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EW ORLEANS (AP) -- Call it a sign of the times for Louisiana's embattled governor: A chance to dine with Gov. Kathleen Blanco fetched a winning bid of $1 at a recent fundraising auction hosted by a group of business leaders. The president of the Monroe Chamber of Commerce, in northeastern Louisiana, said she called Blanco's office Tuesday to apologize for a "poor joke gone awry."

Gov. Kathleen Blanco was ready to go shopping. Her treasury was flush with money. The Republican Legislators said her proposals were dead on arrival. Many Democrats weren’t fond of her session ideas and wanted to discuss Road Home and real insurance reform, instead. Blanco wanted to spend a profusion of one-time money on many one-time spending items. The House of Representatives has told her to do it on her own time, not theirs. On Monday, Blanco failed to get the House of Representatives to approve a revised, reduced version of her spending plan. She has been unable to get the...

A little more than a year after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is seeing a boom in its Latino population, with many coming to help reconstruct the city. Health officials had not anticipated the surge in the city's Latino population, The New York Times reported. In a demographic twist, hundreds of Latino babies are being born in New Orleans to immigrant Latino workers, both legal and illegal. In a city largely abandoned by its doctors after the storm, this new population adds a financial strain to the already struggling city. Many expectant mothers, lacking in financial assistance, cannot afford prenatal care...

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco's push to spend $2 billion on tax breaks, pay raises and other budget proposals stalled in the state House on Sunday as the governor's allies ran into problems getting the votes to raise a constitutional spending cap. The Blanco administration tried to work out a compromise with lawmakers behind the scenes, to determine which proposals could gain passage in a 10-day pre-holiday special session called by the governor despite cries from critics for postponement. The House was expected to take up some of the Blanco spending proposals Sunday but adjourned when it was...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Kathleen Blanco says state police and National Guard troops cannot stay in New Orleans "indefinitely" to help the city fight crime, but she has ordered them to stay in the city at least past the end of the year. Her decision comes in response to a request by New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley to keep the reinforcements well into next year. Blanco said no decision has been made how long the 60 state troopers and 300 Guard troops will be assigned to police and security duties in New Orleans. "We can't do it...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A church that wanted to do something special for Hurricane Katrina victims gave a $75,000 house, free and clear, to a couple who said they were left homeless by the storm. But the couple turned around and sold the place without ever moving in, and went back to New Orleans. "Take it up with God," an unrepentant Joshua Thompson told a TV reporter after it was learned that he and the woman he identified as his wife had flipped the home for $88,000. Church members said they feel their generosity was abused by scam artists. They are...

Congressman William Jefferson has been re-elected to Congress, according to WWL-TV election analyst Greg Rigamer. With two-thirds of the vote counted, Jefferson had a 6,000-vote lead over challenger Karen Carter. "I'm a little worried about what this is going to say to the nation," said City Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, a Carter supporter. Jefferson was forced into the runoff against a fellow Democrat when he failed to win 50 percent of the vote in a crowded open multiparty primary. His opponent, state Rep. Karen Carter, is seeking to become the first black woman from Louisiana elected to Congress. Jefferson, 59, has...

Jefferson Parish's murder rate continued to spiral upward Friday night, after authorities logged a third killing within 24 hours, pushing the bloodshed to its highest level since 1980. The tally stood at 62 homicides in unincorporated Jefferson Parish, with the West Bank accounting for 43. The previous high for unincorporated Jefferson Parish was 50 murders logged in all of 1990, said Col. John Fortunato of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office. Friday night's violence, which brought Sheriff Harry Lee to the scene in Terrytown, came more than 24 hours after two men were cut down in a Harvey neighborhood Thursday night.

Blanco during her speech to legislature BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Governor Kathleen Blanco faces openly rebellious lawmakers who have returned to the Capitol to consider her pre-Christmas, billion-dollar plans for tax breaks, road projects, pay raises and insurance rebates. Blanco called a ten-day special legislative session over the objection of some legislators and government watchdog groups. Her critics object to her nearly $2 billion spending plan, fueled by higher tax revenue from recovery-related commerce such as sale of construction materials, cars, appliances and furniture to replace that lost to two major hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, in 2005. The...

