Latest News

The lawyer for a businessman linked to a corruption probe of former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said his client expects to plead guilty in federal court to conspiring to bribe a former New Orleans official.

Randy Smith, lawyer for Frank Fradella, wouldn't name the ex-official. A two-count bill of information filed Tuesday against Fradella identifies the official only as "public official A" and that he served the city from May 2002 to May 2010 — a period that coincides with Nagin's tenure.

BATON ROUGE — A scientific study has found that heavily oiled areas in Barataria Bay showed twice the normal land erosion rates in the year and a half after the massive BP oil leak in 2010. The study found oil killed marsh plants and that led to the higher rates of erosion. 

GONZALES, La. (AP) — The Gonzales City Council has voted 3-1 to rezone an 18-acre parcel from residential to C-2 commercial so Emerson Process Management can continue with plans to build a $10 million regional campus expansion project.

Emerson Process Management refurbishes and remanufactures valves for industrial plants.

The National Weather Service has discontinued a tropical storm warning for Louisiana after forecast models indicated that the state is under less of a threat from Tropical Storm Debby than initially thought.

Parts of Alabama and Florida remain under a tropical storm warning, however. Storm paths are generally hard to predict days in advance, and forecasters say they've been comparing several models to compile the official forecast. As of late Sunday, though, they believe the storm was less likely to make a westward turn toward Louisiana. 

CHALMETTE — In August the St. Bernard Parish Hospital is slated to open its doors seven years after Hurricane Katrina.

The Times-Picayune reports that the 113,000-square-foot hospital and an adjoining 60,000-square-foot medical office building are nearly ready.

For Wayne Landry, chairman of St. Bernard Parish's Hospital Service District, the opening is one of the last pieces of the parish's recovery.

A new development of affordable housing in Central City, a neighborhood plagued by blight and abandoned houses, is seeing a flourishing of solar panels.

The Times-Picayune reports that residents in the Harmony Neighborhood Development are putting solar panels on their homes.

The development, being built by a nonprofit, is being constructed using federal funding to convert blighted and vacant properties into the new affordable housing.