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How much money has Uncle Sam spent on New Orleans and the Gulf region since Hurricane Katrina ripped the place apart?...I’ll give you the answer because you’ll never guess it. The grand total is $127 billion (including tax relief)...

Aide to New Orleans mayor describes chaos after storm in new book — NEW ORLEANS — After Hurricane Katrina inundated his city with floodwaters, leaving in its wake a wave of human suffering and lawlessness, Mayor C. Ray Nagin surveyed what already was being called the nation’s worst natural disaster from the window of a sweltering hotel suite he’d commandeered. “Are you OK?” his press secretary, Sally Forman, asked. “This was God’s plan for me, Sally,” Nagin said. “What was?” she asked. “To rebuild New Orleans.” That exchange is one of the many insights into the man and the chaos...

NEW ORLEANS - For proof that Hurricane Katrina is transforming the ethnic flavor of New Orleans — and creating altogether new tensions — look no further than the taco trucks. Lunch trucks serving Latin American fare are appearing around New Orleans, catering to the immigrant laborers who streamed into the city in search of work after Katrina turned much of the place into a construction zone. The trucks are a common sight in barrios from Los Angeles to New York, but controversial in a city still adapting to a threefold increase in Hispanics since Katrina. Officials in suburban Jefferson Parish...

CHAPEL HILL -- In the attempt to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, many controversial questions have yet to be answered: Should the poorer neighborhoods like the 9th Ward be rebuilt where they are or should integrated neighborhoods be rebuilt on safe ground? And should people whose homes were destroyed be told they can't return to their old homes and told they have to move to those new neighborhoods? They were among the questions discussed Friday during a panel discussion on "Katrina Revisited: Progress Made and Challenges Ahead," hosted by former vice presidential candidate John Edwards, director of UNC Center...

In the second day of Ray Nagin's trip to New York, the mayor is seeking investors for New Orleans. Nagin is in Manhattan trying to sell New Orleans to New Yorkers, but business owners like Effie Naghi say the weekend is a washout. Naghi, a French-Quarter jeweler, joined the mayor's two-day Manhattan event hoping to strike deals or at least meet some New Yorkers. "We didn't get any New Yorkers in this facility, that's basically what happened, that's it," said Naghi. He says he made no deals and signed no contracts. "It's kind of silly, we didn't have to make...

In New Orleans these days, even a magician can run out of tricks.

WNBC.com reports: NEW YORK -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, confronted with accusations he's taking too long to rebuild his city after Hurricane Katrina, takes a swipe at New York's redevelopment of the World Trade Center site on a television news show. Nagin, weaving through the wreckage in the devastated Ninth Ward neighborhood, claimed much of the debris was removed from public property, but when a "60 Minutes" correspondent pointed out flood-damaged cars on the streets, Nagin shot back, "You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later. So let's be...

CBS) Confronted by accusations that he’s taking too long to clean up his city after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin defended himself by remarking on New York City’s failure to rebuild Ground Zero. Nagin made the remarks in an interview conducted by CBS News National Correspondent Byron Pitts which will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. EDT. On a tour of the decimated Ninth Ward, Nagin tells Pitts the city has removed most of the debris from public property and it’s mainly private land that’s still affected – areas that can’t be cleaned...

With 219,000 estimated back, city nears half its prestorm level Nearly a year after the flood scattered its residents across the country, New Orleans' population now approaches half its pre-Katrina level, according to statistics released by Entergy on Tuesday. To be precise, the new figures -- which show that the utility's has about 52 percent fewer electrical customers than it did a year ago -- suggest a current population of 219,390, in the same range as several recent estimates.

America : How Much is a Billion? A Billion!!!!! Here's some thought provoking information - The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a casual manner, think about whether you want the "politicians" spending your tax money . A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases . . . A billion seconds ago it was 1959... A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive... A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet... A...

(August 13, 2006)--A suburban New Orleans pastor says he believes Hurricane Katrina put the "fear of God" into the city, but he isn't sure that will last. The Rev. Grant Storms of The Reformer Church in Metairie, La., says New Orleans is a more sober city, literally and spiritually, than it was before Katrina struck. He hopes New Orleans' French Quarter will now shed its immoral image and become a place that families won't be afraid to visit. But Storms notes that the annual Southern Decadence festival is scheduled to begin on Aug. 30, the day after the first anniversary...

