Plans to Raze Housing
The Associated Press reports from New Orleans, "Protesters angry about the pending demolition of more than 4,000 public housing units stormed a City Council meeting Thursday in a confrontation that ended with a prominent civil rights lawyer being hauled off in handcuffs."

Dec 3: New Orleans Residents Vow to Fight Federal Bulldozers
Bill Quigley, writing for Truthout, reports, "On the 12th day before Christmas, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to unleash teams of bulldozers to demolish thousands of low-income apartments in New Orleans."

Nov 29: FEMA Sets Date for Closing Katrina Trailer Camps
Leslie Eaton, reporting from New Orleans for The New York Times, writes, "Almost 3,000 families here and across Louisiana will have to leave their government-supplied trailers over the next few months under a new schedule prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

Nov 20: Katrina Rated Largest US Ecodisaster
Patrik Jonsson of The Christian Science Monitor says, "When hurricane Katrina ripped out tulip poplars, bent black gum to the ground, and scattered loblolly pines like pick-up sticks, local tree enthusiasts such as Julia Anderson not only had a rude aesthetic shock, but many also sensed that the destruction had shaken the very roots of the region's ecological balance."

Nov 16: Poor Lag in Hurricane Aid From Mississippi
Leslie Eaton reports for The New York Times: "Like the other Gulf Coast states battered by Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi was required by Congress to spend half of its billions in federal grant money to help low-income citizens trying to recover from the storm. But so far, the state has spent $1.7 billion in federal money on programs that have mostly benefited relatively affluent residents and big businesses."

Nov 15: Katrina Recovery Woes
Bill Moyers Journal looks at Mississippi families who are still in need of housing, two years after Katrina, and examines what's happened to the money Congress sent to rebuild.

Nov 9: Lawmakers Criticize FEMA's Handling of Hazards Posed by Trailers
Spencer S. Hsu, of The Washington Post, reports: "Nearly four months after the Federal Emergency Management Agency promised to study the risk of formaldehyde in trailers provided to Hurricane Katrina survivors, none of 52,000 occupied units have been tested, and FEMA has warned its employees for their own safety to stay out of 70,000 similar trailers in storage."

Nov 6: Critics Cite Red Tape in Rebuilding of Louisiana
Leslie Eaton, reporting for The New York Times, writes, "If rebuilding anything in this storm-scarred place could possibly qualify as simple, surely it would be the administration building in City Park."

Nov 2: Rapture Rescue 911: Disaster Response for the Chosen
Naomi Klein, writing for The Nation, says: "One customer described a scene of modern-day Revelation. 'Just picture it. Here you are in that raging wildfire. Smoke everywhere. Flames everywhere. Plumes of smoke coming up over the hills,' he told the Los Angeles Times. 'Here's a couple guys showing up in what looks like a firetruck who are experts trained in fighting wildfire and they're there specifically to protect your home.' And your home alone."

Criminal Justice Meltdown in New Orleans?
Bill Quigley, reporting for Truthout, writes: "Some say crime causes a city to be under siege; others say crime is the symptom of a city under siege. Either way, New Orleans is in serious trouble. Our criminal justice system is in an unprecedented crisis."

Sep 12: Data Confirm New Orleans's Black Exodus
Miguel Bustillo reports for The Los Angeles Times, "New Orleans' black population dropped 57% a year after Hurricane Katrina, while the white population declined 36%, according to an analysis by three demographers of new U.S. census data that confirm the disaster's disproportionate impact on the city's racial composition."

Sep 2: Windfall: How Conservatives, Contractors, and Developers Cashed In on Katrina
In Mother Jones, Jean Casella and James Ridgeway report on "a timeline of how disaster became opportunity" for the Bush administration and its allies.

Aug 31: Katrina All the Time
Paul Krugman writes for The New York Times: "Future historians will, without doubt, see Katrina as a turning point. The question is whether it will be seen as the moment when America remembered the importance of good government, or the moment when neglect and obliviousness to the needs of others became the new American way."