"IT'S AN EMBARRASSMENT AND BREACH OF TRUST" A Louisiana State Police employee and 11 others have been arrested as part of a statewide investigation into the theft of 256 computers purchased by FEMA. Only 43 of the stolen computers had been recovered as of Monday morning, police said. The Dell computers, valued at approximately $900 each, were intended to replace computers in government buildings, hospitals, and other facilities in Louisiana damaged by Hurricane Katrina, said State Police spokesman Lt. Lawrence McLeary. The computers were being stored at the Louisiana State Police Compound on Independence Boulevard in Baton Rouge. "It's an...

Some of the "Fighting Tigers" are fighting mad at Governor Blanco. As noted in the press, there are unofficial reports that LSU Tigers are going to the Rose bowl. After this was announced, Governor Blanco began making phone calls that haven't exactly impressed LSU fans. Several fans have approached THE DEAD PELICAN expressing a mixture of outrage and ridicule, claiming that Blanco is trying to take credit for something that isn't her doing. Other LSU fans haven't forgotten about Blanco's tail gate party for ULL, at the same time that university was playing the LSU tigers. According to a statement...

A multi-agency task force investigating as many as 21 stranglings arrested a 42-year-old Houma man on Friday and booked him with two of the earliest ones. See story A statewide investigation into nearly two dozen slayings of men, most around the southeastern Louisiana town of Houma and in neighboring parishes, led police to arrest a suspect Friday who they believe is a serial killer, charging him in the killings of two men from New Orleans. Houma police arrested Ronald J. Dominique, 42, at a homeless shelter run by the police department on Friday, and accused him of leaving two dead...

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Wednesday that she will not remove one of her top aides from his job or ask him to abandon his post as head of Southern University's governing board while he is being investigated for sexual harassment complaints. The Governor's Office hired an independent attorney, Mark Falcon, to look into the complaints from unidentified Southern University System employees against Johnny Anderson. But Blanco said her office has received "a verbal accusation with no evidence that I'm aware of" and she wouldn't make changes in Anderson's role until further investigation. "This is very treacherous,...

Is Crime Causing Locals To leave? NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Even among the best-off post-Katrina returnees to New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parishe — those living in houses or apartments, rather than trailers — about one-third say they may leave the area within the next two years, a small poll indicates. The poll only reached people whose houses or apartments were in good enough shape to have a land-based phone, pollster Susan E. Howell of the University of New Orleans noted as she released the results Tuesday. "They are presumably not in trailers," she wrote. And, since the university's Survey...

Federal prosecutors on Thursday came a step closer to putting away a Ponchatoula man charged with hatching a murder-for-hire plot against the DEA agent who made a big drug bust against him last fall. Johnnie Sims, 26, of Robert, La., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to charges of plotting to kill a federal agent and conspiring to deal cocaine and marijuana in and around Tangipahoa Parish. Sims agreed to testify against his alleged narcotics selling cohort, Chris Walker, 31, who faces trial next month on charges he not only trafficked in crack cocaine, but also tried to have his...

Wilbert Ross is known as a fighter to fellow residents of Renaissance Village, the trailer park for hurricane evacuees in Baker. His latest battle is to keep bus service for the people who live there. Several dozen hurricane evacuees, including Ross, met Friday at Faith Chapel Church on Staring Lane with officials from the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority. The evacuees met to express their opposition to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s decision to end funding for emergency transportation services. The services set to end Nov. 30 because of a lack of funding include the use of RTA vehicles that...

The Loiuisiana Democratic party hasn't taken very kindly to Bobby Jindal's latest gubernatorial bid. The Dems realeased a statement Friday with the title "THOUGH SHALT GO FORTH AND SEEK CONTRIBUTIONS." The title was an apparent snide reference to Jindal's religious faith; Jindal had claimed that he'd been "praying about" whether to run for governor. Some believe that the press release contains ethnic and racial overtones, as it pointedly makes snide use of Mr. Jindal's Indian name, which is "Piyush." The Dems attacked Jindal in the statement, saying that "Piyush (Bobby) Jindal has finally admitted to a partial divine revelation that...

