The mayor of New Orleans invited residents of some of the city's most popular neighborhoods to return at their own risk beginning yesterday, a move that could bring back about one-third of the city's half-million inhabitants.
The newly opened areas, including the French Quarter and Garden District, all escaped major flooding in a city that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina a month ago before receiving a second blow from Hurricane Rita last week.
Business owners began showing up on Thursday, some saying they were pulling out and others vowing to rebuild.
PHOTO: AFP
"We are lucky. I was expecting much worse than this,'' said Germame Kassa, whose Ethiopian grocery and deli was relatively unscathed, although the stink of rotting food permeated through the locked doors. "One way or the other, we'll be back in business.''
Mayor Ray Nagin was pushing aggressively to reopen the city despite concerns raised by state and federal officials. Serious health hazards remain because of bacteria-laden floodwaters, a lack of drinkable water and a sewage system that still does not work, said Stephen Johnson, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"There are a whole lot of factors that need to be weighing on the mayor's mind,'' Johnson said.
He said the EPA was not taking a position on Nagin's plan, but he refused to answer when asked if he would allow his own family to return to New Orleans.
State officials say at least 140,000 homes and businesses across southeastern Louisiana were so badly damaged that they must be torn down. The storms also left 19.95 million tonnes of debris, including 350,000 cars and trucks, said Mike McDaniel, chief of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
Even as residents were to begin pouring back into New Orleans, the police department said it was investigating a dozen officers accused of looting during the lawlessness that engulfed the city after Katrina.
"The investigation does in fact show police officers with some items,'' acting Police Superintendent Warren Riley said on Thursday.
He said four of the 12 officers have already been suspended for failing to stop looting.
"It was not clear that they in fact looted,'' Riley said of the four. "What is clear is that some action needed to be taken and it was not.''
Riley drew a distinction between taking useful items such as food and jeans, which he contended didn't amount to looting in a crisis, and taking luxuries such as jewelry.
Incidents in which officers took Cadillacs from a dealer's lot were not looting because the officers patrolled in the cars, Riley said.
Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 923 on Thursday, up from 896 the day before, the state health department said.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
RSS