• 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.

• a breath of fresh air
C heryl Guillory still wears a mask in public. She ingests a long list of prescription medication each day. She will make frequent trips to her doctor for the rest of her life.

• Rural fire districts getting burned
Firefighters in St. Tammany Parish routinely undergo training to hone their skills for combatting blazes that strike houses, trailers and woodlands across the north shore.

• Treme leaders want greater role in school
When New Orleanians gathered last week to debate the future of Joseph A. Craig Elementary School in Treme, the conversation raised broader questions about the role the surrounding neighborhood should play in charting the course of a public school that has historically helped to define it.

• Discovery Channel makes a discovery: A use for the blighted Village Square in Chalmette
It's the aftermath of a major catastrophe.

• Key official couldn't fight City Hall
A key New Orleans recovery official has said he was forced out of Mayor Ray Nagin's administration last week because he refused to abandon his belief that "the interests of the taxpayers must be respected over corporate profits."

• NEW ORLEANS SCHOOL REFORM IS FUELED BY HARD-WORKING YOUNG IDEALISTS. WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY BURN OUT?
every morning, Akili Academy's teachers gather for a daily bonding ritual.

• Aging Lacombe bridge to get overhaul this year
St. Tammany bureau

• Larger Luling plant debuts
Monsanto has completed a $200 million expansion of its Luling plant that will increase the production of its Roundup brand herbicide by 20 percent.

• Leftover election business settled today
A New Orleans campaign season that has been drowned out at times by the Saints' historic Super Bowl run and Carnival festivities ends quietly today as voters choose new representatives for two district seats on the City Council.

• Nagin hunts for long-term computer vendor
With less than two months left in Mayor Ray Nagin's second term, his beleaguered technology office is seeking a vendor to provide computer equipment and software at New Orleans City Hall for the next two years.

• TREASURE IN TERRYTOWN
Judy Mills and her husband, Bruce, came to Terrytown in 1961, they were a young couple with a new baby looking for an affordable home in a nice neighborhood.

• City keeps close eye on grant money
A year after Mayor Ray Nagin launched a $10 million grant program for lower-income elderly and disabled homeowners, it is arguably the administration's most successful housing aid effort to date, but not for how much money it has disbursed or how many homes it has rebuilt.

• fbi's net widens
The FBI confirmed Thursday that it has opened two additional civil-rights investigations into the post-Katrina actions by New Orleans police officers, the latest in a growing list of inquiries.

• Jefferson's parish attorney resigns
Embattled Jefferson Parish Attorney Tom Wilkinson resigned Thursday, becoming the third top-level parish official to step down in the past two months amid a wide-ranging federal criminal investigation.

• Murder law applied to drug case
Orleans Parish prosecutors want a murder conviction for a drug dealer who allegedly served up the powdered heroin that killed a 36-year-old woman inside her Lower Garden District apartment in June.

• Outside expert sought on jail safety
St. Tammany Parish officials will bring in an independent consultant to review potential flaws and other security problems that might have contributed to last month's breakout at the parish jail, replacing the Baton Rouge architectural firm that designed the facility.

• St. John levee may be in the cards
A hurricane protection levee for St. John the Baptist Parish may rise along Interstate 10 if parish officials can persuade Congress to include the $400 million project in a bill that sets up water-related spending projects this year.

• Feds to judge: Give shorter jail sentence to key witness
Federal prosecutors are recommending that former Orleans Parish School Board member Ellenese Brooks-Simms receive a drastically reduced sentence for turning on her benefactor, political operative Mose Jefferson, and helping to ensure his conviction on bribery charges.

• Health clinics have become a lifeline since Katrina. But the money supporting them is set to flat-line.
Primary-care health clinics have proliferated across the New Orleans region since Hurricane Katrina, in no small part due to a $100 million, three-year federal grant that will run out in September.

• Inspector says Riley is stifling access
Saying that New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley has "repeatedly refused to comply with the law" and assist the city's fledgling independent police monitor's office, Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux on Wednesday called on Mayor Ray Nagin "to instruct the superintendent to cooperate with the police monitor and obey the law."

• Kenner mayoral hopeful sued by lender
JPMorgan Chase has started foreclosure proceedings against Kenner mayoral candidate Phil Capitano, alleging he hasn't paid his mortgage in six months.

• Obama calls for up-or-down vote on health bill
WASHINGTON -- Drawing a line in the sand, President Barack Obama on Wednesday called on Congress to schedule an up-or-down vote on comprehensive health care legislation "in the next few weeks."

• Saints haven't settled on future of trophy
safe to assume now that Saints coach Sean Payton has had a few weeks to digest the franchise's Super Bowl title and that he's returned to work, he has finally let the shiny Lombardi trophy out of his grasp.

• 2005 Treme death catches FBI's eye
Federal investigators are looking into the role that New Orleans police officers played in the July 2005 death of a local man, an inquiry that adds to a growing list of civil rights probes into the department.

• Airport crash-lands in customer survey
New Orleans' Louis Armstrong International Airport ranks next to last among 24 small American airports in customer satisfaction, according to a biennial survey released Tuesday by J.D. Power & Associates.

