The Big Easy is much like small-town South Africa — charming, with poverty in the back streets
Soweto International Jazz Festival aims to facilitate encounters with the locals that extend beyond what existing tourism initiatives have achieved.
The Big Easy has clamped down on smoking in the city’s bars — but you can still smoke on the streets.
A symbolic funeral held to give hurricane victims closure has highlighted the ongoing trauma faced by those who fled and those who have returned.
United States President Barack Obama, marking the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans on Sunday, praised the city’s resilience.
US government and BP officials are warning that the blown-out oil well causing a disaster on the Gulf Coast may not be stopped until August.
The oil spill hits its 40th day on Saturday with Gulf residents clinging to one hope: that BP’s complicated "top kill" operation will plug the well.
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/ 19 February 2010
Louisiana is the third-most popular state in which to shoot a film in the United States, thanks chiefly to huge tax incentives.
A South African woman, whose husband and mother-in-law were murdered five years ago in New Orleans, has unveiled a handbook for other ”survivors”.
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/ 17 December 2008
Three years after hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is mounting the United States’s biggest biennial of modern art. Teri Grenert reports.
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/ 3 September 2008
Authorities on the US Gulf Coast were on Tuesday struggling to orchestrate the orderly return of nearly two million evacuees to New Orleans.
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/ 2 September 2008
Hurricane Gustav slammed ashore on the US Gulf Coast near New Orleans on Monday but rebuilt levees appeared to hold floodwaters out of the city.
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/ 1 September 2008
Hurricane Gustav roared ashore on the US Gulf Coast on Monday, lashing New Orleans with winds and rain but sparing the city its full force.
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/ 1 September 2008
Republicans open their convention on Monday to nominate presidential candidate John McCain with no pomp and little politics.
Thousands of people in New Orleans and across the US Gulf Coast fled their homes on Sunday as Hurricane Gustav barreled through the Gulf of Mexico.
Ferocious Hurricane Gustav moved into the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico on Saturday where it was expected to strengthen and threaten New Orleans.
The solemn ceremonies for the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Friday for the most part were blown away by Tropical Storm Gustav.
Tropical Storm Gustav took a turn on Thursday, moving south as it crept toward Jamaica on a new track that could spare New Orleans.
Patrick ”Deep Dish” Bertoletti looked down at the litter of empty oyster shells on the red plastic tray and savoured the sweet taste of victory. The Acme World Oyster-Eating Championship belt — a massive leather affair featuring a silver dish with a single oyster on the half-shell in the centre — hung on his skinny hips.
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/ 13 February 2008
Verita Bouvaire Thompson, the reputed long-time mistress and confidante of Humphrey Bogart, has died. She was 89. In 1982, Thompson wrote a revelatory book called Bogie and Me: A Love Story in which she described a 14-year secret love affair with Bogart that overlapped his marriage to Lauren Bacall.
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/ 21 December 2007
Protesters, unfazed by violent clashes with police hours earlier, on Friday vowed to continue their battle against a plan to demolish 218 public housing buildings in New Orleans, a bid that has further highlighted the growing tensions in a city struggling to recover two years after Hurricane Katrina.
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/ 24 September 2007
The United States Episcopal Church is in the middle of a debate that could end with its departure from the Worldwide Anglican Communion over disagreements about gay clergy and same-sex unions. The conflict was prompted when the US church consecrated Gene Robinson as the first bishop in an openly gay relationship.
Still struggling to rebuild, New Orleans on Wednesday mourned the loss of about 1 500 lives when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the coast two years ago, as United States President George Bush vowed better days lay ahead. Scores of tiny hand bells tinkled as the city’s prominent mayor, Ray Nagin, led a poignant memorial service to the dead.
Swede Fredrik Jacobson defied gusting winds to hold a share of the lead with Australia’s Adam Scott in the opening round of the St Jude Championship in Memphis, Tennessee on Thursday. Twice US Open champion Retief Goosen and American Brian Gay carded 68s to share third place
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/ 13 February 2007
A powerful storm and likely a tornado hit the New Orleans area early on Tuesday, killing an elderly woman, injuring at least 15 other people and damaging dozens of business and homes in a region still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Trailers provided by the government’s emergency agency were tossed around and homes collapsed.
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/ 27 October 2006
Research studies have indicated that two crucial aids to modern living — cellphones and anti-depressants — may undermine male fertility. Samples taken by the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio from men attending an American fertility clinic suggested that their sperm declined steadily in number, quality and ability to swim as cellphone usage increased.
Alabama native Sarah Jane Keith (30) stopped on a desolate street of the New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward where porches had teemed with neighbours a year ago, before Hurricane Katrina. ”I stood in the middle of the street and screamed. I cried. Nobody heard me,” she said.,
As many as 12 000 people, many of them Hurricane Katrina survivors, jammed the New Orleans Arena late on Wednesday for the premiere of filmmaker Spike Lee’s four-hour documentary about the deadly storm. Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1 300 and rendering tens of thousands more homeless.
A doctor and two nurses were arrested for killing four patients in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, investigators said on Tuesday. An arrest warrant filed on Monday charged that the doctor and nurses administered lethal doses of morphine and another drug to patients at Memorial Medical Centre.
Jazz pianist and composer Hilton Ruiz, who came to New Orleans to work on a Hurricane Katrina benefit recording, died early on Tuesday, his agent and manager said. He was 54. Ruiz had been comatose at a hospital since he fell early no May 19 in front of a French Quarter bar.
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/ 28 February 2006
Six months after hurricane Katrina flushed the life out of New Orleans, Mardi Gras has brought fun back to the Big Easy. The once-abandoned French Quarter was filled with rowdy revelers stumbling down the middle of the street, tripping over beer bombs and broken beads.
A sold-out Hurricane Katrina bus tour, promising passengers a look at some of the city’s most misery-stricken spots, was to make its inaugural run on Wednesday morning. Passengers were told the bus would take them past the Superdome, the Convention Centre and neighbourhoods damaged by Katrina and the subsequent flooding.