BATON ROUGE — A state office that oversaw a series of controversial charities tied to African-American legislators is being scrutinized by the FBI, Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s office confirmed Tuesday in annoucing that it had complied with a subpoena for records from the department. “The governor’s office staff has complied with the FBI’s request for information dating back to 1996 regarding certain programs funded by the former Office of Urban Affairs,” Blanco’s office said in a prepared statement. The governor’s office confirmed receipt of the subpoena Tuesday after a reporter inquired about it. Before it was abolished earlier this year, the...

The ravaged neighborhoods of New Orleans make a grim backdrop for imagining the future of American cities. But despite its criminally slow pace, the rebuilding of this city is emerging as one of the most aggressive works of social engineering in America since the postwar boom of the 1950s. And architecture and urban planning have become critical tools in shaping that new order. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s plan to demolish four of the city’s biggest low-income housing developments at a time when the city still cannot shelter the majority...

Hurricane Ernesto is coming!

Fake officials "reopen" New Orleans public housing By Peter Henderson and Matt Daily Mon Aug 28, 5:49 PM ET NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A prankster posing as a federal housing official took centre stage at a New Orleans event with the city mayor and the governor of Louisiana, controversially promising to throw open closed public housing to thousands of poor former city residents. The stunt, which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development called a "cruel hoax," was the latest by an activist group known as "The Yes Men" who have previously masqueraded as World Trade Organisation officials announcing...

(Charged with rebuilding his city and decisively re-elected six months ago, Mayor Ray Nagin remains an elusive character and a controversial leader—and miles of the Big Easy are still uninhabitable.) Sept. 4, 2006 issue - Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, had been avoiding a group of particularly determined—and strident—community activists who were after him to do more to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward, a working-class, predominantly black area that was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. A year after the storm, New Orleans water and sewer pipes are still badly damaged, and the city has been unable to certify...

"New Orleans has suffered from the trauma of three crises," says Louisiana Congressman Bobby Jindal. "First was the hurricane, second was the levees breaking and third has been the widespread incompetence of the federal, state and local government response. This has been a one-year case study in bureaucracy and red tape at its very worst." Congressman Jindal's aptly stated charge of incompetence across all levels of government is the gentle assessment. Here, on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, are the views of prominent Democrats: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, touring New Orleans: "What is needed in New Orleans is public...

New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan bristled at criticism and walked out of an ABC News Nightline interview when told that law enforcement officials were critical of Jordan's handling of his office. ABC News' Brian Ross interviewed Jordan earlier today as part of a report examining the state of the New Orleans justice system one year after Katrina, to be broadcast on Nightline later tonight. Since last year's hurricane, there has been growing criticism of Jordan's office by senior people in law enforcement who say, even with the acknowledged problems caused by Katrina, the District Attorney has not efficiently dealt...

No one does righteous anger like Spike Lee. If there's one thing that marks the director's work, it's that sense that something is about to pop, no matter the topic. Then, all you can do is sit back and ponder the question of "How did it come to that?" That's why Lee was the perfect choice to create HBO's monumental documentary, "When the Levees Broke," which airs again tonight. Today marks the official anniversary of when those levees broke in New Orleans, creating a disaster never before seen in this country. In Lee's hands, "When the Levees Broke" doesn't seem...

NEW ORLEANS — In New Orleans these days, even a magician can run out of tricks. Harry Anderson, the illusionist, comic and former star of sitcoms like “Night Court” and “Dave’s World,” has lived in New Orleans since 2000, when he left Hollywood with his wife, the former Elizabeth Morgan. They rode out Hurricane Katrina in the French Quarter, in the building that houses Oswald’s Speakeasy, Mr. Anderson’s nightclub. Their home, whose ground floor was given over to Sideshow, their magic and curiosity shop, was in another building in the Quarter. In the weeks after the storm, even before the...