Aug 30: The Lower Ninth Battles Back
Rebecca Solnit writes for The Nation: "If you measured the Lower Ninth Ward by will, solidarity and dedication, from both residents and far-flung volunteers and nonprofits, it would be among the best neighborhoods in the United States. If you measured it by infrastructure and probabilities, it looks pretty grim."

Aug 29: Anger, Sadness Mark Katrina Anniversary
The Associated Press reports, "On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, anger over the stalled rebuilding was palpable Wednesday throughout the city where the mourning for the dead and feeling of loss doesn't seem to subside."

Aug 27: Obama Outlines Plan to Help New Orleans
The Associated Press reports: "Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday the country cannot fail New Orleans again and that as president, he would keep the city in mind every day. 'The words never again cannot be another empty phrase,' he said in front of one of the few rebuilt houses he saw on a brief tour of the city's Gentilly Woods section. 'It cannot become another broken promise.'"

Aug 26: Douglas Brinkley: Reckless Abandonment
Two articles from the Washington Post report how the city of New Orleans remains shattered and unrepaired two years after Katrina. Columnist Douglas Brinkley highlights the ways in which New Orleans has been victimized by misplaced government priorities, and journalist Peter Whoriskey follows several New Orleans residents as they try to put their lives back together again.

Aug 23: Billions in Katrina Relief Funds Missing
Jeffrey Buchanan and Chris Kromm for AlterNet report: "When pressed on the slow pace of recovery in the Gulf Coast, President Bush insists the federal government has fulfilled its promise to rebuild the region. The proof, he says, is in the big check the federal government signed to underwrite the recovery - allegedly more than $116 billion. But residents of the still-devastated Gulf Coast are left wondering whether the check bounced."

Aug 17: One Billion Dollars Later, New Orleans Is Still at Risk
John Schwartz, of The New York Times, reports: "Six inches. After two years and more than a billion dollars spent by the Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild New Orleans's hurricane protection system, that is how much the water level is likely to be reduced if a big 1-in-100 flood hits Leah Pratcher's Gentilly neighborhood. Looking over the maps that showed other possible water levels around the city, Ms. Pratcher grew increasingly furious. Her house got four feet of water after Hurricane Katrina, and still stands to get almost as much from a 1-in-100 flood."

Aug 11: FEMA to Buy Back Contaminated Trailers
Claudia Lauer of The Los Angeles Times reports that an internal memo written by FEMA Director David Paulison says the agency will buy back trailers it sold to the public after Hurricane Katrina "because of concerns over formaldehyde levels."

Aug 10: New Orleans's Children Fighting for the Right to Learn: Part II
In the first installment of this article, Bill Quigley, writing for Truthout, described the massive charter school educational experiment going on in New Orleans. That experiment has divided public school children into two groups - those in the charter and high-performing school group and those assigned to the Recovery School District (RSD) a state-managed set of schools for the rest of the children. In this installment, he continues the examination and looks at possible and predictable outcomes of this division between the haves and the have-nots.

Aug 9: Part I: New Orleans's Children Fighting for the Right to Learn
Bill Quigley writes for Truthout: "There is a massive experiment being performed on thousands of primarily African American children in New Orleans. No one asked the permission of the children. No one asked permission of their parents. This experiment involves a fight for the education of children."

Aug 8: A Window Seat to Disaster: Part III
In Part Three of his series for Truthout, Charles E. Anderson reports: "On the surface, buses guiding tourists through the rubble of a city where 1,600 people died seems somehow unsavory. But the tours provide essential context to the disaster.... Opinions on tours are as varied as the 9th Ward residents themselves. But most agree that they want people to know what happened in New Orleans."

Aug 7: Life in New Orleans' 9th Ward
In Part Two of his series for Truthout, Charles E. Anderson says the "reality is that resources, not geography, determine a neighborhood's resurrection, and the elderly are hit particularly hard."

