Category Archives: Louisiana

Biden says ‘no question’ Delta variant behind poor August jobs report numbers – live

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A group of parents in Iowa are filing a lawsuit against the state for its ban on mask mandates, says the law discriminates against students with disabilities that make them more susceptible to Covid-19.

The plaintiffs in the case are asking the federal judge to block the ban on mask mandates and order to allow the states to allow mandates.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal published yesterday, Democratic senator Joe Manchin said that he will not pass the $3.5tn spending bill that progressive members of the party want to pass through reconciliation.

Manchin said that Democrats looking to pass the bill have “no regard to rising inflation, crippling debt or the inevitability of future crises.”

The Northeast is flooded after torrential rain.
The West Coast is on fire.
The Gulf is still reeling from the hurricane.

This is no time to pause or pull back. We need to pass the President's Build Back Better agenda and invest in urgent climate action NOW. Lives are at stake.

White House’s @KJP46 on the Manchin op-Ed: “Senator Manchin is an important partner to our administration. The president firmly believes that critical investment in our future should be paid for and if we do, economists tells us that they should not increase the inflation risk.”

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Hurricane Ida: aerial footage shows flooding and destruction in Louisiana – video

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Nearly all of Louisiana lost electrical power on Monday after one of the strongest hurricanes to strike the region downed power lines, littered roads with debris and flooded isolated communities south of New Orleans in the US. After dumping a deluge of rain in Louisiana by late Monday afternoon and killing at least two people, Ida was downgraded to a tropical depression as its eye crawled through neighbouring Mississippi

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Hurricane Ida: more than 1m without power as New Orleans assesses damage

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Crews using airboats and helicopters conduct search and rescue missions after at least two people killed

More than 1 million homes and businesses remained without power in and around New Orleans on Monday as residents and authorities began to assess “catastrophic” damage from Hurricane Ida, a 150mph monster storm that was the most powerful ever to hit Louisiana.

Related: New Orleans battered by Hurricane Ida as storm claims first victim in Louisiana

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Hurricane Ida’s rampage through Louisiana – in pictures

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Up to 2 million people in and around New Orleans were without power after Hurricane Ida, a 150mph monster storm that was the most powerful ever to hit Louisiana. At least one person was killed, by a falling tree, but the governor, John Bel Edwards, warned that the death toll will probably rise

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New Orleans battered by Hurricane Ida as storm claims first victim in Louisiana

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A million households without power as governor says system of levees overhauled after Hurricane Katrina will face ‘most severe test’

One person has died as Hurricane Ida, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US, knocked out power to all of New Orleans, reversed the flow of the Mississippi River and blew roofs off buildings across Louisiana.

Related: Hurricane Ida live updates: first death in Louisiana as New Orleans loses power

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Hurricane Ida: flooding and devastation as historically powerful storm makes landfall – video report

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One person has died as Hurricane Ida, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US, knocked out power to all of New Orleans, reversed the flow of the Mississippi River and blew roofs off buildings across Louisiana. Across the state, more than a million households were without power, and the outage in New Orleans had left the city more vulnerable to flooding – 16 years after Hurricane Katrina caused devastation.

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Hurricane Ida: New Orleans hunkers down beneath category 4 storm

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  • Storm hits land on 16th anniversary of Katrina
  • Louisiana governor confident levees will hold

Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday as a brutal category 4 storm, slamming the coast with 150mph sustained winds as it trudged towards New Orleans and Baton Rouge, threatening devastation.

Related: The Katrina survivors who fled devastation only to freeze in Texas

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Hurricane Ida barrels down on Louisiana amid warnings of ‘life-altering storm’

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Tens of thousands in US face evacuation orders as storm makes first landfall in Cuba, sparking fears of floods and mudslides

Hurricane Ida rapidly gained strength on Friday evening as communities in southern Louisiana braced for a major category 4 storm with sustained winds of about 140mph and tens of thousands of residents were placed under mandatory evacuation orders.

The hurricane is due to make landfall in the US on Sunday, with officials warning of a “life-altering storm”. The cities of New Orleans and Lafayette, as well as the state capital, Baton Rouge, are under threat from Ida, which is forecast to reach the US somewhere between the parishes of Terrebone and St Mary, slightly west of New Orleans.

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Covid hospitalizations surge in US south as unvaccinated urged to get shots

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  • Louisiana now leads the nation in new Covid cases
  • Intensive care units near capacity in multiple locations

Covid-19 hospitalizations continued to surge among America’s deep south states on Monday as health officials urge unvaccinated residents to receive the shot and intensive care units near capacity in multiple locations, prompting fears of a surge close to the numbers of last winter.

The state of Louisiana now leads the nation in new Covid cases as the Delta variant rips through a region with some of the lowest vaccination rates in the US. Last Friday, the Louisiana department of health announced a daily increase of 6,116 positive Covid cases, with 2,421 people now hospitalized with the virus including 277 on ventilators. With just 37% of residents fully vaccinated, state data indicated that unvaccinated people accounted for 90% of hospitalizations in the state. 181 people died from the virus in Louisiana last week.

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Alarm as US Covid cases above 100,000 a day for first time since February

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  • Seven-day hospital admissions average up 40% from last week
  • Mississippi health official says Delta surging ‘like a tsunami’

Daily Covid-19 cases in the US moved above 100,000 a day for the first time since February, higher than the levels of last summer when vaccines were not available, and came as health officials sounded alarm over lagging rates of vaccination driving the surge of the infectious Delta variant.

