• Charter schools likely to band together
With several local charter-school operators gearing up to run additional schools next year, most of New Orleans' charter schools could soon be part of clusters that share a board of directors, overarching vision and back-office support.

• HEALTH CARE NARROWLY CLEARS HOUSE IN VOTE
WASHINGTON -- By a narrow partisan margin of 219-212, the House approved massive health care legislation Sunday night that supporters said would cover 32 million uninsured Americans, expand Medicaid, protect consumers from unfair insurance limits and exclusions and close the prescription drug coverage gap for seniors.

• 'Treme' crew disrupts Uptown area
As New Orleans revels in the label of "Hollywood South," attracting film crews, celebrities and convoys of big trucks to the region with the promise of tax incentives and incomparable scenery stretching from Audubon Park to the Lower 9th Ward, one neighborhood isn't welcoming the limelight.

• Help springs eternal, but money runs out
Two religious denominations that, for nearly five years, have been pouring money and volunteers into the rebuilding of New Orleans have decided to wind down their recovery projects to return to relief work elsewhere on a more normal scale.

• Roots of NOPD scandal may run deep
When an investigator needed an identity for a fabricated witness in the Danziger Bridge police shooting, prosecutors say, he looked to his fellow officers for help.

• Death penalty may be on table for Destrehan native
Arkansas prosecutors might seek the death penalty against a Destrehan native who they say admitted to "smothering" her two young children last year in separate killings about 10 weeks apart.

• Elevation grants going nowhere
A federal inspector general's review of Road Home elevation grants paid in 2006 and 2007 found that 80 percent of recipients have thus far failed to raise their homes with the money.

• Low bid puts Jeff in odd position
Last fall, the Jefferson Parish Council canceled a $5 million drainage maintenance contract with Hubbard Enterprises, the construction company owned by a former St. John the Baptist parish president and convicted felon, Bill Hubbard.

• Mother could face death penalty
Arkansas prosecutors might seek the death penalty against a Destrehan native who they say admitted to "smothering" her two young children last year in separate killings about 10 weeks apart.

• Post-war treasure hunt tracked artwork
Although Nazis have been justifiably condemned for looting and stockpiling art, including pieces they seized from Jews who were sent to perish in concentration camps, they unwittingly helped preserve much of what they had seized, a historian said Friday in New Orleans.

• TELLING THE STORIES OF THEIR LIVES
For 40 minutes Friday, Jim Atwood and Patti Adams, husband and wife for 35 years, chatted quietly across a small Formica table. Not about the day, but about bigger themes, their lives as classical musicians and artists, about living in New Orleans and, in time, of course, their journey toward recovery from Katrina.

• Wolfe wants to continue long record of service
Thirty-five years ago, the St. John the Baptist Parish Police Jury decided there wasn't enough money to continue the anti-poverty program that employed Richard "Dale" Wolfe.

• Bailey points to business skills, council record
Edgard insurance agent Perry Bailey says he is well-prepared to be the next president of St. John the Baptist Parish.

• Camera officer never did a case
Steve Mortillaro, who lost his $12,000-a-year Jefferson Parish position this month, said Thursday he was hired in 2008 to be an administrative hearing officer for stoplight camera tickets but didn't preside over a single case.

• Meter maids no longer taking Saturdays off
If you park in one of New Orleans' 4,000 metered spaces Saturday and don't feed the meter, don't be surprised if you find a warning citation on your windshield.

• Police break up cockfight in Slidell
St. Tammany Parish deputies busted up a cockfighting ring near Slidell this month, arresting four people in the first use in the parish of a state law that made the sport a criminal offense, authorities said.

• Priest cleared in local molest claims
A local Catholic priest accused of molesting four boys years ago at a church-run shelter in Marrero has cleared his name after the accusers formally withdrew their claims.

• UNREAL WORLD
It started as a routine stop for New Orleans police: On March 1, officers were dispatched to look into a disturbance Uptown in the 1600 block of Dufossat Street.

• At Obama's request, Cao to restudy Senate bill
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Wednesday asked Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, R-New Orleans, to take a fresh look at the language on abortion in the Senate health care bill to see whether he could, in good conscience, support landmark health care legislation now days from a final vote.

• Brees to share game plan for life of victory
The revival of Drew Brees, the Saints and the city of New Orleans will be chronicled in the Super Bowl MVP's upcoming autobiography, "Coming Back Stronger: Unleashing the Hidden Power of Adversity," which is scheduled to be released July 6.