Aug 5: Katrina Evacuees Trapped in Trailers
The Associated Press reports: "It was bad enough when Hurricane Katrina chased Carrie Lewis out of her assisted-living home in New Orleans. Now she fears the rest of her life may be spent in the isolation of a federally sponsored trailer park."

Aug 3: Court backs insurers over Katrina
Insurers win a court case about whether they are liable to pay for flood damage in New Orleans.

July 26: US Attorney Won't Prosecute Katrina Insurance Lawyer
"A US attorney on Wednesday declined a federal judge's request to prosecute a prominent Mississippi attorney on allegations of criminal contempt in a Hurricane Katrina insurance dispute," reports the Associated Press.

July 25: Doctor cleared of Katrina deaths
A New Orleans surgeon is cleared by a grand jury of murdering four patients in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

July 24: Recovery in New Orleans Is Slowed by Closed Hospitals
Leslie Eaton reports for The New York Times that the New Orleans health care system is in need of urgent repair as physicians trickle out of the city and post-Katrina health care needs soar.

July 22: FEMA Runs for Cover
The New York Times editorial board asks, "How many times can the federal government let down the victims of the hurricanes that ravaged the Gulf Coast two years ago?"

July 19: FEMA Suppressed Post-Katrina Health Warnings
Spencer S. Hsu for The Washington Post reports that "The Federal Emergency Management Agency has suppressed warnings from its own Gulf Coast field workers since the middle of 2006 about suspected health problems that may be linked to elevated levels of formaldehyde gas released in FEMA-provided trailers, lawmakers said today."

July 16: Construction Companies Prey On Post-Katrina Cleanup Crews
Brian Beutler, Media Consortium, reports: "After Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast in late August 2005, tens of billions of dollars in federal and private contracts, the largest of which went to companies like Bechtel, Halliburton, and its then-subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root, were dispatched to New Orleans. The alleged goal was to fund a cleanup effort President Bush said would require 'a sustained federal commitment to our fellow citizens.' That, of course, never came to pass."

July 12: Road to New Life After Katrina Is Closed to Many
Shaila Dewan for The New York Times documents the "grim limbo of exile" that she says many Hurricane Katrina evacuees are experiencing.

July 11: New Study Explores Katrina's Aftermath for Women
Peggy Simpson, The Women's Media Center, reports; "Some women displaced by Hurricane Katrina have had to choose between finding basic shelter and guarding their personal safety."

June 29: How to Destroy an African-American City in Thirty-Three Steps: Lessons From Katrina
Bill Quigley writes for Truthout, "Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps - just remember to delay, and you will probably be doing the right thing."

June 16: New Orleans Still Waiting for Promised Federal Aid
The cash-strapped city of New Orleans is turning to foreign countries for help to rebuild as federal hurricane-recovery dollars remain slow to flow.

May 1: Army Corps Asked to Explain New Orleans Pump Contract
When the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, it copied the specifications - typos and all - from the catalog of the manufacturer that ultimately won the $32 million contract. The pumps, supplied by Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Florida - former employer of Jeb Bush - and installed at canals before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, proved to be defective. The matter is under investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

April 29: US Didn't Accept Most Foreign Katrina Aid
Allies offered the United States $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash to aid Hurricane Katrina victims. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to US officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

April 25: FEMA Mismanaged $3.6 Billion in Katrina Contracts
FEMA exposed taxpayers to significant waste - and possibly violated federal law - by awarding $3.6 billion worth of Hurricane Katrina contracts to companies with poor credit histories and bad paperwork, investigators say. FEMA did not take adequate legal steps to ensure that the companies were small and locally operated, resulting in a questionable contract award to a large firm with ties to the Republican Party.

April 12: Lawyers: Emails Can Aid Katrina Case Against State Farm
Attorneys for homeowners suing State Farm Insurance Cos. after Hurricane Katrina have long accused the insurer of pressuring engineers to alter reports on storm-damaged homes so that policyholders' claims could be denied. Now, some of these lawyers claim they have evidence to prove their allegation - internal emails from an engineering firm that helped State Farm adjust the claims.

