Last year Kieran Connery only had Thomas O’Gorman for company on those midweek dashes down the M9 from Dublin to training in Carriganore outside Waterford city.

THE Pittsburgh Steelers will be hoping star quarterback Ben Roethlisberger can survive 60 minutes of football tomorrow as the NFL wild card round gets going this weekend.

MICHAEL VICK had a rough return to Atlanta last night, suffering a concussion along with defeat as the Falcons beat the Philadelphia Eagles 35-31 in the Georgia Dome on Sunday night.

New Orleans Saints clinched the Super Bowl XLIV today in a victory hailed as the most popular in the history of the competition.

INDIANAPOLIS Colts quarterback Peyton Manning provided the fourth-quarter heroics, Santana Moss’s overtime catch won it for the Washington Redskins and the Baltimore Ravens rallied to win the clash of unbeaten teams.

Irish rock band U2 headed the entertainment line-up at last night’s reopening of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.

Rockers U2 and Green Day will stage a National Football League (NFL) pre-game performance on the 25 September for the official reopening of the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.

WHAT should have been a weekend of remembrance of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction became a weekend of worry as Ernesto became the first hurricane of the Atlantic season yesterday.

IN dramatic and sometimes agonising terms, US disaster officials warned US President George W Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach New Orleans's levees.

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.

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.

HE has been called an idiot, an incompetent and worse. The vilification of federal disaster chief Michael Brown, emerging as chief scapegoat for whatever went wrong in the US Government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, has ratcheted into the stratosphere.

THREE Irish students stranded in the devastation that hit New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina yesterday paid tribute to those who helped them flee the city.

WITH the last weary refugees rescued from the Superdome and Convention Centre, New Orleans turned its attention yesterday to gathering up and counting the dead across a ghastly landscape awash in perhaps thousands of corpses.

THE mayor of New Orleans lashed out at US President George W Bush yesterday, demanding to know why he has failed to co-ordinate a successful relief operation.

US consulates were trying to contact hundreds of foreign nationals in the area hit by Hurricane Katrina as the devastation continued to make communication nearly impossible today.

Days after Hurricane Katrina inundated much of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, massive aid is arriving, yet with people still clinging to dry areas hoping for rescue, questions have arisen about the level of preparedness and response.

There are worries over the location of some Irish citizens caught up in the disaster stricken US city New Orleans, a Government minister said today.

US President George Bush, facing blistering criticism for his administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, said today “the results are not acceptable” and pledged to bolster relief efforts with a personal trip to the Gulf Coast.

US President George Bush hopes his tour of Gulf Coast communities battered by Hurricane Katrina will boost the spirits of increasingly desperate storm victims and their tired rescuers.

New Orleans descended into anarchy as corpses lay abandoned in the streets, fights and fires broke out, police officers turned in their badges and the governor declared war on looters who have made the city a menacing landscape of disorder and fear.

FIGHTS and fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome yesterday and anger and unrest mounted as New Orleans descended into chaos.

NEW ORLEANS’ mayor issued an urgent plea for relief of his flooded city on Thursday as gunshots and looting hampered the evacuation of desperate crowds trying to escape Hurricane Katrina’s destruction.

Fights and rubbish fires broke out, rescue helicopters were shot at and anger mounted across New Orleans today, as National Guardsmen in armoured vehicles poured in to help restore order across this increasingly desperate and lawless city.

The evacuation of Hurricane Katrina refugees from the Superdome in New Orleans was suspended today after shots were fired at a military helicopter, an ambulance official overseeing the operation said. No immediate injuries were reported.

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.

Rescuers along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast pushed aside the dead to reach the living in a race against time and rising waters, while New Orleans sank deeper into crisis and Louisiana’s governor ordered storm refugees out of this drowning city.

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.

Mary Foster, New Orleans

Rick Wilking, New Orleans

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

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.

An immediate mandatory evacuation for the southern US city of New Orleans was ordered today as Hurricane Katrina bore down with winds up to nearly 175 mph and a threat of a massive storm surge.