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NEW ORLEANS — City and state officials worked to finalize plans Wednesday to move homeless people off the streets and fill a 155-room hotel in the Central Business District. The general manager of that hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn-New Orleans French Quarter Downtown on Gravier Street, confirmed the plan was to start moving people in groups of 35 from encampments and house and feed them for the next 30 days, using a mixture of federal, state, local and philanthropic funds. “We have transitioned our hotel into an intake facility,” said hotel general manager Adam Turni told WWL-TV in an exclusive...

After Gov. John Bel Edwards ordered bars, casinos and other businesses to shut down or curtail operations to fight the rapid spread of the coronavirus in Louisiana, U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins posted a video in which he blasted the governor as “out of line” and accusing him of sitting in an “ivory tower.” Higgins, a Republican from Port Barre, took a stance that is sharply at odds with public health professionals, political leaders and President Donald Trump’s administration, which has advised Louisiana and other states to put in severe restrictions to tamp down a rising tide of COVID-19 cases. Higgins...

Multiple people were reportedly injured Saturday morning when part of the Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans collapsed. STORY: Multiple injuries reported after Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans collapses This is a developing story. See the photos below. https://www.nola.com/multimedia/photos/collection_ba89561c-ed02-11e9-8934-378c4f7317af.html#1

NEW ORLEANS – Work crews are finalizing preparations for a controlled demolition that will take down twin tower cranes that have been swaying precariously over the ruins of the Hard Rock Hotel construction site since a fatal collapse one week ago. If all goes to plan, the cross beams of the cranes, which each weigh 145,000 pounds, will collapse where they stand, according to New Orleans Fire Department chief Tim McConnell.

NEW ORLEANS — The Hard Rock Hotel that was set to open on Canal Street has collapsed while under construction. Few details were immediately available from city officials but no injuries were immediately reported. The cause of the collapse was not immediately clear.

[Intro by poster topher] Two bodies still trapped under wreckage after 4 months... NEW ORLEANS — Four months after the Hard Rock hotel construction site on Canal Street collapsed, the mangled concrete and twisted steel still looms over downtown New Orleans. On the border of the collapse zone, a memorial for the three men killed in the collapse continues to grow. Advertisement The site has become a landmark, with visitors and locals stopping to take pictures and write messages on ribbons for the families of Anthony Magrette, Jose Ponce Arreola and Quinnyon Wimberley, who died when the building fell Oct....

It looks as though President Donald Trump is about to attend his third college football game this season. According to The Advocate, the president is expected to be attending the national championship game between LSU and Clemson on Monday, Jan. 13 at the Superdome in New Orleans. Although that has not been officially confirmed by The White House at this time, it is known that the president likes to attend college football game son the taxpayer’s dollar.

New Orleans police are investigating a mass shooting along Canal Street. According to NOPD, at least 11 people were struck by gunfire in the 700 block of Canal Street just before 3:30 a.m. Sunday. Superintendent Shaun Ferguson says officers were on the block when the shooting happened. No officers were reported injured. A person was detained near the scene, however police say their involvement in this incident remains under investigation. No arrests have been made. SNIP

The last of the Louisiana state election numbers are in and it's not pretty for the Democrats. Not only does its moderate Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards, face a runoff as noted here, the state Senate has taken a supermajority. And a whole bunch of key state offices went squarely to Republicans. Funny how the press isn't covering this much. But Guy Benson at Townhall is, and he found a Democratic Party "decimated": Among statewide office-holders, the incumbent GOP Lieutenant Governor (68 percent), Attorney General (66 percent), Treasurer (60 percent, and Agricultural Commissioner (58 percent) were all re-elected without the...

One person has died and another injured after they were shot in New Orleans on Saturday night in the Desire area, pushing the total of gunshot victims this weekend in the city to 13. According to New Orleans police, this latest shooting happened in the 3400 block of Louisa Street, when an individual in a black Cadillac drove by and began shooting. A 17-year-old was killed and five others were wounded in a shooting Friday night on City Park Avenue. Four people were shot in the St. Claude neighborhood late Saturday morning, according to police. A number of shots were...

State Sen. Wesley Bishop, a Democrat from New Orleans who recently announced he would not seek re-election after eight years in the Legislature, is under federal investigation for possible payroll abuse, records show. Bishop serves as associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at Southern University at New Orleans. In a series of stories last year, WVUE-TV Fox 8 reported that Bishop had been paid for 122 days of sick leave at SUNO while attending hearings in Baton Rouge in his capacity as a lawmaker. The station raised questions about whether the roughly $50,000 in sick leave payments were legal or...