April 3: New Orleans Rebuilding Slowed Due to Insurance Premiums
New Orleans homeowners and business owners say their insurance premiums have doubled or tripled since Katrina. Businesses are delaying rebuilding. Workers have been slow to return. Sky-high insurance has become what Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood calls the "third storm" to hit the region behind Katrina itself and the legal disputes over insured damage.

March 16: Unstable Foundations: Letter From New Orleans
Rebecca Solnit writes: "During my trips to the still half-ruined city, some inhabitants have told me that they, in turn, were told by white vigilantes of widespread murders of black men in the chaos of the storm and flood. One local journalist assured me that he tried to investigate the story, but found it impossible to crack. Reporters, he said, were not allowed to inspect recovered bodies before they were disposed of. These accounts suggest that, someday, an intrepid investigative journalist may stand on its head the media hysteria of the time (later quietly recanted) about African-American violence and menace in flooded New Orleans. Certainly, the most brutal response to the catastrophe was on the part of institutional authority at almost every level down to the most local."

March 14: Corps Placed Faulty Pumps in New Orleans
The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm.

Feb 27: Eighteen Months After Katrina
"Half of the homes in New Orleans still do not have electricity," writes Bill Quigley. Continuing: "Louisiana received $10 billion to fix up housing. Over 109,000 homeowners applied for federal funds to fix up their homes. Eighteen months later, fewer than 700 families have received this federal assistance.... Visitors to New Orleans can still stay in fine hotels and dine at great restaurants. But less than a five-minute drive away lie miles of devastated neighborhoods that shock visitors. Locals call it 'the Grand Canyon effect' - you know about it, you have seen it on TV, but when you see it in person it can take your breath away."

Feb 25: Dying for a Home: Toxic Trailers Are Making Katrina Refugees Ill
Along the Gulf Coast, in the towns and fishing villages from New Orleans to Mobile, survivors of Hurricane Katrina are suffering from a constellation of similar health problems. They wake up wheezing, coughing and gasping for breath. Their eyes burn; their heads ache; they feel tired, lethargic. Nosebleeds are common, as are sinus infections and asthma attacks. Children and seniors are most severely afflicted, but no one is immune. There's one other similarity: The people suffering from these illnesses live in trailers supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

Feb 14: Katrina homeless hit by tornado
A tornado rips through New Orleans, damaging trailers housing people left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

Feb 7: FEMA Wants Back Over $300 Million in Katrina Aid
In the neighborhood President Bush visited right after Hurricane Katrina, the US government gave $84.5 million to more than 10,000 households. But Census figures show fewer than 8,000 homes existed there at the time. Now the government wants back a lot of the money it disbursed across the region.

Feb 6: Katrina's Insurance Catastrophes
Some insurance consumer advocates, scores of consumers and a number of Congressmen believe insurers failed miserably in compensating and protecting untold thousands of victims who lost their Gulf Coast homes and businesses in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005. And then Hurricane Rita blew in, a month later, and swept waves of even more destruction along that susceptible coast.

Jan 31: Judge Reduce Jury's Katrina Award A federal judge on Wednesday reduced by more than half a jury's award of $2.5 million in punitive damages against State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. for denying a Mississippi couple's claim after Hurricane Katrina.

Jan 25: New Orleans Not Part of Bush's Speech
New Orleans is still a mess and the pace of recovery across the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina's strike remains achingly slow after 17 months. But none of this captured President Bush's attention on the year's biggest night for showcasing policy priorities.

Jan 21: The Second Looting of New Orleans
A year and a half after New Orleans became an international symbol of governmental neglect and racism, the city remains in crisis. Students are still without books, health care is less available to poor people than ever, public housing is still closed, and infrastructure is still in desperate need of repair. In an open letter to funders and national nonprofits, a diverse array of New Orleanians declared, "From the perspective of the poorest and least powerful, it appears that the work of national allies on our behalf has either not happened, or if it has happened it has been a failure."