• Coastal spending for 2011 outlined
The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority on Wednesday recommended spending $648 million on levee, coastal restoration and infrastructure improvements along Louisiana's fast-eroding coastline in the upcoming fiscal year.

• Huge pumping station going up near Harvey
Even though he knew what to expect because he had helped design it, Kevin Wagner was still in awe Wednesday as he stood on the foundation of the world's largest drainage pumping station being built south of Harvey.

• Husband cites mental illness
Dawn Wines, whom authorities in Arkansas say killed her two young children within a two-month span last year, suffered from postpartum depression and seemed disconnected from the children, her estranged husband said Wednesday.

• Idle canal debris finally going to a better place
More than four years after Hurricane Katrina, thick debris is finally being cleared from the canals that snake through the Coin du Lestin subdivision near Slidell, and the mud and muck is being rerouted into Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge to help replenish as many as 35 acres of the 1,500 lost to the storm.

• Mayor urged to present budget sooner
Anticipating significant cuts to close a revenue deficit in excess of $1 million, some Slidell City Council members are urging Mayor Ben Morris to present the budget sooner rather than later.

• NOPD actions at Bacchus parade ruled proper
A federal jury on Wednesday concluded that New Orleans police officers who arrested two men at a 2007 Carnival parade acted within their authority, dismissing the men's claims they were targeted by police because one of the men had filmed them.

• City replanting scores of trees after Katrina wilted landscape
Armed with $750,000 in federal grant money, the Department of Parks and Parkways in New Orleans is embarking on what city officials say is the city's most ambitious greening project in two decades: A citywide initiative that calls for planting nearly 4,000 trees, including some unusual varieties, during the next year.

• Committee endorses new school's boundaries
After three meetings to discuss the options, there was no dissension Tuesday as a local committee recommended to the St. Tammany Parish School Board that it choose the third of four proposed maps for the boundary lines for Henry Mayfield Elementary School, which is scheduled to be open for the 2011-12 school year.

• Nutria hunters find a canine solution to pest problem on the bayou
The dog had been in the nutria tunnel for about 10 minutes when a muffled bark was heard above ground on the banks of Bayou St. John.

• Pumping station work can go forward
Under the corps construction plan, the new combination of gates and pumps at the end of each canal would be operated in tandem with existing interior pump stations during hurricanes to block surge from entering the canals, while pumping rainwater from the canals into the lake. The lakefront gates and pumps would not operate at other times.

• Robottom vows to bring new era of honesty
Natalie Robottom tells St. John the Baptist Parish residents that the March 27 election is "a chance to get it right."

• Storm warnings move up 12 hours
To give more time for decision-making and evacuation when warranted, forecasters will begin issuing their storm warnings a full 12 hours earlier this hurricane season, which begins June 1.

• Work to build pump stations can move forward
Construction of permanent pump stations at the Lake Pontchartrain ends of the 17th Street, Orleans Avenue and London Avenue canals can move forward, after state and local officials signed an agreement Tuesday with the Army Corps of Engineers guaranteeing that they will be built to accommodate future changes in the drainage system.

• Yenni wants to continue Kenner's progress
On one of the walls of Mike Yenni's home office is a picture of him as a boy sitting on his grandfather's lap as the older man drives a riding lawnmower. Pretty typical photo of a grandson and his Paw Paw.

• Capitano passionate about Kenner, its people
Before Phil Capitano became mayor of Kenner, the door to the second floor of City Hall was always closed. When he took the city's top seat, Capitano put the receptionist's desk in the front room and opened the entrance to Kenner citizens.

• Juneau calls halt to talks on city deal
Four months after introducing his ambitious plan to restore the storm-ravaged Morris F.X. Jeff Municipal Auditorium, developer Stewart Juneau said Monday he is calling for a temporary halt to negotiations on a deal that New Orleans' inspector general has called "a contract for nothing but high-priced hours."

• Keller points to skills he honed as schools chief
Gerald Keller believes the next St. John the Baptist Parish president needs to stem the flow of moving vans out of the parish.

• Northlake Nature Center loses old clubhouse to fire
A Sunday morning fire gutted a never-completed golf clubhouse near Mandeville that provided a link to the north shore's past as a getaway for the state's political elite.

• Northlake Nature Center loses old clubhouse to fire
A Sunday morning fire gutted a never-completed golf clubhouse near Mandeville that provided a link to the north shore's past as a getaway for the state's political elite.

