Some residents return at Mayor's invitation

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.

Mayor Ray Nagin defended his decision to let people back in, and suggested that the federal official in charge in New Orleans, Coast Guard Vice Adm Thad Allen, had made himself “the new crowned federal mayor of New Orleans.”