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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) - With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama's football stadium. About 10 condominium projects are going up in and around Tuscaloosa, and builders are asking up to $1 million for units with granite countertops, king-size bathtubs and 'Bama decor, including crimson couches and Bear Bryant wall art. While many of the buyers are Crimson Tide alumni or ardent football fans not entitled to any...

New Orleans (AP) -- The vice president of the City Council, once thought to be a likely candidate for mayor in 2010, pleaded guilty Monday to a federal bribery charge. Oliver Thomas entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance, and prosecutors were to discuss details of the case later Monday. Bond for Thomas was set at $25,000.

Pelosi Delays Decision on JeffersonBy Susan Ferrechio Published: March 1, 2007 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has postponed until at least next week action on a resolution that would place embattled Rep. William J. Jefferson on the Homeland Security Committee after Republicans said they would demand a roll call vote that could be potentially embarrassing for some Democrats. Leadership aides confirmed Thursday that the vote has been tentatively scheduled for sometime next week. Democrats acknowledged that their move to give the seat to the Louisiana Democrat, who is under federal investigation for bribery, would not happen via the simple and fast...

Lee Celano for The New York TimesDylan Langlois, center, and Kasandra Larsen said goodbye to a friend as they prepared to move out of New NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 15 — After nearly a decade in the city of their dreams, Kasandra Larsen and her fiancé, Dylan Langlois, climbed into a rented moving truck on Marais Street last Sunday, pointed it toward New Hampshire, and said goodbye. Not because of some great betrayal — they had, after all, come back after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina — but a series of escalating indignities: the attempted carjacking of a pregnant friend;...

NEW ORLEANS -- Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama blasted the Bush administration Monday for the slow pace of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts and what he saw as a lack of urgency at the White House. "There is not a sense of urgency in this administration to get this done," said the Democratic senator from Illinois. "You get a sense that will has been lacking in the last several months." Obama, the nation's only African American senator, was in New Orleans for a field hearing conducted by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The devastation in New Orleans and...

Katrina evacuees say they need more than extension They welcome more time with housing help but say the problem is more long-term A six-month extension of emergency housing assistance will stave off an immediate catastrophe but will not solve the underlying problems preventing hurricane victims from rebuilding their lives, evacuees and their advocates said Monday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed that assistance would continue through Aug. 31 for about 128,000 households living in trailers, mobile homes or apartments, including about 14,000 in the Houston area. The assistance was scheduled to expire in February for victims of Hurricane Katrina and...

By Emer Mullins The large increase in babies being born to immigrants in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is putting maternity hospitals in that city under strain, The New York Times has reported. Hundreds of babies are being born to Latino immigrant workers, who flocked to the city to work during the reconstruction. “The throng of babies gurgling in the handful of operational maternity wards here has come as a big surprise — and a financial strain — to this historically black and white city, which before the hurricane had only a small Latino community and virtually...

A radio commercial for a local gun shop advises Houstonians to arm themselves against "Katricians," adding to the growing tension between Houstonians and the Katrina evacuees who have been blamed for a rising crime rate. Gun shop owner and radio talk-show host Jim Pruett said Thursday he started running the ad a few weeks ago after hearing a local television interview with a Katrina evacuee living in Houston who implied he would have to turn to crime if his government assistance ran out. "There are many evacuees here who are working," said Pruett, who has owned Jim Pruett's Guns &...

AUSTIN — Days after being criticized for derogatory comments about Hurricane Katrina evacuees, independent gubernatorial hopeful Kinky Friedman struck back at candidates who pander to minorities. "I don't eat tamales in the barrio, I don't eat fried chicken in the ghetto, I don't eat bagels with the Jews for breakfast," said Friedman, who is Jewish. "That to me is true racism." The comment last week was intended to reflect that he's not afraid of risking a little unpopularity for the sake of being honest, campaign spokeswoman Laura Stromberg said Monday. "He's not going to become the politician that people in...

Seething at what they consider racist slurs against African-Americans displaced by Hurricane Katrina, activists here Friday took verbal aim at gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman and west Houston residents who last week urged city officials to send evacuees back home. "The nerve of the white man to talk about shipping anyone anywhere," Houston activist Quanell X told a small group of reporters and the public Friday at a Texas Southern University news conference. "This is disgraceful." His comments came as local and New Orleans activists gathered in Houston to craft a response to the comments, which they said smeared the estimated...

Life in Houston hasn't been easy, with many lacking health insurance, jobs, survey finds Houston may be hot, unfriendly and frustratingly difficult to navigate, but more than two-thirds of the poorest New Orleans evacuees who fled to the city after Hurricane Katrina plan to stay, a Rice University survey released today shows. Almost 69 percent of the 1,081 people queried in the National Science Foundation-funded study conducted in July by political science professors Rick Wilson and Robert Stein said they likely will remain in Houston. That figure is up from about 57 percent in October and 51 percent in September...