The seven-day average of hospital admissions has also increased more than 40% from the week before, with health workers describing frustration and exhaustion as hospitals in Covid hotspots were again overwhelmed with patients, almost 20 months into the pandemic in the US.

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Tornado spurred by storm Claudette damages 50 homes in Alabama

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No deaths or serious injuries reported as tropical storm disrupts plans for Juneteenth and Father’s Day weekend

Authorities in Alabama say a suspected tornado spurred by Tropical Storm Claudette demolished or badly damaged at least 50 homes in a small town just north of the Florida border.

Sheriff Heath Jackson in Escambia County said a suspected tornado “pretty much leveled” a mobile home park, toppled trees on to houses and ripped the roof off of a high school gym.

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Ronald Greene punched and dragged by police before his death, video shows

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  • Greene, 49, died after confrontation with officers in 2019
  • Louisiana police initially refused to release bodycam footage

Two years after Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old Black man, died after a confrontation with white police officers in May 2019, the Louisiana police department released footage of the incident.

Louisiana state police had refused to publicly release footage from the incident, which they claimed culminated in Greene dying from crashing into a tree and injuring his head.

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Three dead after shoot-out in New Orleans gun store

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Customers and staff opened fire on a person who walked into the Metairie store and fatally shot two people

Three people are dead and two more in hospital after a person in a New Orleans gun store opened fire, killing two before dying when customers and staff shot back, police say.

The shooting happened at the Jefferson Gun Outlet in the suburb of Metairie around 2.50pm on Saturday, according to a release from the Jefferson Parish sheriff’s office.

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The scars of solitary: Albert Woodfox on freedom after 44 years in a concrete cell

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Woodfox was a member of the Angola 3, a group of men wrongfully accused of murder. Now he marks the fifth anniversary of his freedom

Every morning for almost 44 years, Albert Woodfox would awake in his 6ft by 9ft concrete cell and brace himself for the day ahead. He was America’s longest-serving solitary confinement prisoner, and each day stretched before him identical to the one before.

Did he have the strength, he would ask himself, to endure the torture of his prolonged isolation? Or might this be the day when he would finally lose his mind and, like so many others on the tier, suddenly start screaming and never stop?

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Fauci rebukes Trump Covid claims but offers ‘no excuses’ for vaccine delays

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The pedestrian pace of Covid-19 vaccinations in the US came under new scrutiny on Sunday, as the pandemic death toll passed 350,000 and experts warned of another surge in infections and deaths arising from gatherings at Christmas and New Year.

Related: Larry King, TV chatshow veteran, in hospital with coronavirus – reports

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Hurricane Zeta kills at least six as 100mph winds race through south

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More than 2.6 million without power in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, with life-threatening weather to continue

More than 2.6 million customers were without power on Thursday morning across several southern states and at least six people had been killed after Hurricane Zeta howled ashore in Louisiana with winds over 100mph then weakened to a tropical storm and raced through the region.

According to the website PowerOutage.us, shortly after dawn at least 2 million were without electricity in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, and the number grew from there. Georgia has the most outages, with more than 800,000 people in the dark.

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Hurricane Laura brings 150mph winds to Louisiana with more ‘catastrophic conditions’ to come

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Six fatalities recorded in Louisiana, including a teen girl who died after a tree fell on her home and a man who died of carbon monoxide poisoning

Hurricane Laura, the most powerful hurricane to strike the US this year, moved across Louisiana on a northerly path on Thursday, after threatening an “unsurvivable storm surge” on the coast and tropical force weather as far as Tennessee.

The storm slammed into western Louisiana overnight with gusts of up to 150mph and could cause “catastrophic conditions”, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. Not until 11 hours after landfall did it finally weaken.

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‘Devastation everywhere’: Louisiana city wakes up to storm’s aftermath

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Lake Charles felt the full force of Hurricane Laura and now residents who rode out the disaster are picking up the pieces

Classie Ballou lives on the fifth floor of Chateau du Lac, an eight-story retirement home in the Louisiana city of Lake Charles. “I made it through Rita,” he said from a park bench in the rubble of downtown as he reflected on the fury of Hurricane Laura that had just roared through his home town. “Honestly, I thought it wasn’t going to be that bad.”

He shook his head. “If I were doing it over, I would leave.”

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Marco and Laura could hit US coast as hurricanes, forecasters say

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  • Louisiana in path of two tropical storms now in Gulf
  • Mississippi governor heralds ‘unprecedented times’

Tropical Storm Marco was swirling over the Gulf of Mexico early on Sunday, heading for a possible hit on the Louisiana coast as a hurricane, while Tropical Storm Laura knocked utilities out as it battered Hispaniola, following a track forecast to take it to the same part of the US coast – also as a hurricane.

Related: Could the US and Caribbean be heading for their worst hurricane season?

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Tornadoes rip through US south leaving trail of devastation and killing dozens

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  • More than two dozen tornadoes reported in four states
  • Louisiana sheriff reports ‘extreme flooding’ seen rarely ‘if ever’

At least six people were killed after severe storms tore through a number of southern states late on Wednesday, adding to weeks of extreme weather that had already killed more than two dozen people and destroyed hundreds of homes.

Related: Tornadoes and storms hit US south as six killed in Mississippi

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