HOUSTON -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Monday his city is recovering and that people have been "hoodwinked and bamboozled" into believing it won't be rebuilt. Nagin spoke at the Essence Music Festival's empowerment seminars, being held outside New Orleans for the first time because of lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina. "We are moving forward," he said. "New Orleans is a city that is in recovery, and it is coming back." He said he wanted to let people know "what is really going on," that New Orleans is ahead of schedule on rebuilding and that 98 percent of the...

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, in Dallas to raise money for Republican candidates, described the rebuilding effort in New Orleans as "pathetic" Thursday and said it will take political courage and leadership for the city to fully recover from Hurricane Katrina. 'I expected the [hurricane] devastation. What I did not expect was the lack of activity,' said Rudolph Giuliani, who spoke Thursday at the Greater Dallas Chamber luncheon and was in town to raise money for GOP candidates. Mr. Giuliani gave his analysis to business leaders gathered at a Greater Dallas Chamber luncheon. Responding to a question from the...

Big Questions About the Big Easy Hughes Joseph Hughes chairs the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech and serves on the EPA's environmental engineering advisory committee. He toured the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast with President Wayne Clough in November, spoke to former Alumni Association trustees in January and recently sat down with the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. Hughes now is helping coordinate a conference that will address the future of New Orleans.What is Georgia Tech's role in the rebuilding of New Orleans? We're at the stage right now in the discussion where there are real questions whether we should rebuild...

In just eight months, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has done years of work on the Katrina-battered ramparts around New Orleans. The Corps has repaired 169 miles of damaged levee. Replaced long stretches of inadequate concrete floodwall with a much sturdier design. Installed 70-ton gates at the mouths of ruptured drainage canals. But it isn't good enough. Even the man who has led the monumental effort to bring the Big Easy's hurricane protection infrastructure back to pre-Katrina standards says so. The defenses are "better, stronger and more resilient" than ever, said Col. Lewis Setliff. "But I'm only fixing about...

NEW ORLEANS — Another week scooping the rotted guts of flooded homes from city streets behind him, Efrain Pineda donned his Sunday best — denim jeans and blue button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up — and made haste for Easter Mass. The name alone drew Pineda to a Catholic church near the intersection of Canal Boulevard and Rampart Street: Our Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of his native Mexico. Beyond the “alleluias” and “amens,” though, it isn’t much like home. The congregation has always been predominantly African-American, counting Fats Domino among its faithful. Much of the music is gospel, distinguished by...

NEW YORK-- Brad Pitt called Thursday for people to submit proposals for an environmentally friendly design competition he is sponsoring to rebuild parts of New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina. "Our goal is to kick off the rebuilding effort. It's certainly long overdue and I can only go from the reports that we get ... that it's behind, absolutely. People are frustrated," Pitt said by telephone from Namibia. "We could possibly build something that was better and took into account the historical traditions of the city and the voices of the people and turn this into some kind of good,"...

WASHINGTON - A full recovery in New Orleans could take 25 years as homeowners, businesses and tourists are coaxed back to the city devastated by Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration's Gulf Coast recovery coordinator said Thursday. In an interview with The Associated Press, Don Powell said that much of the city's rebirth will hinge on factors he said were "out of our control," including restoring housing, ensuring safety and encouraging robust investment by the private sector. "We kind of want it to happen overnight, or I do, but it's going to take some time," Powell said. "This could be five...

The New Black Panther Party is coming to New Orleans on Friday to represent the black "masses" who have been "displaced, murdered and abandoned" by a negligent government at war with its people, the group said in a press release. The leader of the New Black Panther Party, attorney Malik Zulu Shabazz, said his group will launch a "weekend of mobilization that will give rise to a never-before-seen stage in the Afrikan Liberation Movement." The press release describes the event as a self-help program for black people in the city where "the plot to destroy the Black civilization has continued...

Evangelist Billy Graham seems to have closed out his 60-year career as the country's most famous evangelist after calling thousands to Christian faith in wounded New Orleans with the acknowledgment that "this is probably the last evangelistic sermon I'll ever preach." Frail and tentative, the 87-year-old Graham shuffled behind a walker toward the pulpit set at one end of the New Orleans Arena as a crowd his organization estimated at 16,300 stood in a sustained roar of applause on Sunday (March 12). His son and heir, Franklin Graham, gently assisted him into place. Thousands of flash bulbs exploded. An overflow...