Katrina Hurricane

New Orleans THIS is a town so inextricably linked to good times and revelry that a musician could practically make a name with one celebratory anthem. That's the case with Al "Carnival Time" Johnson. Since 1960, "Carnival Time," the song and the singer, have been mainstays of New Orleans' Mardi Gras celebrations. Even at other times of the year, his upbeat party tune, a musical tour of the Big Easy on Fat Tuesday, is played on the radio and performed at event after event by Johnson himself.

The middle-class homeowners who gathered here on a recent weeknight call themselves the Gentilly Civic Improvement Assn. It's an unexceptional name -- one that belies the epic challenges they face. The members talked public high schools; they said it'd be nice if Gentilly had one again. They talked about the storm-blasted tree canopy, and playgrounds neglected by a challenged city government. They wondered whether grant money might help. Maybe bake sales.

The longest-serving member of the New Orleans City Council resigned Monday, hours after pleading guilty to charges that he took kickbacks from a businessman who wanted to keep a parking lot contract for the French Quarter. The swift fall of Oliver Thomas, who until recently was council president, stunned New Orleans' political world.

The doctor and two nurses once accused of killing patients in a flooded hospital after Hurricane Katrina face no further charges, authorities told a judge on Monday. "The attorney general's investigation is closed, there is no continuing investigation, no one is targeted," Assistant Atty. Gen. Julie Cullen said. "This case is closed." Orleans Parish Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael Morales said the case against Dr. Anna Pou ended when a grand jury refused to indict.

A grand jury on Tuesday refused to indict a surgeon who was accused of murdering four hospital patients by lethal injection during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The decision ends a sensational prosecution attempt by Louisiana's attorney general that enraged New Orleans' medical community. After meeting for four months, the Orleans Parish grand jury declined to indict Dr.

A day after hearing testimony about health problems from Hurricane Katrina victims who had lived in government-supplied trailers, members of Congress on Friday questioned why a federal agency was auctioning many of those trailers to dealers and individuals across the country. "I understand the need to not lose money, but if the trailers are going to make people sick, maybe we should consider cutting our losses," said Rep. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Conn.).

Top officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency knew about reports of possible health problems from formaldehyde in trailers provided to Hurricane Katrina victims, according to documents released Thursday by a House committee. The warnings from Gulf Coast field workers were brushed aside because "senior FEMA officials in Washington ... didn't want the moral and legal responsibility to do what they knew had to be done," said Rep. Henry A.

LEBORIA Sager was poking around with a rake on the debris-strewn lot where her home once stood, five long months after Hurricane Katrina reduced it to rubble. She had unearthed crystal, pieces of her china teacup collection, and her rosary. But Sager had just about given up hope of finding anything else when the rake hit upon something with a spiral-bound spine, caked in muck and partially buried under a wire fence. Sager realized what it was and screamed: She had found her wedding album.

Two Mississippi attorneys who won a punitive damages verdict against State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. over destruction from Hurricane Katrina said Friday that they had settled other pending cases. Biloxi attorney Jack Denton said he and attorney William C. Walker Jr. settled 20 State Farm cases Friday. Two of the lawsuits were scheduled for trial this month in federal court. Terms of the settlements are confidential. "We finally got a little relief," Denton told the Sun Herald newspaper.

BY now, most everybody knows that young Jack Denton is back in this wreck of a town to do his late father's work. They know they can find him sleeping upstairs in his father's old law office, which, after Hurricane Katrina, doubles as his apartment. They know they can find him with clients and colleagues down at Mary Mahoney's Old French House Restaurant -- his dad's old haunt, flooded badly, but open again for business. The green-jacketed waiters there call him "Mr. Denton."