Jan 19: Vacuum Maker Hailed as Savior Quits Gulf Town
Ten days after Hurricane Katrina tore through town, the Oreck Corporation reopened the storm-damaged plant where it assembled its widely advertised vacuum cleaners. But now, 16 months later, Oreck is moving its manufacturing to Tennessee due to high insurance rates and lack of workers.

Jan 17: New Orleans Feels Pain of Mental Health Crisis
Sixteen months after Hurricane Katrina tore this city apart, a hidden sort of damage is emerging. Local officials see it in reports of suicides, strokes and stress-related deaths. They see it in the police calls for fights and domestic violence. They see it in the long waiting lists for psychiatric care that they have no way to provide. These days, life in the Big Easy isn't easy at all.

Jan 11: State Farm Held Liable in Katrina Case
A federal judge ruled against an insurance company Thursday in a Hurricane Katrina damage case that may have implications for hundreds of other homeowner lawsuits against insurers who refused to cover billions of dollars in damage from the storm's surge.

Jan 2: Seven Indicted New Orleans Officers Surrender
Seven policemen charged in a deadly bridge shooting in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina turned themselves in Tuesday at the city jail.

Dec 29: New Orleans: HUD Policies Limiting Housing for Poor
Bill Quigley writes: "Gloria Williams and her twin sister, Bobbie Jennings, are both 60 years old. They are two of the more than 4,000 families who lived in public housing in New Orleans before Katrina struck. The families are still locked out of their homes. Their residences are two of 4,534 apartments that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced plans to demolish."

Dec 28: Hope for New Orleans
William H. Chafe writes: "From one perspective, the future of New Orleans is bleak. Surely no governmental body, least of all FEMA, has given anyone reason for confidence. But this is no ordinary place, and these are no ordinary people. Rooted in their history is a vision - admittedly Utopian - that affirms the possibilities of living in bi-racial peace; prizes grace, hospitality and humor; and fights like hell against bureaucrats who refuse to acknowledge the human potential for rising above self-interest and cynicism. Maybe - just maybe - there is reason to hope."

Dec 26: Katrina Fraud Costs Could Top $2 Billion
Federal investigators have already determined the Bush administration squandered $1 billion on fraudulent disaster aid to individuals after the 2005 storm. Now they are shifting their attention to the multimillion dollar contracts which have gone to politically connected firms.

Dec 23: FEMA Not Required to Restore Aid to Evacuees, Court Rules
The Federal Emergency Management Agency does not have to reinstate immediately rental assistance to evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled yesterday, reversing a decision that a lower court judge had said he hoped would "get these people a roof over their heads before Christmas."

Dec 22: America's Open Wound
"Welcome to the Lower Ninth Ward. You won't find much holiday spirit here. In every direction, as far as it is possible to see, is devastation.... Whatever you've heard about New Orleans, the reality is much worse. Think of it as a vast open wound, this once-great American city that is still largely in ruins, with many of its people still writhing in agony more than a year after the catastrophic flood that followed Hurricane Katrina," writes Bob Herbert.

Dec 13: Judge: White House Handling of Katrina Housing "Legal Disaster"
A federal judge called the Bush administration's handling of a Hurricane Katrina housing program "a legal disaster" Wednesday and ordered officials to explain a computer system that can neither precisely count evacuees nor provide reasons why they were denied aid.

Dec 12: Many Imprisoned Katrina Victims Still Waiting for Day in Court
In October 2005, less than two months after Hurricane Katrina struck, Pedro Parra-Sanchez was arrested for allegedly stabbing a man with a broken bottle during a fight. With the city's prison damaged by flooding, he was taken to a makeshift jail at the Greyhound bus station, then transferred to a correctional facility about 70 miles away, and later to a prison in southwest Louisiana. That's where Parra-Sanchez sat for more than a year - never seeing a lawyer or setting foot in a courtroom. By law, the district attorney should have brought Parra-Sanchez to court to formally charge him within 60 days. Instead, "he disappeared," said Pamela R. Metzger, director of Tulane University's Criminal Law Clinic. "The system failed."

