New Orleans La

Today, the Lower 9th Ward is a dreary landscape of deserted brick and wood-frame structures, concrete slabs where homes once stood, unshaded streets and sidewalks buckled by uprooted live oaks and weeks of standing water. At night, a graveyard silence is broken only by the skittering of rats. It is about as inhospitable a place as exists in post-Katrina New Orleans. And yet sisters Tanya Harris and Tracy Flores are moving back. To them, the "Lower 9" is still beautiful.

The Community Book Center, a longtime fixture on Bayou Road in the city's Esplanade Ridge neighborhood, was one of the numerous small-business casualties of Hurricane Katrina. The storm ravaged the venture that Vera Warren-Williams had nurtured for 25 years, where she sold African American novels, school reading texts, gifts and artwork.

Calling the Orleans Parish program for defending indigent clients "a mockery" of what a criminal justice system should provide, a criminal court judge ordered 42 defendants released and their prosecutions halted Friday. Judge Arthur L. Hunter Jr., an outspoken critic of the public defender's office, charged that the financially strapped and overburdened program had failed to adequately represent poor defendants.

Google Inc.'s replacement of post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery on its map portal with images of the region before the storm does a "great injustice" to the storm's victims, a congressional subcommittee said. The House Committee on Science and Technology's subcommittee on investigations and oversight Friday asked Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt to explain why his company was using the outdated imagery. The subcommittee cited an Associated Press report on the images.

Brian Watkins initially thought that Hurricane Katrina had done him a favor. It forced him to flee to southwestern Louisiana, where he planned to make a fresh start and kick his heroin and methadone habit. But then Hurricane Rita tore through that corner of the state, and Watkins was chased back to New Orleans. "At first I thought I could just go out and socialize," said Watkins, 23, who had been on probation for a narcotics offense before the storms. "But everybody was drugging.

An irate judge halted the prosecution of 42 criminal defendants, saying the underfunded public defender's office in New Orleans is not providing adequate representation. State Judge Arthur Hunter also ordered 16 of the defendants released from jail even though they have not made bail. Hunter set a May 7 hearing for dozens of other defendants who he said are poor but cannot get adequate representation.

African Americans seeking rental housing in the New Orleans metropolitan area face significant discrimination and fewer accommodations to choose from since Hurricane Katrina, a report released Tuesday found. In 6 out of 10 transactions, African Americans faced less favorable treatment than comparably qualified whites, the report said. "For Rent, Unless You're Black," a study by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, surveyed 40 properties in the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, St.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Mayor C. Ray Nagin led hundreds of marchers Saturday to the crumbling houses that still dominate the Lower 9th Ward, drawing attention to the area's slow recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Jackson said the Bush administration and much of the nation had largely forgotten the hurricane victims in the Lower 9th, most of whom are working-class and black, whereas areas that draw tourists and more affluent sections were recovering more quickly.

"Doctor's Office Open," declares a blue and white banner hanging from trees in front of the white brick building where Robert Travis Kenny practices medicine. It's not a sign you would normally see in the decorous world of medicine, but in post-Katrina New Orleans, an open doctor's office actively seeking patients is noteworthy. In the Mid-City neighborhood, where Kenny's office is, only five doctors remain of the 120 he estimates were in practice before the August 2005 hurricane.

An administrator with a reputation for shaping up big-city schools was hired to lead New Orleans' beleaguered district as it recovers from Hurricane Katrina, officials said. Paul Vallas, 53, now the head of Philadelphia's public schools, will take over as superintendent of the state-run Recovery School District on or after July 1, Louisiana Education Superintendent Paul Pastorek said. "Everyone I spoke to said he is in the top tier of superintendents in this country," Pastorek said.