New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina | featured news

More than a decade ago, Ray Nagin was elected mayor of New Orleans on a vow to root out corruption in a city plagued by decades of it. On Friday, the former mayor was indicted on charges he lined his pockets with bribe money, payoffs and gratuities while the chronically poor city struggled to recover from Hurricane Katrina's punishing blow.

Kim Bondy was in New Orleans seven years ago when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, and scores of patients died in flooded hospitals cut off from power. She never thought that she might face that danger herself.

Hurricane Isaac crashed ashore in southeast Louisiana on Tuesday, bringing high winds and soaking rains that pose the first test for multibillion-dollar flood defenses put in place in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast seven years ago.

As the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall approaches, New Orleans -- and much of the Gulf Coast -- is preparing to put into practice the lessons learned from that defining storm. Tropical Storm Isaac is following a path eerily similar to Katrina's in 2005.

From New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward to the Mississippi coast, people hit hard by Hurricane Katrina are paying homage to those killed by the storm's devastation.

The federal government will award $1.8 billion to New Orleans schools damaged by Hurricane Katrina, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, said Wednesday.

ProPublica, in an historic first for online journalism, won a coveted Pulitzer Prize on Monday for investigative reporting about controversial deaths at a New Orleans medical center following Hurricane Katrina.

President Obama, who accused the Bush administration of standing by "while a major American city drowns," flew to New Orleans Thursday to hear directly about its 4-year-long struggle to recover from Hurricane Katrina.