Former President Bill Clinton dined with financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 1995, records show—years before the interactions detailed in a statement from his office earlier this week. That statement condemned the wealthy hedge fund manager after his indictment for alleged sex trafficking crimes was unsealed Monday. The statement said Clinton "knows nothing" about Epstein's alleged crimes and included a timeline of Clinton's interactions with him starting in 2002. But according to a story published back in March 1995 by the Palm Beach Post, then-President Clinton attended a “three-hour dinner” at the time with a “very select group of...

The Newhouse family sold the 182-year-old daily The Times-Picayune and its website, nola.com, to a scrappy New Orleans competitor, and the entire staff is being laid off. That has stirred worries across the other papers in the family’s Advance Publications empire. A total of 161 staff members are being laid off, according to a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) notice filed with the Louisiana Workforce Commission, which listed 65 reporter and editor jobs in the bloodbath. John and Dathel Georges, the husband-and-wife team that owns the rival New Orleans Advocate, are buying The Times-Picayune from Newhouse’s Advance Local,...

Diana Ross says a TSA agent at a New Orleans airport took a pat-down search too far -- which left her feeling shaken and violated afterward. The legendary soul singer described her experience early Sunday morning in a string of tweets, explaining that while she's normally treated like royalty in NOLA ... she got the exact opposite treatment at an airport there -- saying, "I was treated like [expletive]." [snip] Ms. Ross says she's not blaming the airline she flew with -- Delta, apparently -- but instead is pointing the finger at a female TSA agent that conducted an "over...

POTTSVILLE, Pa. -- D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc. and Philadelphia Phillies’ pitcher Aaron Nola are teaming up. The collaboration announced Monday will make All-Star Nola one of the first active MLB players to have a partnership with a beer brand. “Yuengling holds a special spot in my heart,” said Aaron Nola. “I had my first Yuengling Lager after being drafted by Philadelphia and I haven’t looked back. The fact that America’s Oldest Brewery is family owned and operated is important to me as I value family over everything. I love cracking open a cold Yuengling whether it’s a day fishing...

LaToya Cantrell‘s gun buyback turned out to be a bust. Previously unmentioned, this painfully liberal effort only had $100,000 total, so only money for 200 people. Small, important details such as this had not been shared. The Hayride jumped on the fact Cantrell originally said $500 per gun. Then it was modified to $500 max per resident no matter if they turned in one or five guns. As to how it worked, they gave vouchers for guns. The buyback was advertised as cash although one person said he received a $500 card for Dollar General. It’s still unclear if anyone...

Much of downtown Baton Rouge lost power during the lunch hour and Entergy officials say the outage could last hours. The heart of the Central Business District lost power around 12:40 p.m., says Entergy spokesman David Freese, after a “non-Entergy contractor” damaged an underground cable. Entergy is currently assessing the damage, which will take hours to repair, says Freese, cautioning it’s impossible to provide an accurate restoration time until Though City Hall is impacted, Chief Administrative Officer Darryl Gissel says the city-parish government building is operating on backup generators and will remain open. City-parish officials urge caution traveling in the...

The manager of a Kenner post office stole $630,000 worth of stamps and sold them online after losing more than $667,000 while gambling in recent years, federal authorities said this week. Prosecutors also allege Ryan Cortez, 46, embezzled nearly $10,000 from a church in Des Allemands that listed him as its treasurer. The alleged theft was to fuel a gambling problem to which he confessed, the feds allege. And in the process of allegedly stealing stamps, authorities said, Cortez made history by committing one of the largest internal thefts the U.S. Postal Service has ever seen.

A cat in Louisiana reportedly cut power to more than 7,500 people when it snuck into a substation early Monday. Entergy New Orleans tweeted around 9:30 a.m. the cat "got into a substation that feeds parts of Uptown, Central City, Mid-City, and the [Central Business District] and caused a flash when it came into contact with [their] equipment." Power was restored to customers hours later, around 11:30 a.m., the company said. The cat, which did not survive the incident, wasn't the first animal to find its way into a substation, but it was "unusual," Entergy said. "Generally, squirrels and other small...

DUDLEY — Police chiefs in Massachusetts have responded angrily to a remark by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren that the American criminal justice system is “racist ... front to back.” Ms. Warren, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, was speaking before an audience at historically black Dillard University in New Orleans Aug. 3 when she delivered what she called “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist ... I mean, front to back.” Ms. Warren cited disproportionate arrests of African-Americans for petty drug possession; an overloaded public defender; and state laws that keep convicted felons from voting even after their...