AS officials put together a blueprint for New Orleans’ rebirth, a commission appointed by Mayor Ray Nagin is expected to recommend that residents be given the power to decide what shape their neighbourhoods should take.

SHOCK waves from Hurricane Katrina continued to batter New Orleans as some 3,000 city workers - half the workforce - faced the losing their jobs as the city has no money to pay them.

Mayor Ray Nagin said today that the city was laying off as many as 3,000 employees – or about half the city’s workforce – because f the damage done to New Orleans’ finances by Hurricane Katrina.

The Mayor of New Orleans has suspended the reopening of large portions of the city and ordered nearly everyone out because of the risk of a new round of flooding from another tropical storm.

Residents began trickling back today as part of a plan by the mayor to reopen New Orleans one postal code at a time, despite repeated warnings from the top federal official on the scene – and US President George Bush himself – that the city is not ready.

Forensic workers and body-sniffing dogs searched New Orleans in earnest for corpses as crews cleared away mounds of rubbish and debris left behind by residents fleeing Hurricane Katrina.

ACROSS miles of ravaged neighbourhoods of clapboard houses, grand estates and housing projects, workers struggled to find corpses and persuade the city’s last stubborn residents to leave.

TO the estimated 10,000 residents still holed up in this ruined city, the mayor had a blunt new warning: get out now or risk being taken out by force.

With thousands feared dead and the city’s remaining residents told to evacuate for weeks, conditions deteriorated further in submerged New Orleans today as looting spiralled out of control.

Army engineers trying to plug New Orleans’ breached levees struggled to move giant sandbags and concrete barriers into place, and the governor said today the situation was growing more desperate and there was no choice but to abandon the flooded city.

Hurricane Katrina smashed into New Orleans today, knocking out power and submerging part of the low-lying city in up to 6ft of water.

Hurricane Katrina edged slightly to the east today as it bore down on America’s Gulf Coast, providing some hope that the worst of the storm’s 150 mph winds might not directly strike low-lying New Orleans.

Powerful winds and rain lashed America’s Gulf Coast early today as a slightly weakened Hurricane Katrina charged toward the city of New Orleans with 155-mph winds and the threat of a disastrous storm surge.

AN immediate evacuation for all of New Orleans was ordered last night as Hurricane Katrina bore down with wind revving up to nearly 175mph and threats of a massive storm surge.