>>NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A note found on the body of a suicide jumper led police to a French Quarter apartment where they found his girlfriend's charred head in a pot on the stove, her arms and legs in the oven and her torso in the refrigerator, a law enforcement officer said Wednesday. New Orleans Police spokesmen confirmed that a 26-year-old woman was found dismembered Tuesday night in her apartment above a voodoo shop. Details from the kitchen were released by a law enforcement officer close to the investigation who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity and...

So common is the practice of drug abusers loaning out their cars in exchange for crack cocaine that police call it a “crack rental.” But a Kenner woman added a new twist to the arrangement over the weekend when the man borrowing her vehicle failed to deliver the drugs: She stabbed him. Kenner police said Evelyn N. Simonett, 47, 2607 Helena St., picked up Chadwick Lee, 20, at his Kenner house Saturday at midnight and drove him to her home. They had agreed that Lee could use Simonett’s sport-utility vehicle in exchange for $40 of crack, said James Gallagher, Police...

The Housing Authority of New Orleans approved further plans Wednesday to demolish its largest housing complexes and build new "mixed-income" developments on the sites, all shuttered since Hurricane Katrina struck 14 months ago. Donald Babers, the federal housing official appointed to act as HANO's one-man board of commissioners, swiftly approved a series of agenda items that confirm the C.J. Peete, St. Bernard and B.W. Cooper complexes will never reopen as they were pre-Katrina. HANO plans to build at least 1,285 units that include both market-rate and subsidized homes at the sites of the three developments. HANO officials did not offer...

Corruption Is Issue in New Orleans RaceReuters Updated:2006-11-01 09:04:06 Rep. William Jefferson (Alex Brandon, AP) NEW ORLEANS, Oct 31 (Reuters) - The battle to represent hurricane-battered New Orleans in Congress should turn on which candidate can best help rebuild the city but the buzz is about how $90,000 in cold hard cash ended up in the Democratic incumbent's freezer. Until the FBI found the money wrapped in foil as part of a sting operation in May, eight-term congressman William Jefferson seemed certain to be re-elected on Nov. 7 to represent Louisiana's 2nd district, much of which lay under water after...

MEMPHIS, Tenn, 11/22 - A church that wanted to do something special for Hurricane Katrina victims gave a $75,000 house, free and clear, to a couple who said they were left homeless by the storm. But the couple turned around and sold the place without ever moving in, and went back to New Orleans. "Take it up with God," an unrepentant Joshua Thompson told a TV reporter after it was learned that he and the woman he identified as his wife had flipped the home for $88,000. Church members said they feel their generosity was abused by scam artists. They...

Even though he was focused on making a better life for himself, Brandon Spincer always made time for kids. The former Tulane University football star worked with the children of Boys and Girls Town. He doled out his tickets to home football games to youngsters from troubled neighborhoods. And in the end, it would be his adopted families at Tulane and St. Augustine High School that would rally around his parents, his two children and other relatives after Spincer, 24, was cut down in a jealous rage Monday night. Authorities said Steve Adams, 25, of Algiers ambushed Spincer, killing him...

Here's a brief summary of New Orleans crime info as of Friday and Saturday morning ... New Orleans Hopes Summit Will Stem Rising Death Toll NOPD investigating city's 100th homicide of 2006 2 murders in 2 days in Treme Ex-boyfriend killed man, then himself in woman's apartment Two Shot Dead At Metairie Apartment Man slain on Bienville Street, second in as many days 10 escape from juvenile center, 5 at-large Police seeking public's help in trying to ID shooting victim Suspect in 4 robberies sought State Police Drug Bust Pre-Katrina Suicide Rate Still Higher Than After Storm Escapee from hospital...

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 22 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Former Deputy City Attorney Henry A. Dillon III, 48, of New Orleans, has been sentenced to life imprisonment, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten of the Eastern District of Louisiana announced today. On May 4, 2006, Dillon was found guilty by a federal jury of two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law against two separate victims. In addition, the jury made special findings that the offenses involved aggravated sexual abuse. Federal law defines aggravated sexual abuse as knowingly causing a person to engage in a sexual act by using force against that...