The number of National Guard troops on the Texas-Mexico border would jump from 1,500 to 10,000 under a plan to combat illegal immigration proposed today by independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman. "We've waited 153 years for the feds to help us," Friedman said. "They haven't yet. We have our own army. I want 10,000 Texas National Guard troops on the border and I want them now." The immigration proposal was one of four broad policy issues Friedman outlined today. The independent is running against incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry, Democrat Chris Bell, and another independent, Carole Strayhorn, the state comptroller...

NEW ORLEANS A New Orleans man may have thought he'd get a thank-you for rescuing more than 200 people from Hurricane Katrina floodwaters. Instead, he got a lawsuit. John Lyons Junior is suing Mark Morice (mohr-EES') for taking his boat without permission and not returning it. Lyons' lawyer says Morice made no attempt to return the boat. Morice says he left it for other rescuers to use. Lyons' 18-foot boat was one of three Morice said he commandeered after water started rising. Morice said one of the other boat owners told him he was glad he'd been able to hot-wire...

New Orleans police chief during Hurricane Katrina, Eddie Compass, says he unnecessarily "heightened people's fears" by repeating unconfirmed reports of out-of-control crime in the city during the aftermath of the storm, adding to the confusion caused by the disaster and potentially hampering rescue efforts. "There were reports of rapes and children being raped. I even got one report … that my daughter was raped," Mr. Compass says in a Spike Lee documentary scheduled to air on HBO tonight. "In hindsight, I guess I heightened people's fears by me being the superintendent of police, reporting these things that were reported to...

Katrina victims blamed for Houston crimeBy PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press Writer A letter to inmate No. 1352951 and a cell phone bill for $76.63, both found in a soggy New Orleans duplex ruined by Hurricane Katrina, led Louisiana bounty hunter James Martin to Texas. Again. It marked the seventh time since Katrina that Martin, whose pursuit of bail jumpers often begins with clues salvaged from abandoned New Orleans homes, has followed a trail to Texas. "I don't think Texas really knows what they got," Martin said. Katrina sent a lot of bad guys to Texas, as Houston is finding...

NEW ORLEANS -- Mayor Ray Nagin unveiled a new evacuation strategy for New Orleans on Tuesday that relies more on buses and trains and eliminates the Superdome and Convention Center as shelters. "There will be no shelter of last resort in the event of a major hurricane coming our way," Nagin declared. The mayor, facing a runoff election May 20, has been widely criticized for failing to get the city's most vulnerable residents out of town as Hurricane Katrina approached. The Superdome and Morial Convention Center became a scene of misery for days after the Aug. 29 hurricane as thousands...

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Ernie K-Doe has some big hurdles to overcome to win his bid for mayor of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans: he lacks the political experience and financial clout of many of his rivals. He's also been dead for almost five years. No matter, said the widow of the flamboyant rhythm-and-blues singer and one of the city's most enduring characters as she launched his tongue-in-cheek campaign for the April 22 vote. "He's the only one qualified -- that's my opinion," Antoinette K-Doe said on Saturday at a rally outside the Mother-in-Law Lounge, the nightclub that bears the name of...

The Rev. Jesse Jackson is touring Southern cities this week to rally opposition to next month's mayoral election in New Orleans, saying too many Hurricane Katrina victims scattered around the country will be unable to vote. He is asking black churches, black colleges and other organizations in cities like Atlanta, Jackson, Miss., and Memphis, Tenn., to encourage their members to march on New Orleans on April 1. The election is set for April 22. Jackson and other civil rights leaders have demanded that the election be postponed. But they have not said when they believe the balloting should be held....

The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt—and that is what you have been doing all your life. (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged) In the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in American history, we have seen a spectacular resurgence of the indictment against white merica that has been an organizing theme of our national discourse since the 1960s. Starting from the liberal assumption that any undesirable outcome for black people is the result of white racism, black leaders and spokesmen—supported, according to one poll, by 66 percent of all blacks—have charged in the most virulent terms that white...

Hey, lunatic-fringe-self-proclaimed-prophet-of-gloom—can you please stop with the “God struck down New Orleans because of Mardi Gras and Biloxi because of their gambling” blather? With that line of reasoning, how would you explain the hurricane that leveled Pensacola last year? Pensacola is no South Beach, nor does it have a Bourbon Street. In fact, I don’t think you can find a city in the US that has more churches per capita than Escambia County, and yet they got the blunt end of the pool cue eleven months ago. Go figure. Look, I realize that drunken college girls flashing their chests for...