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A 57-year-old man is accused of cruelty and child desertion after witnesses saw him throw his children out of a car and drive away on Rampart Street with one holding onto the bumper Friday night (June 29), according to New Orleans police. Kenneth Watson was booked into Orleans Justice Center jail the next day on three counts of child desertion and four of cruelty to a child, court records show. Witnesses told police they saw Watson get out of a car after it stopped suddenly on North Rampart near the intersection of St. Peter Street around 11:30 p.m. Friday and...

Six days a week for the past four decades, 67-year-old Daniel Jackson has shown up to work at New Orleans cemeteries. He's seen lightning strike stone angels and hurricanes topple tombstones. He's buried toddlers, Katrina victims, convicted killers and his own siblings. And on a recent spring day, he lounges in a plastic chair wedged in the shade of Carrollton Cemetery and describes his longtime profession as "quiet and peaceful." Jackson's former boss, Henry Nelson, who hung up his own shovel years ago, sits with his legs crossed next to him and stares out at a labyrinth of weathered tombstones....

Hurricane forecasters on Monday (May 21) were tracking a weather disturbance they say has a low chance of developing into a tropical depression this week in the Gulf of Mexico. It has the potential to make things wet in New Orleans for Memorial Day weekend. As of 7:30 a.m. Monday, the weather disturbance was in the Caribbean Sea and extended across Cuba and the Florida peninsula. It's expected to move into the central or eastern Gulf of Mexico over the next several days.What does it mean for New Orleans? The National Weather Service office in Slidell said the system could...

Mayor LaToya Cantrell ascended to New Orleans' highest public office Monday (May 7), becoming the first woman to lead the city in its 300-year history, and telling a large audience at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre that "There's only you and me and the work before us." "I vow to each one of you standing here today, before God Almighty, I'll spend every breath and every moment of the next four years proving that you made the right choice," Cantrell said in her speech. Cantrell's relatively short inaugural speech, which clocked in at about 12-1/2 minutes, touched on themes of equity,...

On Tuesday night (April 23), President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will welcome Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and his wife, Brigitte, for the first state visit of the Trump administration. According to a press release from the first lady's office, every aspect of the visit was "all carefully selected by First Lady Melania Trump, to complement and pay homage to the long-standing friendship between the United States and France." Let's get to the most important matter: what are they eating? The main course, we're happy to report, will include jambalaya, "which will be cooked in a New...

by Mark Finkelstein February 11, 2006 When's the last time you recall a famous elected official being called a drunk on live national TV? It happened this morning on the Today show. Today was surely looking for a light touch on New Orleans when co-host Campbell Brown interviewed New Orleans magician, comic and eccentric extraordinaire Harry Anderson in a pre-Mardi Gras piece on "Life after Katrina." But the NBC show surely got a bit more than it was bargaining for. When Anderson took some shots at FEMA and the federal response to Katrina, Brown, in an apparent bid for balance,...

A New Orleans resident has received several speeding tickets over the past few years for racing through town at the blistering speed of ... 0 mph. Donald Schulz says he’s been issued at least 10 citations since 2011 for having his pickup truck legally parked along Canal Boulevard. The street has a 35 mph speed limit and a stationary traffic camera on the median. “It’s a nuisance; I've had to take time out of my day several times and go down there and correct the situation,” Schulz told Fox News. “It got so bad that years ago I even had...

The legacy: It was an annual plague. Every summer, as warm weather set in, New Orleans braced for an outbreak of yellow fever. Those who could afford it got the heck out, fleeing to the Northshore or farther. Those who couldn't, stayed. And they prayed. Nearly every year, hundreds of them would be killed anyway by the so-called "saffron scourge" -- sometimes thousands. Then, in 1900, a team led by Army doctor Walter Reed confirmed a key discovery: It was the mosquitoes. The winged pests weren't just annoying. They were deadly, spreading the virus that caused the disease. That breakthrough...

New Orleans police are searching for a man accused of stealing a Louis Vuitton bag stuffed with $25,000 worth of merchandise, including 2 Rolex watches, from a Central Business District store Friday (April 6), NOPD said. Shortly after 2 p.m., the man went into the store in the 100 block of Roosevelt Way, took a Louis Vuitton tote bag, and left the business, police said

If they’re a person of color, they pay $12. If they’re white, he’ll tell them they can either pay $12, or they can pay $30 — two and a half times the base price, which reflects the wealth disparity in New Orleans. He tells them the profits will be redistributed to people of color, but not as charity — just to any minority customers of his who want it, regardless of their income or circumstance. “When I tell black folks what’s happening, 90 percent of them start laughing, like, ‘For real?’ They’re tickled,” he said. “White folks, there’s this blank...

