In the New Orleans neighbourhood President Bush visited right after Hurricane Katrina, the US government gave $84.5m (€65.3m) to more than 10,000 households.

Hilary Duff will make an appearance in New Orleans, Louisiana next Tuesday to mark the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

The police and fire departments are being asked to recheck about 400 Louisiana addresses where authorities have consistent information about residents missing since Hurricane Katrina.

Engineers pumped much of the remaining floodwater out of New Orleans as tens of thousands of residents continued returning to dry neighbourhoods to check on houses and reopen businesses.

HURRICANE Rita's rains sent water pouring through breaches in a patched levee yesterday, cascading into one of the city's lowest-lying neighbourhoods in a repeat of New Orleans's flooding nightmare.

The outer bands of rain from Hurricane Rita began falling in New Orleans today, and forecasts of between 8 and 13 centimetres of rainfall in the coming days raised fears the patched levee system could fail and flood the city all over again.

THE owners of a nursing home were charged with homicide because they did not evacuate 34 elderly patients who died after Hurricane Katrina struck, the first major criminal case related to the storm’s still rising death toll.

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.

NEW Orleans awaited the reopening of its airport and waterfront yesterday for the first time since Hurricane Katrina hit, as the coroner planned autopsies on at least 44 patients found dead at a flooded hospital.

AUTHORITIES yesterday said their first systematic sweep of New Orleans found far fewer bodies than expected, suggesting that Hurricane Katrina's death toll may not be the catastrophic 10,000 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.

RESCUE teams hunted door to door in New Orleans yesterday searching for survivors, either trapped or hiding out, in the ruined city as 25,000 body bags were readied for a gruesome clean-up operation.

Announcing itself with shrieking, 145-mph winds, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast just outside New Orleans yesterday, submerging entire neighbourhoods, swamping Mississippi’s beachfront casinos and killing at least 55 people.

Adam Nossiter, New Orleans

Rick Wilking, New Orleans