A 21-year-old Tennessee woman was found near death in a downtown hotel room Monday with a single gunshot wound to her head, New Orleans police said. The woman, whose name police are withholding pending family notification, was rushed to a local hospital where emergency personnel pronounced her dead, said NOPD spokesman David Adams. Police in the Eighth District received a call Monday morning of a female shot at 334 O’Keefe Street, in a room inside the Sleep Inn Hotel. Investigators said the woman was from Memphis, and was “possibly involved in illicit activity in the French Quarter.” Police yesterday afternoon...

• Another downtown bar held-up • 2 still sought in bar holdups • Man stabs toddler, wife along Baton Rouge highway • Kenner man booked in shooting • Mom's boyfriend convicted of girl's rape • 4 students arrested in school fight • Man booked in Internet sex sting • Kenner man booked in molestation • NOPD lists suspects in separate shootings • Shooting victim is Marrero man • Activist found innocent of assault

100,000 newcomers A U.S. Census Bureau survey of hurricane-affected Gulf Coast communities suggested an influx of almost 100,000 Hispanics in the four months after Katrina. The survey also found a slight rise in Hispanics in New Orleans and surrounding parishes, to just above 6 percent. "In some ways, New Orleans is just catching up with a trend that's happening in every other city in the country," said Elizabeth Fussell, a Tulane sociologist. "Katrina has put us on the national map."

For prostitutes working the streets of New Orleans, the post-flood era has sparked a boom in business, largely owing to the influx of an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 out-of-town workers away from their families with money to blow, police said. It's "like the Super Bowl" for sex workers, said Deputy Chief James Scott, commander of the Police Department's Intelligence Division, from his division's headquarters in a trailer. Though police are making more arrests for prostitution than before Hurricane Katrina, Scott said quantifying such results is difficult because undercover officers often can't develop conclusive evidence to make a clear-cut prostitution case....

HOUMA -- A former school deputy accused of having sex with a teen girl was forced to submit a saliva sample for DNA testing Tuesday, based on a judge’s ruling. The 16-year-old girl who has accused Glenn Michael Brunet, 46, of repeated sexual intercourse led detectives to two items that she said may have his DNA -- a used condom and a towel he allegedly cleaned himself with after sex, according to courtroom testimony. Authorities have withheld the girl’s name because of the sexual nature of the allegations, but said she is a Lafourche Parish resident. Brunet is charged with...

A New Orleans police officer lost his job and was jailed Friday after being nabbed in a French Quarter sting operation, authorities said. An internal affairs investigation was started after complaints had been lodged against Donald Baptiste, 37, alleging he had been taking money from citizens, police said. Late Thursday, police used a confidential Hispanic informant who pretended to speak very little English and pretended to be intoxicated. Baptiste was dispatched to the scene to handle a disturbance call and allegedly confronted the informant and took several hundred dollars that had been given to the informant by police, according to...

St. Tammany Parish Councilman Joe Impastato of Lacombe, under federal indictment for allegedly using his elected office to extort kickbacks for a debris-disposal contract, has resigned from the council seat he has held since 2000. In a resignation letter submitted to the Parish Council office on Friday, Impastato maintained his innocence on charges that include extortion and money laundering, and cited business and family reasons for his decision to step down from the 7th District seat. "I am committed to the effort required to be vindicated of the false charges that have been brought against me, as well as to...

Motorist pulled beside him, fired six times Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies are searching for suspects in the shooting of a 23-year-old Algiers man who was waiting at a Terrytown stoplight Friday. The shooting occurred shortly before 9 a.m. at Holmes Boulevard and Behrman Highway, said Col. John Fortunato, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office. Witnesses said the victim was in a red Chevrolet Impala at the traffic light when a tan Ford F-150 pulled alongside him, he said. The truck's driver fired six shots into the car...

