Hurricane Isaac made landfall in south-east Louisiana today, with winds of nearly 80mph.

595 flights have been cancelled in and out of Miami airport as tropical Storm Isaac batters Florida Keys.

Democrats launched co-ordinated attacks against Mitt Romney, intensifying calls for him to explain his offshore bank accounts and release several years of tax returns.

NEWT GINGRICH has for the first time taken the lead over US President Barack Obama in a national poll.

ARMY engineers opened a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River yesterday, deluging thousands of homes and farms in Louisiana’s Cajun country in order to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Army engineers will open a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River as early as today, deluging thousands of homes and farms in Louisiana’s Cajun country in order to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Republicans captured Democratic governorships in at least 10 states, including some prime presidential battlegrounds, and hoped for even more gains.

An oil platform exploded and burned off the Louisiana coast in the second such disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in less than five months.

A crush of mud finally plugged BP’S blown-out well, three months after the offshore drilling rig explosion that unleashed a gush of oil and a summer of misery along the Gulf Coast.

THE US Coastguard says BP has been forced to remove a cap that was containing some of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil from the Gulf of Mexico disaster has been found more than 100 miles from the leak, adding to fears of more pollution.

BP said today everything was going as planned as the oil giant began pumping heavy mud into a leaking Gulf of Mexico well.

THE US government will independently verify how much oil has leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from a BP-owned undersea well.

Heavy oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill reached wildlife sanctuaries on Louisiana coasts today.

US President Barack Obama yesterday warned of “massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster” as a giant oil slick from the Gulf of Mexico threatens environmental and economic catastrophe.

An oil spill that is threatening to eclipse the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control and started washing ashore along America's Gulf Coast early today.

BP crews raced to protect the Gulf of Mexico coastline as a remote sub tried to shut off an underwater oil well gushing 42,000 gallons a day from the site of a wrecked drilling platform.

“Extremely dangerous” Hurricane Ike grew to fierce Category 4 strength today as it roared on an uncertain path that forced millions from the Caribbean to Florida, and Louisiana to Mexico, to wonder where it would eventually strike.

Some of the two million residents who fled New Orleans and Louisiana to escape Hurricane Gustav were returning to their homes today.

Mayor Ray Nagin gave New Orleans residents the go-ahead to return to the US city today, but with several warnings – many homes were without electricity or working toilets and a dusk-to-dawn curfew is still in effect.

Oil prices fell to their lowest level in four months today as the threat from a weaker-than-expected Hurricane Gustav faded.

Rescue workers were today considering evacuating New Orleans as it faced a hurricane threat three years to the day that Katrina devastated the city.

On the eve of Hurricane Katrina’s third anniversary, a nervous New Orleans watched as another storm threatened to test everything the city has rebuilt, and officials made preliminary plans to evacuate people, pets and hospitals in an attempt to avoid Katrina-style chaos.

After days of hammering at Republican rival John McCain, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama struck a conciliatory note and urged unity in service of a greater good in a speech to college graduates.

AN OXFORD-educated son of Indian immigrants won the Louisiana governor’s election yesterday, becoming America’s youngest and the first non-white to hold the state’s post since the 1870s.