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

Tropical Storm Lee dumped more than a foot of rain in New Orleans and spun off tornadoes elsewhere as its centre came ashore in a slow crawl north that raised fears of inland flash flooding in America’s Deep South and beyond.

Relatives flew over Gulf of Mexico waters where 11 oil rig workers died a year ago, residents gathered in prayer vigils onshore and President Barack Obama vowed to hold BP and others accountable for “the painful losses that they’ve caused”.

ACTOR Nicolas Cage is facing a domestic violence charge after he was arrested while drunk in New Orleans’ French Quarter.

FIVE years after the ravaging storm, US President Barack Obama celebrated New Orleans’s revival from Hurricane Katrina and pledged common purpose with residents in the continuing struggle to protect and rebuild the Gulf Coast.

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.

Hurricane Gustav crashed into a mainly-deserted US Gulf coast and delivered only a glancing blow to New Orleans as it weakened and headed inland today.

US President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will skip the Republican National Convention because of mounting concerns about Hurricane Gustav, the White House said today.

FOR the second year in a row, the Edge is putting his money where the music is.

I WAS horrified to read an editorial on social welfare and the poor (September 5) which would have made Margaret Thatcher blush.

Rio de Janeiro ended this year’s carnival parade in style today, wowing a capacity crowd of 60,000 revellers with a samba act celebrating Brazil’s African roots.

New Orleans, still in a mess amid an achingly slow pace of recovery across the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina’s strike, did not warrant a mention by US President George Bush on the year’s biggest night for showcasing US policy priorities.

A deadly gunfight on a bridge in the anarchy-filled days following Hurricane Katrina became a symbol of New Orleans’ loss of control. Now, more than a year later, seven police officers face charges in the shootings.

Funnyman Denis Leary is getting serious about the plight of New Orleans’ firefighters, who are too proud to ask for charity following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

HOURS after Hurricane Katrina lashed the US Gulf Coast, Louisiana’s governor mistakenly assured the Bush administration that New Orleans’ protective levees were intact, according to a video which emerged last night.

US disaster officials warned President George Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, risk lives in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage of the briefings.

Sunshine and mild temperatures helped bring the crowds out yesterday as New Orleans’ first post-Katrina Mardi Gras neared, but a stroll through the French Quarter is a lot easier now than it was this time last year.

America’s former disaster chief Michael Brown, who became the personification of the government’s listless response to Hurricane Katrina, said he told top officials of massive flooding in New Orleans on the day the storm howled ashore.

Former US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) director Michael Brown has placed blame on everyone from New Orleans’ mayor to Louisiana’s governor for the chaos following Hurricane Katrina. Now, he’s including himself.

New Orleans’ controversial mayor has been forced to apologise after claiming Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for the war in Iraq and predicting the city would be “chocolate” again.

President George Bush travelled to a still-ravaged Gulf Coast after three months away, promising a post-hurricane building boom and encouraging other Americans to visit.

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.

There are still sultry, secluded French Quarter courtyards and majestic old Garden District mansions to be seen in New Orleans these days but the tour that John and Toni Stone of Harrisonburg, Virginia, opted for today took them past boarded up shops and collapsing houses.

Folk singer Arlo Guthrie rolled into town on “the train they call the City of New Orleans,” to perform a pair of shows to benefit musicians left without instruments and gigs after their city was battered by Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans’ elections for mayor and City Council, scheduled for next February, have been postponed for up to eight months because of the damage and dislocation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said the city was laying off as many as 3,000 employees – or about half its workforce – because of the financial damage inflicted on the city by Hurricane Katrina.

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.

Officials ended their door-to-door sweep for corpses, finding far fewer bodies than once feared and school children returned to classes as New Orleans revved up efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

SOME of New Orleans’ most popular neighbourhoods officially reopened to residents yesterday, a move that could bring back about a third of the city’s half a million inhabitants.

Hurricane Rita ploughed into the Gulf Coast early today, lashing Texas and Louisiana with driving rain, threatening to flood low-lying regions and knocking power out to half a million people as transformers exploded in the pre-dawn sky.

Hurricane Rita roared toward the Texas and Louisiana coasts early today, a major Category 4 storm that spurred a traffic-snarled exodus toward higher ground and fears it could cripple the heart of the US petrochemical industry.

AS many as one million people were ordered to clear out along the Gulf Coast as hospital and nursing home patients were evacuated yesterday.

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.

US President George Bush ruled out raising taxes to pay the massive costs of Gulf Coast reconstruction, saying other government spending must be cut to pay for a recovery effort expected to swell the national debt by $200bn (€164bn) dollars or more.

US President George Bush said today the Gulf Coast must be rebuilt with an eye toward wiping out the persistent poverty and racial injustice plain to all in the suffering of the black and the poor in Hurricane Katrina’s wake.

The putrid air rising from New Orleans’ slowly receding floodwaters was found not to be overly polluted, encouraging news for a mayor weighing the reopening of the French Quarter and other dry parts of the city.

The husband-and-wife owners of a nursing home near New Orleans were charged yesterday with negligent homicide in the deaths of 34 people during the flooding unleashed by Hurricane Katrina.

The port of New Orleans reopened, and the airport awaited its first commercial flights today since Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore more than two weeks ago.

Alarming predictions of as many as 10,000 dead in New Orleans may have been greatly exaggerated, with authorities saying that the first street-by-street sweep of the swamped city revealed far fewer corpses than feared.

More stragglers seemed willing to flee the filthy water and stench of death as increasingly insistent rescuers made what may be their last peaceful pass through swamped New Orleans before using force.

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.

Soldiers toting M-16s strengthened their grip on this swamped city as concerns grew about the risks posed by the toxic floodwaters and officials braced for what could be a staggering death toll by readying 25,000 body bags.

Using the unmistakable threat of force, police and soldiers went house to house to try to coax the last 10,000 or so survivors of Hurricane Katrina to leave storm-shattered New Orleans because of the risk of disease from the putrid, sewage-laden floodwaters.