• Red tape trimmed for W-14 canal project
Engineering and design work to improve the water flow in the W-14 canal in and around Slidell could start sooner than expected, as the top official in the Army Corps of Engineers' New Orleans office has OK'd the plan, St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis said Monday.

• State begins taking land for hospital site
In a display of muscle that marks a milestone in the controversial march toward building a new hospital complex in Mid-City, the state has taken a full city block at Canal and Rocheblave streets -- and the property owners are seething mad.

• State compiles hospital site, and riles land owners
In a display of muscle that marks a milestone in the controversial march toward building a new hospital complex in Mid-City, the state has taken a full city block at Canal and Rocheblave streets -- and the property owners are seething mad.

• St. John board clashes over director
The St. John the Baptist Parish Housing Authority on Monday delayed taking action against executive director Lawand Johnson, who some board members believe improperly used an agency credit card to make personal purchases.

• Health care vote has Melancon in tough spot
WASHINGTON -- Congress is headed toward a showdown vote on health care and Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, at odds with his party and his president, is hoping to avoid suffering collateral damage to his uphill senatorial campaign.

• REBOUND
After quitting on a basketball scholarship at UNO as a sophomore in 1997, Renard Allen Jr. spent several years working odd jobs, raising two children with his wife and dominating local recreational basketball leagues.

• Time to start cashing in Uncle Sam's IOUs
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. -- The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in the small West Virginia town of Parkersburg along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.

• PERSONAL FOUL
enard Allen Jr.'s former girlfriend followed him home after a party one night in December 1997.

• Report into Katrina shooting appears riddled with blanks
police report about the shooting of a man whose burned corpse was discovered in a car on the Algiers levee after Hurricane Katrina apparently differs from the report originally written by the sergeant whose name appears on the document's cover page, sources close to a federal investigation into the matter say.

• SPARTANS RISE AGAIN
Trey Folse first saw Salmen High School after Hurricane Katrina's storm surge all but destroyed it, he might have thought he was on a swamp tour instead of roaming the halls of a school so dear to his heart.

• AN INDEPENDENT REPORT SAYS THE RSD'S HIGH SCHOOLS CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE, 'WITH NO CLEAR DIRECTION' FROM THE DISTRICT'S LEADERS
After two years, an ambitious plan to overhaul the Recovery School District's high schools has elicited mixed reviews. Many educators and students say the system is slowly, but steadily, boosting academic expectations and creating career-themed academies for students. But a recent independent report took a more critical view.

• Congemi exiting race for mayor for good
Jefferson Parish Councilman Louis Congemi said Friday he will quit the race for Kenner mayor after five weeks sitting on the sideline while battling pneumonia.

• Witness bullying alleged after girl killed
Two Metairie men threatened and beat witnesses during the investigation into the death of a 7-year-old River Ridge girl who was killed by a stray bullet as she slept in her apartment, according to an indictment and court records prosecutors unsealed Friday.

• 2 men clash at Kenner mayor forum
Kenner mayoral candidates Phil Capitano and Mike Yenni traded barbs at a candidate forum Thursday night.

• City pays bill after service cut
A software vendor that processes building permits and a range of other City Hall documents restored the service late Thursday, nearly 72 hours after taking the unprecedented step of pulling the plug because Mayor Ray Nagin's administration had ignored repeated pleas to make good on bills that were hundreds of thousands of dollars in arrears, a company spokesman said.

• Company chosen to comb over jail
A Chicago-based architecture and engineering company has been selected to review potential security problems at the St. Tammany Parish jail in the wake of a murder suspect's escape last month, officials said Thursday.

• Coroner lacks evidence of homicide at hospital
After a second inquiry into a Memorial Medical Center patient's death in the days following Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard said Thursday that he still does not have enough evidence to declare Jannie Burgess a victim of homicide, an announcement that likely closes investigations into explosive allegations of euthanasia at the Uptown hospital.

• Ex-cop admits danziger ploT
An ex-New Orleans police officer pleaded guilty Thursday to covering up the deadly Danziger Bridge police shooting in the days after Hurricane Katrina, admitting that he and fellow cops invented witnesses, planted a gun, twisted and changed victims' statements, and falsified reports.

• Ex-school official gets 18-month prison term
people not to believe in miracles."

• Gretna helps pay for gates
When the city of Gretna annexed Timberlane Estates subdivision in 2009, the deal between the community and city appeared simple.