The likely contentious question over who will inherit Tom Benson's estimated $3 billion fortune -- including the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, his most high-profile and publicly beloved assets -- will be a key issue in the wake of Benson's death at the age of 90. Benson, who died Thursday (March 15), had said he intended to leave the teams to his wife, Gayle Benson. But a long-running family fight over Benson's empire, including the Saints and Pelicans, could reignite in the settling of his estate in court in New Orleans. Details of how Benson decided to pass on his...

FULL TITLE: Transgender visitor at a prison files lawsuit after she was ordered by guards to remove her underwear because a screening machine detected 'unknown object' in her pants A transgender woman who tried to visit her incarcerated brother has filed a federal lawsuit claiming that Louisiana prison officers ordered her to remove her underwear and show her genitals before she could leave the facility. Donald Nelson, a 48-year-old New Orleans resident who goes by the name 'China,' said in the complaint filed Tuesday that officers at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola insisted on searching her vehicle after she refused...

SAARTJ is a pop-up restaurant in the Louisiana city run by local Nigerian chef Tunde Wey who will be charging white customers $18 (£13) extra for their meal. Much like the cafe in Melbourne, Australia which charged a 'man-tax' due to the gender pay gap, SAARTJ is charging an increase to highlight the racial pay gap in New Orleans. In 2013, a study found that the average household income of an African-American in the city was 54 per cent lower than that of a white person.

KIPP Renaissance High School in the Bywater will be closed Tuesday (Feb. 27) "out of an abundance of caution" after administrators learned of a threat to the school made via social media, school officials said in an announcement Monday night. KIPP Renaissance administrators were notified Monday evening of the threat, according to the statement from KIPP New Orleans Schools. School officials launched an investigation and contacted the New Orleans Police Department, which is also investigating the threat.

An 8-year-old boy was robbed at gunpoint in the Little Woods area of New Orleans East on Saturday afternoon (Feb. 24), the New Orleans Police Department said. The boy was approached by a man who demanded the boy give him his keys, according to a preliminary NOPD report. When the boy refused, the man pulled out a gun and said, "Give me the keys or I will kill you." -snip-A10-year-old boy was robbed at gunpoint by three unknown people at 4:19 p.m. on Saturday in the 3000 block of Bruxelles Street near the intersection of Paris Avenue and Gentilly Boulevard,...

Workers at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East on Thursday (Feb. 22) rolled out the latest piece of hardware for the nation's new deep-space rocket. Watch the video above to see the piece being shipped out. The piece, a structural test version of the intertank that will eventually be housed in NASA's Space Launch System, was loaded Thursday morning onto the agency's Pegasus barge. The barge, first used during the Space Shuttle program, will carry the intertank to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama for testing. Michoud Assembly Facility on Thursday Feb. 22, 2018 rolled out the...

Baltimore’s highest-ever per capita homicide rate in 2017 also made it the deadliest big city in the country, USA Today reported Monday. Though official data from the FBI won’t be available until later in the year, USA Today reviewed the homicide rates in the nation’s 50 largest cities and Baltimore came out on top. The 342 homicides the city experienced in 2017 were a 17 percent increase over the prior year, and translated to a rate of 56 killed per 100,000 people. That easily outpaced New Orleans and Detroit, which both had about 40 killings per 100,000 people, according to...

A Black Lives Matter activist who made headlines after video of him wrestling a Confederate flag out the the hands of a protester in Charleston, South Carolina went viral, was shot and killed in New Orleans Tuesday. A spokesperson with the New Orleans police department confirmed the death of 32-year-old Muhiyidin Moye, who went by Muhiyidin d'Baha, to NBC News in an email Wednesday. Police said d'Baha was shot in the thigh early Tuesday morning and transported to a nearby hospital where he died from his injuries.

A leader of the Black Lives Matter movement died early Wednesday morning in New Orleans after being shot in the thigh, according to multiple reports. Muhiyidin Elamin Moye, 32, was shot in the thigh while riding a bicycle, police told The New Orleans Advocate.

A Black Lives Matter activist from South Carolina died Tuesday (Feb. 6) after being shot in the thigh earlier in the day on Bienville Street in New Orleans, according to the NOPD. The shooting victim has been identified as Muhiyidin Moye, an NOPD spokesman said Tuesday night. Moye -- who preferred the last name d'Baha, according to the Washington Post -- and was called "Moye" or "Moya" by loved ones, was struck by gunfire shortly before 1:30 a.m. in the 1900 block of Bienville Street. d'Baha's mother did not want to speak with a reporter when reached by phone Tuesday...