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Homicide rates are rising once again across the country after last year’s spike, and Houston is faring worse than the largest U.S. cities. Four homicides in Houston in the last 24-hours have brought the total this year to 199, a 35% increase over 2020. Compare that to only a 5% increase in homicides so far over last year in Chicago, a 17% increase in New York and a 23% increase in Los Angeles. The total number of homicides is also higher in Houston than in Los Angeles, a city with nearly twice the population. It’s also higher than New York...

Between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the broadcast networks of NBC, ABC, and CBS presented several reports on the “massive” and “historic” flooding devastating Louisiana, even comparing storm damage to that suffered during Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina. However, the one thing missing from the coverage was a single mention of the President of the United States, Barack Obama. On Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt proclaimed: “Now to the flooding disaster still impacting tens of thousands of people in the south. That massive tropical system that devastated Louisiana is now bringing new flash flood watches to Texas. This...

Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin was convicted on 20 of 21 counts of corruption and bribery today. USA Today reporter Rick Jervis did a bit of a profile of Nagin in the course of reporting on the convictions. It included a recounting of the his time at the city's helm during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But one thing it oh-so-predictably did not include was Nagin's Democratic Party affiliation

The California Highway Patrol plans to fire two officers after an internal investigation found they used their service weapons to shoot alligators while working in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, the CHP said Friday. The CHP said the officers shot and killed at least one alligator and failed to report the firing of their weapons, as required by agency policy, said Fran Clader, a spokeswoman at CHP headquarters in Sacramento. The officers broke Louisiana law when they killed the animal, she said. “This is an embarrassment to our department and especially to all our personnel who went to Louisiana and served...

NEW ORLEANS — Two days after the New Orleans Police Department suspended three officers without pay for allegedly assaulting 64-year-old Robert Davis and an Associated Press cameraman on Bourbon Street, two NOPD officers threatened workers from a charitable organization cleaning a park and providing free food and medical care to the needy. A CityBusiness reporter was forcibly ejected from the park while taking photos. NOPD public information officials did not answer phone calls to comment on the incident. On Monday, a coalition of nonprofits and community groups officially opened Welcome Home New Orleans, a makeshift camp in Washington Square in...

OK fellow FReepers. Here's the perfect time to eliminate National Endowment for the Arts. Is 'Pisschrist' more important than the people of NOLA? Bush said we need cuts to pay for NOLA rebuilding, and I can't think of a more frivolous and sickening waste of tax money than the NEA. Two birds with one stone. Tempt the left fall on their swords to say that the Corpus Christi play and fisting photos are more important than the victims of Katrina. What do you say, my fellow FReepers?

The Truth About Katrina Relief: Dispatches from the George R. Brown Convention Center Calm after the storm Like everyone else in America I watched the Hurricane Katrina disaster unfold on TV in horror. If you live in the Gulf Coast states long enough you will see hurricanes and floods destroy cities and towns but this one was different. Directly following the storm the damage seemed to be minimal for a storm of this magnitude. Many of us breathed a sigh of relief. But then the levies broke and created a whole new kind of disaster – a hurricane ravaged city being...

After President Bush's speech an ABC new correspondant interviewed a few of those that are displaced by the hurricane. It was a priceless moment. A middle age Black woman was asked if she was angry at President Bush because of the slow response of the federal goverment. She hit the nail on the head with her reply. She stated that she was not angry at Bush, but that she was angry at Nagin and Blaco for their lack of response. She also wanted to know why they didn't use the school buses to evacuate the city. The correspondant then tried...

CNN Headline news reporter just stated that the military will not force folks from their homes. "Refusing to force Americans from their homes", said the noticeably British reporter. Further, they will not let residents deteriorate in their own homes. The military will continue to get water and food to those remaining in New Orleans, effectively undermining Nagin's mandatory evacuation order.

Paul Simpson, a political blogger who lives in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, La., said he and other locals are puzzled by the governor's refusal to let the federal government temporarily command the state's National Guard. "I thought it was as standard as sunshine in California that the governor would tell the president, 'You have the Guard.' I thought that was a given," Mr. Simpson said. "She absolutely has no clue." Critics have long derided Mrs. Blanco for her tendency to call for studies and special commissions to find solutions for the state's biggest problems. In 2003, the Shreveport...

Over the last ten days I have, with the rest of America and the world, watched a horrific natural disaster and tragedy unfold. I say natural disaster because that is exactly what a hurricane is when it strikes humanity and destroys property and lives and leaves suffering in its wake, as hurricane Katrina did along the Gulf Coast last week. I say tragedy because I have sat transfixed as I have watched as governmental social programs long in place, contributed to the disaster, and as a number of unimaginable and crass mistakes made by those who could have and should...

From RIGZONE - your gateway to the oil and gas industry: Special Report: Hurricane Katrina Damage Assessment It has been a week since Hurricane Katrina pounded its way across Florida into the Gulf of Mexico, on its way to causing one of the worst natural disasters in American history. The course it took through the Gulf led straight through the heart of the offshore oil patch into America's most active port and leading oil refining region. The damage to the oil and gas industry is still being assessed, but by all accounts it could have been much worse. However, the...

***UPDATED: Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005, 2:13 p.m.***A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth: 1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying. 2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one. 3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before...

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Please have plenty of tissuses or a hankie nearby when you read this These are the times that try men's souls. But trying is not good enough. You have to get it right: people's lives are on the line. It's still early in the process of assessing the full extent of the damage to life and property wrought by the wrath of Katrina. Louisiana and Mississippi have had the faces of their states altered. Entire neighborhoods are gone or ruined. Bridges have been disabled. Long stretches of highway are now primitive walkways, while others have simply broken off and fallen...

Russia is ready to assist the United States in dealing with the damage caused by hurricane Katrina, which has taken 68 lives so far and left behind a tremendous amount of devastation, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a message to U.S. President George Bush Tuesday. "Russia deeply sympathizes with Americans, who faced a disaster of such a colossal scale, and is ready to offer necessary assistance," Putin said. Putin asked Bush to extend his condolences to families and relatives of those killed in the disaster. "Accept my sincere words of regret in connection with the natural calamity in the...

THE BOXES are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all. If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water. "As the water recedes," says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, "we expect to find a lot of dead bodies." New Orleans is a disaster waiting to happen. The city lies below sea level, in a bowl bordered by levees that fend off Lake...