• Man pleads guilty in Klan killing
An alleged Ku Klux Klan member pleaded guilty on Thursday to obstruction of justice for helping to cover up the murder his father is accused of committing in remote northeastern St. Tammany Parish during a Klan initiation ceremony in 2008.

• Report trashes N.O. garbage deals
Bolstering suspicions raised for years by critics of the city's Sanitation Department, a draft report by New Orleans' inspector general charges that officials have failed to properly oversee five key garbage contracts, possibly leading to incorrect payments to vendors.

• Tenant needed on housing board
Where's the tenant? That's the question one St. John the Baptist Parish Housing Authority commissioner is asking the Parish Council.

• Davis presses for flood money
St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis today will meet with members of Congress, congressional committees and the Army Corps of Engineers in Washington, D.C., to lobby for money for storm protection on the north shore.

• IG's report savages N.O. recovery contract
The controversial engineering firm hired to manage New Orleans' massive rebuilding effort has been operating for more than two years under a dubiously awarded contract that has allowed it to overbill the city repeatedly even as the bricks-and-mortar recovery work it oversees has lagged, according to a draft report by the city's inspector general.

• Letters expected to go out next week to Section 8 lottery participants
The Housing Authority of New Orleans attracted nearly 30,000 families -- roughly one in five New Orleans households -- when it launched a Section 8 lottery six months ago, but none of the hopefuls has received a housing assistance voucher.

• Mayor's race may regain Congemi
Three weeks after his wife announced he was quitting the Kenner mayoral race because of illness, Louis Congemi said Wednesday his health has improved and he might remain a candidate after all.

• Reverse course, judge is urged
State prosecutors have asked a St. John the Baptist Parish district judge to reverse her decision to vacate a murder indictment against an 8-year-old Reserve boy's stepfather, mother and stepbrother.

• Tangle on I-10 twin spans starts to unwind Friday
The largest public works project in state history will begin its final phases Friday as crews take steps toward moving traffic off the old Interstate 10 twin spans and onto the new roadways that will replace the storm-wracked bridges.

• 2nd ex-cop pleads guilty to cover-up
A second former New Orleans police officer has been charged in federal court in the alleged police cover-up of the Danziger Bridge shootings and appears to be cooperating with investigators in the federal probe into the deadly shootings in the days after Hurricane Katrina.

• HIGH ACHIEVER
hen a redistricting plan bumped Stacy Rodrigue's son from Chateau Estates Elementary School in Kenner, she was livid. Andrew Rodrigue had grown up at Chateau, and with just two years remaining before middle school, she couldn't imagine him anywhere else.

• Park-and-ride lot planned near Lacombe
St. Tammany Parish has received a $1 million grant through the U.S. Department of Transportation to construct a park-and-ride facility on Louisiana 434 near Lacombe, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced.

• Spend cautiously, Landrieu urges the city
Amid concerns that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's administration may be improperly spending $200 million in state money earmarked for Hurricane Katrina recovery projects, Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu on Tuesday urged City Hall to be cautious about dipping into the fund before he takes office May 3.

• St. John Parish water meets standards
St. John Parish residents won't be getting anytime soon letters that their east bank water system doesn't meet federal standards.

• Witness said civilians fired guns on span
When Lt. Michael Lohman arrived at the Danziger Bridge on Sept. 4, 2005, he found six people shot by his officers, but no guns to back up police allegations of a shootout between civilians and police, according to documents associated with his guilty plea filed in federal court last week.

• Contract awarded for east bank levee
The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a $9.5 million contract to build a new floodwall and drainage structure at Cross Bayou in the St. Charles Parish East Bank Hurricane Protection levee.

• Covington woman braves Iraqi bombs
Despite mortars and rockets that bombarded Baghdad on Sunday morning, a former state representative from Covington observed Iraq's parliamentary elections along with a delegation of other current and former female state legislators.

• Cowen report applauds school reforms
New Orleans educators have successfully reduced animosity between charter and traditional schools, and significantly raised student expectations and results across the board. But they still must do more to increase transparency and repair the relationship between the locally elected School Board and the state-run Recovery School District, according to an annual report released Monday by Tulane University.

• Lafitte mayor to make pitch for levee
Having traveled extensively in recent years to push for improved flood protection in lower Jefferson Parish, Jean Lafitte Mayor Tim Kerner will make the case on his home turf today.

• Recovery officials tussled over contracts
The departure last week of a key recovery official from City Hall appears to have been the final act in a protracted power struggle between two top aides to Mayor Ray Nagin over the proper way to spend emergency recovery money.