By Walt Philbin Staff writer New Orleans police and Texas homicide detectives arrested a 20-year-old New Orleans man Friday at his mother’s home near Bayou St. John in connection with a double murder of a man and his pregnant girlfriend near Houston in December, NOPD Sgt. Mike Crawford said Friday. Both victims and the suspect, Jared Daniel, along with a second suspect already being held on a similar fugitive warrant in connection with the same incident, were Katrina evacuees, said homicide detective E.R. Rogge of the Pasadena (Texas) Police Department. The second suspect, who also faces unrelated robbery charges filed...

New Orleans, LA - This morning, members of the New Orleans Police Department are investigating the fatal stabbing of an unidentified Hispanic male. The offense occurred at approximately 2:30 a.m. at 2300 Franklin Avenue. According to investigators, Fifth District officers responded to a call of a "male stabbed" and, upon their arrival, found the victim lying on a porch of a home suffering multiple stab wounds to the body. Emergency medical technicians were summoned to the scene, where he was pronounced dead.

A New Orleans officer was shot and wounded while responding to a triple shooting in Marrero in which one person was critically wounded. The officer, Sam Palumbo Jr., was taken to the Charity Hospital Trauma Unit at Elmwood, where he was listed in stable condition. His wounds were not believed to be life-threatening, according to Assistant Chief Newell Norman of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office. Police were responding to an 8:05 p.m. shooting in the 6700 block of Carver Drive in Marrero in which three people -- a father, son and daughter -- were wounded. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office...

Within a few hours Monday evening the potential for homicide that always seems to lurk just below the surface burst into the open with four killings, two in New Orleans and two on the west bank in Jefferson Parish. The New Orleans shooting deaths both occurred at different times in the same block of Dumaine Street in the 6th Ward. The first victim, Eric McCormick, 27, of New Orleans, was driven to University Hospital about 4 p.m. by a private citizen, police said. Police soon learned he had been shot in the 2600 block of Dumaine Street near North Broad...

Seemingly before the wind stopped, certainly before power was restored, they began arriving. The initial wave brought the food, the drink, the clothing, the gasoline to get through those first desperate, chaotic days. The second wave brought hammers, saws, shovels, drills, all the tools necessary to begin removing Hurricane Katrina’s afterbirth. As summer turned to fall and fall to winter, they came, wave after wave after wave. From near and far, points domestic and international, some 350,000 volunteers set aside their lives to help us rebuild ours. And still they come. To paraphrase volunteer Elizabeth Ryan, they climb, pound, beat,...

A suicide note in the pocket of a man who jumped off the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel late Tuesday led police to the grisly scene of his girlfriend’s murder, where they found her charred head in a pot on the stove, her legs and feet baked in the oven and the rest of her dismembered body in trash bag in the refrigerator, according to police and the couple’s landlord. The man, Zackery Bowen, a tall man in his mid 20s with long blond hair, claimed in the note to have killed his girlfriend, Adrian “Addie” Hall, on Oct. 5, according...

A Shocking Story of Gun Confiscation In America The video you will see on this web site is horrifying. The crimes committed against law-abiding gun owners are beyond comprehension. The arrogance of anti-gun politicians and government officials and their hate of freedom will churn your stomach. The law is the law, the Constitution is the Constitution. If ONE local mayor or police chief can decide what the Second Amendment means, it opens the door to tyranny—where ANY mayor or police chief can say what the Second Amendment means. That's why I'm asking you to make a special contribution to help...

15-year-old offered $90 for job, police sayA 14-year-old Destrehan boy has been booked with solicitation for murder after St. Charles Parish authorities said he offered a 15-year-old Destrehan boy $90 to kill a rival. The 14-year-old turned himself in to detectives in St. Rose on Wednesday shortly after 6:30 p.m. after learning that a warrant had been issued for his arrest, Sheriff's Office spokesman Capt. Patrick Yoes said. He also was booked with illegal possession of a handgun by a juvenile. A second youth, a 15-year-old New Sarpy boy, was arrested Wednesday and booked with illegal possession of a firearm...