Dec 9: New Orleans to Raze Public Housing
Public housing officials decided Thursday to proceed with the demolition of more than 4,500 government apartments here, brushing aside an outcry from residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina who said the move was intended to reduce the ability of poor black people to repopulate the city. Residents and their advocates made emotional, legal and what they called common-sense arguments against demolition at the housing authority meeting. "The day you decide to destroy our homes, you will break a lot of hearts," said Sharon Pierce Jackson, who lived in one of the now-closed projects slated to be razed. "We are people. We are not animals."

Dec 7: Audit Says FEMA Squandering Katrina Aid
One year after Katrina, the government is still squandering tens of millions of dollars in wasted disaster aid, including $17 million in bogus rental payments to people who had already received free trailers and apartments, federal investigators said Wednesday.

Dec 3: Bush Administration Faulted for FEMA Aid Shortfalls
In denouncing the way the Bush administration has denied aid to tens of thousands of victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a federal judge in Washington last week pulled back the curtain on a deeper mystery 15 months after the nation's costliest natural disaster: What has happened to 2.6 million households that applied for disaster assistance but have been largely shed from the rolls?

Nov 30: FEMA Ordered to Resume Katrina Housing Payments
The Bush administration unconstitutionally denied aid to tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita and must resume payments immediately, a federal judge ordered yesterday.

Nov 24: After 15 Months, Katrina Victims Spend Thanksgiving in Trailers
Nearly 15 months after the hurricane struck, the number of Katrina victims who will be spending Thanksgiving in FEMA trailers this year will paradoxically be far higher - roughly three times greater - than it was last year. The reason: Many people who were living with family members or staying in hotels at government expense last year have since moved out or been evicted. But they have been unable to return to their homes because they are still waiting for their houses to be repaired, their insurance to come through, or the water and electricity to be turned back on.

Nov 22: Reading, Writing, and Reinvention in New Orleans
Viewed before Hurricane Katrina as an institutional disaster, New Orleans' public schools got a second shot at success as a result of the devastation. City planners ran with the opportunity, deciding not just to rebuild schools, but to implement a bold experiment in public schooling. A full 60% of the city's reopened schools are now independently-run charter schools. On November 24 at 8:30 pm, NOW looks at the challenges, successes, and implications of one of these schools, Lafayette Academy, through the tragedy-tested eyes of individual students, faculty, and parents.

Nov 18: Katrina's Purgatory
The New York Times writes: "Excuses sound hollow when you're trapped in a flimsy trailer. For Gulf Coast residents waiting for long-promised government housing assistance, patience has given way to anger, and anguish. What is clear more than a year after Hurricane Katrina is that their needs - and the demand for action from the American public - have largely gone unmet."

Nov 9 : Mental Health Crisis Strains New Orleans
Mental health problems soared after Hurricane Katrina, just as the city's ability to handle them plummeted, creating a crisis so acute that police officers say they take some disturbed people to a destination of last resort - jail.

Oct 20: GOP House Appropriations Chair Lewis Fires 60 Staffers Investigating Corruption
The House Appropriations Committee has fired about 60 private contractors who made up most of an investigative unit that was auditing billions of dollars in government spending, including the $62 billion federal relief package for Hurricane Katrina. Last year, the Justice Department launched a separate inquiry into Katrina-related incidents of alleged fraud in which dozens of people have been charged. Many were accused of filing fraudulent claims of property damage in order to get thousands of dollars in government relief checks.

Oct 7: New Orleans Population Is Reduced Nearly 60%
New Orlean's population has dropped by nearly 60 percent since Hurricane Katrina, far more sharply than recent optimistic estimates had suggested.

Sept 28: $330 Million Settlement Deal in Katrina Oil Spill
Murphy Oil and plaintiffs affected by the worst environmental disaster during Hurricane Katrina said Monday they had agreed to a $330 million settlement over a spill from an oil storage tank at its Meraux refinery in St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans.

