America Owes New Orleans, Obama Says
Four years after President Bush pledged in the aftermath of Killer Katrina that America would restore New Orleans to its former glory, President Obama said that his administration would pick up the slack where the previous one has failed. “Well, keep in mind I’ve been in New Orleans multiple times, and I intend to be back in New Orleans before the year is out because I want to see first-hand where progress is being made, and where it is not, ” Obama said, adding that failing to restoring the city “would be a betrayal of who we are as a country.” Speaking to The Times Picayune, Obama said that the nation has moved much too slowly to bring the Big Easy back to its earlier glory. “I think that Katrina was really a wake-up call for the country – about our need to fulfill our commitments to our fellow citizens, a recognition that there but for the grace of God go I, that all of us can fall prey to these kinds of natural disasters, ” Obama said. “I think to fail to follow through on that commitment would be a betrayal of who we are as a country. I also think that the Gulf region generally, but New Orleans specifically, has a unique place in America’s imagination and American life and that’s why it is so important now.” Importantly, the president added, the American people must see that restoration funds are not being wasted. “I also think the rest of the country is going to be insistent at a time of great fiscal challenge that money in the Gulf region is spent wisely, that local officials are coordinating effectively, that there is transparency and accountability to these processes, that there is a minimum of politics involved in decision making,” Obama said. “I think given that there are a lot of communities that are having hard times right now, I think people just want to make sure the money is not being wasted,” Obama said. “And that is part of my responsibility as president, to make sure it isn’t.”

Teen Bomber Arrested At Calif. School
Police arrested a teenager with homemade bombs strapped to his body after he blew up two of the bombs at a high school in the California Bay Area, The Associated Press reports. The explosions caused no serious damage or injuries, authorities said, but there was potential for major harm. A teacher at the Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, near Oakland, tackled him before he could wreak more havoc. “There’s no question in our minds that this individual … may have caused grave damage, serious injuries and casualties,” San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer said at a news conference. The 17-year-old former student, who has not been identified because of his age, had at least 10 pipe bombs attached to a vest he was wearing, Police Lt. Mike Brunicardi told AP. The youngster was also carrying a chain saw. His motive is unclear, police say. The 1,200-student Hillsdale High was evacuated immediately after the 8 a.m. blast, and the rest of the school day was canceled. The pipe bombs detonated in a hallway near a library, authorities said. Brunicardi had no specific details on the damage but said it wasn’t “drastic.” After the blasts, two teachers confronted the suspect, with a third teacher tackling the suspect outside an exit door. A principal joined them and held the teen for police, who arrived within minutes, Brunicardi said. Brunicardi described the actions of the teachers, principal and police officers as “nothing short of heroic. They’re jumping on a kid with active explosive devices,” he said. “I call that a hero.”

Rep. William Jefferson, convicted of selling his influence for hundreds of thousands in “cold cash,” wants a new trial. Last week a New Orleans jury found the nine-term congressman guilty on 11 of 16 counts of public corruption, acquitting him of five others. On Wednesday, Jefferson’s attorneys filed a motion requesting that Judge T.S. Ellis III grant a new trial. While it is highly unlikely that Ellis will comply, Jefferson’s defenders are hoping that the court will release material concerning Lori Mody, the Virginia businesswoman who wore a government bug to record conversations with Jefferson but never appeared to testify during his seven-week trial, NOLA.com reports. Ellis is scheduled to sentence the 62-year-old Jefferson on Oct. 30. The Web site reports that lead Prosecutor Mark Lytle said sentencing guidelines call for the Louisiana Democrat to spend 20 years in prison. Most observers believe that Jefferson will serve a much lighter sentence. Investigators, who raided Jefferson’s Capitol Hill apartment in 2006, found $90,000 in his freezer.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been quarantined in China after being exposed to the swine flu, CNN reports. Nagin reportedly is in the Communist nation on a economic development trip. Read more.

Did New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin spend public dollars to spirit his wife and kids away to tropical paradises? A Louisiana ethics panel wants to know. According to a formal complaint filed against the mayor on Wednesday by Raphael Goyeneche of the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission, one of those dreamlike getaways was a first-class jaunt to Jamaica in 2005, during the time that the Big Easy was trying to recover from Killer Katrina. Read more.

A new study suggests that the stress many suffered after Hurricane Katrina might actually be behind the surge in heart attacks more than three years later, reports The Associated Press. The rate of heart attacks is three times as high as the rate before the storm devastated the New Orleans region in 2005, Tulane University Hospital and Clinic doctors discovered. Full story.

For the first time since the devastating storm hit in 2005, leaving 80 percent of New Orleans under water, the city’s population has surpassed 300,000, according to numbers from the Census Bureau released last week.  “This reinforces what those of us who have been here working toward our recovery have known all along – that new Orleanians are strong, resilient, and committed to our city,” the mayor’s director of policy, Maggie Merrill told The Associated Press. More here.

Octomom: I Bought My Own House!

The 33-year-old mom who recently gave birth to octuplets, wants to set the record straight about her new digs in the southern California community of La Habra. Earlier this week, it was widely reported that her father had stepped in to purchase her a $565,000 home, rescuing her from homelessness as banks prepared to foreclose on her mother’s house. Not so, says Nadya Suleman, who hasn’t missed a day of making news since giving birth in late January. “I earned it. … No, my father did not purchase this house for me. I did it on my own,” she told Radar magazine. Read more.

NOLA Hasn’t Used Millions in Fed Housing Funds

Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu is giving New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin until May 31 to use millions in untouched federal funds for his city before she takes it away, reports The Times-Picayune. Since New Orleans started receiving money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOME fund in 1992 – between $6 million and $7 million each year – the city has had money left over every year.  Read the rest. 
  

Police have charged a New Orleans man with killing his elderly mother, who had survived cancer, diabetes and hypertension. Tony M. DeClues, 52, stabbed Louise DeClues to death last week in a mad search for drug money, police told The Times-Picayune newspaper. Investigators say that the son confessed to killing his 73-year-old mother. Read the shocking details here.

A federal judge on Monday denied an attempt to lump together in a class-action suit thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims who were exposed to poisonous fumes in trailer homes issued by the government. U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt said that each person’s claim is unique and cannot be bundled with the claims of other alleged victims. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has acknowledged that the trailers had unsafe levels of the preservative formaldehyde, which can cause cancer and other ailments.

Police respond to report of racist murders in New Orleans. New Orleans Police have launched an investigation into reports that White vigilantes hunted down and killed Black people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and were never prosecuted for their actions. An article published by The Nation magazine, “Katrina’s Hidden Race War,” has sparked a national outcry about the way racism manifested itself in one of the worst national disasters in U.S. history. In a statement released Wednesday, the New Orleans Police Department said that Superintendent Warren J. Riley “is currently looking into the allegations, and asked if anyone has substantial information relative to any incidents of this type call to the New Orleans Police Department Bureau of Investigations.” Riley said the department was unaware of allegations before the article was published. He police did not receive “any complaints or information to substantiate any of the allegations of racial conflicts or vigilante type crimes in the City of New Orleans including the Algiers Point on the west bank of the City.” In the Nation article, two Black shooting survivors – Donnell Herrington and Marcel Alexander – relayed how they had been blasted with shotguns by White vigilantes in the mostly White Algiers Point neighborhood of New Orleans in the wake of the killer storm. The article also quotes several White vigilantes who admit targeting Blacks, even shooting them as if they were “pheasants.” One of the Whites in the story says, proudly, “Three people got shot in just one day!” Eleven Blacks were killed during the shooting spree, according to the report.