Former US president George W Bush returned to New Orleans to praise the region’s recovery on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Sandra Bullock is to be honoured by the New Orleans, Louisiana school she's been supporting since Hurricane Katrina.

The first Mardi Gras parade since Hurricane Katrina marched through the French Quarter of New Orleans pulling carts with blue tarpaulins, effigies of Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco and floats with themes such as “Give Me That Mould Time Religion".

Probably the last thing a city inundated with water and filled with human misery needs is a parade, much less a Mardi Gras.