Sept 26: New Orleans' Superdome stadium hosts its first game since Hurricane Katrina victims found refuge there last year.

Sept 20: Post Katrina and 9/11, Insight Into the Soul of America
"President Johnson called upon America to use its wealth and resources 'to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities.' What has become of our 'Great Society?' What has become of the soul of America?" asks Dr. Wilmer J. Leon.

Sept 11: Many of Katrina's Migrant Workers Go Unpaid
In the aftermath of Katrina, a cash-based reconstruction economy has taken root in New Orleans, and reports of worker rip-offs are common. A labor rights attorney advocating for migrant workers describes the situation as "the new Wild West of labor law, where lawlessness is absolutely tolerated."

August 30: FEMA Disputes Hold Up Nearly $1 Billion in Relief Funds on Gulf
Critics say FEMA is impeding gulf coast rebuilding as disputes hold up nearly $1 billion in relief funds. The most costly disaster in US history is fast becoming its most contentious, with appeals and disputes worth nearly a billion dollars bogging down repairs of critical public systems and delaying the return of residents.

August 29: Gulf Coast Mourns One Year After Katrina
In the dark of dawn 65 miles south of this shattered city, several hundred people bowed their heads in silence, marking the moment a year ago when the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed overhead at 6:10 a.m. The tiny town of Buras was swept into the Gulf of Mexico by Katrina, and hours later, New Orleans' crucial levees were breached, unleashing one of the worst natural disasters in US history, killing over 1,800 people, most in Louisiana.

Disaster Relief - for Profit
Naomi Klein writes, "The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box."

August 28: FEMA Head: "White House Told Me to Lie"
The ousted head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, says the White House wanted him to lie about the response to Hurricane Katrina. The former FEMA chief cited what he called an email "from a very high source in the White House" that quoted the president at a Cabinet meeting saying, "Thank goodness Brown's taking all the heat because it's better that he takes the heat than I do."

August 25: Whistleblowers Say State Farm Cheated Katrina Victims
State Farm Insurance supervisors systematically demanded that Hurricane Katrina damage reports be buried - or replaced or changed - so that the company would not have to pay policyholders' claims in Mississippi, according to State Farm insiders.

August 24: No Bid Required on 70 Percent of Katrina Contracts
The government awarded 70 percent of its contracts for Hurricane Katrina work without full competition - wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process - says a House study released Thursday by Democrats.

August 17: Disaster Profiteering on the American Gulf Coast Revealed
On the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, "disaster profiteers" have made millions while local companies and laborers in New Orleans and the rest of the devastated Gulf Coast region are systematically getting the short end of the stick, according to a major new report from the nonprofit CorpWatch.

August 15: Judge's Insurance Ruling Could Affect Hundreds of Katrina Victims
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that an insurance company's policies do not cover damage from wind-driven water in a decision that could affect hundreds of upcoming cases related to property damage from Hurricane Katrina.

FEMA Caves, Agrees to Test Katrina Trailers for Formaldehyde
Government officials have finally agreed to check for formaldehyde in trailers FEMA provided to survivors of Hurricane Katrina, but only after dozens of residents complained and environmentalists found high levels of the chemical in tests.

August 10: No-Bid Katrina Contractors Win More FEMA Work
The four giant construction firms that received controversial no-bid contracts to house Hurricane Katrina evacuees last September will be earning up to $250 million apiece to do similar work after future disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday.

July 28: Feds Confirm Fears of New Orleans Flooding
New data from the US Army Corps of Engineers confirms fears that rain from hurricanes and tropical storms could flood some neighborhoods with up to 5 feet of water when new floodgates are closed at the mouths of three major drainage canals

US: FEMA slashes emergency assistance for future disaster victims
Family payments to be cut from $2,000 to $500

Louisiana Governor Sues Federal Agency Over Offshore Environmental Damage
Governor Kathleen Blanco sued the federal government on Thursday in an effort to increase Louisiana's cut of the federal royalties generated by oil production off the state's coast. The suit seeks to block the federal Mineral Management Service from holding a scheduled lease sale of 4,000 blocks in the western Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration.

Fury Meets Katrina Hospital Arrests
This week's arrest of a doctor and two nurses who stayed through Hurricane Katrina to care for stranded hospital patients - but are now accused of killing four of them - has prompted a strong backlash in the medical and legal communities here.

Doctor and nurses arrested in Katrina-related deaths It is impossible to say whether the charges against Dr. Pou and the others are true. One thing is clear, however—that the arrests are a rather crude, political effort to single out individuals who were themselves victims of colossal official neglect and indifference. Whatever the truth of the allegations, this appears to be a shabby effort to scapegoat Dr. Pou and the others.

Independence Day in New Orleans
A Film by Chris Hume and L. Wild Horse
On July 4, residents of the St. Bernard Public Housing Project planned to storm the barbed-wire fences and reoccupy their condemned homes. But the powers that be are finally willing to negotiate. Truthout correspondents Chris Hume and L. Wild Horse were at St. Bernard's for the first Independence Day since Hurricane Katrina.

Religious Leaders Quit Katrina Fund Panel
By all accounts, the group of nine was a religious powerhouse: their ranks included rabbis, imams and ministers, including the man hailed by some as the next Billy Graham. But as of Thursday, seven of the nine religious leaders serving on a committee created by the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to disburse money to churches destroyed by Hurricane Katrina had quit their posts, claiming their advice was ignored.

New Orleans Public Housing Residents Protesting for Right to Return Home
After federal and local officials announced plans to demolish and redevelop several public-housing complexes in New Orleans, former residents are suing and protesting for the right to return to their homes and communities.

425
A Film by Chris Hume and L. Wild Horse
From the haunts of the abandoned Six Flags in New Orleans, Chris Hume and L. Wild Horse find out why the number 425 is important.

Ten Months After Katrina: Gutting New Orleans
Bill Quigley writes, "Still finding dead bodies ... vacant houses stretch mile after mile ... 200,000 have not made it back ... severe shortages of affordable housing ... levees are not yet as strong as they were before Katrina ... not a single dollar of federal housing repair or home reconstruction money has made it to New Orleans ... tens of thousands are waiting ... Most groups here have adopted the theme - Solidarity not Charity. Or as aboriginal activist Lila Watson once said: 'If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us struggle together.'"

"Breathtaking" Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid

FEMA E-Mail Embarrasses White House
The e-mail stated that Bush was relieved that Brown - and not Bush or Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff - was bearing the brunt of the flak over the government's handling of Katrina.

Global Warming Surpassed Natural Cycles in Fueling 2005 Hurricane Season
Global warming accounted for around half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth in the waters of the tropical North Atlantic in 2005, while natural cycles were only a minor factor, according to a new analysis by Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Katrina Displaced 400,000, Study Says
Hurricane Katrina displaced more than 400,000 people from the New Orleans area and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, according to a Census Bureau report to be released today, one of the most comprehensive looks at the hurricane-induced migration.

A Taste of Palast's Armed MadHouse: 1927. Again.
"There is nothing new under the sun," writes Greg Palast. "A Republican president going for the photo op as the Mississippi rolls over New Orleans. It was 1927, and President Calvin Coolidge sent Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, "a little fat man with a notebook in his hand," who mugged for the cameras and promised to build the city a wall of protection. They had their photos taken. Then they left to play golf with Ken Lay or, rather, the Ken Lay railroad baron equivalent of his day."
 

Qatar Grants Millions in Aid to New Orleans
The nation of Qatar plans to announce today roughly $60 million in grants to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina, including $17.5 million to Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically black Catholic university in the United States.

Jan 7: New Orleans Delays Demolition for 2 Weeks
New Orleans city officials agreed in court on Friday not to destroy any storm-damaged houses until at least Jan. 19, when a federal judge will hear arguments in a suit over whether the city can demolish houses without homeowners' permission.