• Investors like what they see at former public housing
A millionaire and two billionaires toured the brand-new town houses that have replaced about 10 blocks of the St. Bernard public housing development on Tuesday, with hopes that their ideas will break the cycle of poverty in that part of New Orleans and further the success of their new national community-building organization.

• Jindal's campaign spending up
BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal may be calling for some belt-tightening in state government, but the same frugality does not apply to his campaign account.

• Latter & Blum fires president
Arthur Sterbcow, the public face of the largest real estate firm in New Orleans, was terminated as president of Latter & Blum Inc./Realtors on Tuesday for providing information to The Times-Picayune about assessment values and home prices in Jefferson Parish for a story published in Sunday's newspaper.

• President singles out 4 GOP ideas on health
WASHINGTON -- Putting some flesh on the rhetorical bones of bipartisanship, President Barack Obama wrote congressional leaders Tuesday that he is "exploring" four health care overhaul ideas offered by Republicans at the Blair House summit last week.

• Charter schools share test scores
In an unusual collaboration, 10 diverse New Orleans charter schools have banded together to share data and test score results over the school year, with the goal of better gauging their strengths and weaknesses.

• Dramatic capture, escape both through the ceiling
Carlos Alberto Rodriguez made his escape from the St. Tammany Parish jail by crawling through the ceiling, so it was only fitting that his apprehension came early Sunday morning after he fell through the attic floor of a Kenner church.

• Judge prepares ruling in five murders
An Orleans Parish judge will likely rule today whether Michael Anderson deserves a new trial, six months after a jury condemned him to die by lethal injection for the 2006 Central City shooting rampage that left five teenagers dead.

• Theriot hopes to prune contracts
The first whiff of the scandal embroiling Jefferson Parish government was the disclosure that the parish had added $4.8 million to contracts held by former St. John the Baptist Parish President Bill Hubbard's company.

• Corps to drive deeper canal pilings
The Army Corps of Engineers plans to drive steel sheet piling some 60 feet into the ground along parts of the London Avenue Canal's eastern floodwall -- three to four times deeper than those that catastrophically failed during Hurricane Katrina -- in hopes of significantly increasing the volume of water that the canal can hold.

• Escapee captured in Kenner church
Escaped inmate Carlos Alberto Rodriguez was captured in Kenner early Sunday following a seven-day manhunt, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office reported.

• Ex-aide speaks out on crasher incident
WASHINGTON -- Free for the first time to speak out about the circumstances surrounding the party-crashers at the White House state dinner in November, outgoing White House Social Secretary Desiree Glapion Rogers said Sunday her office followed established protocol to the letter that night, and reports that her office was not monitoring the gate when guests arrived are "just wrong."

• It's still Carnival time in Jewish community
The old synagogue in Central City blazed with light Saturday night, packed nearly wall to wall with costumed revelers, including a man in a full-dress gorilla suit, a rabbi in a big-bottomed clown outfit and a woman wearing an orange flamingo on her head.

• CRAWFISH SEASON OFF TO SLOW, PRICEY START
lunchtime on the second Friday of Lent at Captain Sid's Seafood in Bucktown, and Bill Borne of Lakeview is only now getting his first taste of crawfish for the season. Price has a lot to do with it.

• Jeff assessor a Louisiana leader
Every time legislators in Baton Rouge reopen their perennial debate about raising Louisiana's homestead exemption, Jefferson Parish Assessor Lawrence E. Chehardy is sure to be there, as he was during the 2009 legislative session when he spoke at committee meetings and even spent his own campaign money on advertisements pushing to shield a larger share of residential property value from taxation.

• JEFF HOME ASSESSMENTS AVERAGE 14% TOO LOW
he brown-brick house at 4201 Holton St. in Metairie, with dormers jutting from the steeply sloped roof and beveled glass set in the front door, looks like a comfortable and tidy abode in a typical suburban neighborhood.

• 2 more arrested in man's escape from jail
Two more people are behind bars on charges of aiding a murder suspect in his flight from the St. Tammany Parish jail last week, even as the search for the escaped inmate continues.

• Boy, 14, booked in rape of girl, 15
A 14-year-old boy from Destrehan has been booked with the aggravated rape of a 15-year-old girl from Destrehan, St. Charles Parish sheriff's authorities said.

• House tallying health bill math
WASHINGTON -- The day after the historic bipartisan health care summit, Democrats appeared ready to go it alone to enact a sweeping health care overhaul, but how they line up the votes to make it happen in the House remains a puzzle.

• Nagin seeking new tech contract
Mayor Ray Nagin's technology office, still reeling from allegations of insider deals and kickbacks, has ignored the wishes of local vendors, the City Council and the incoming mayor to seek another major long-term contract before Nagin leaves office.

• N.O. native ending stay at White House
WASHINGTON -- New Orleans native Desiree Glapion Rogers announced Friday she is stepping down as White House social secretary after a little more than a year on the job.

• Police recruits told: Never betray trust
On a morning reserved for celebration, for the graduation ceremony of 28 of the city's newest police officers, a cloud of doubt instead encompassed the New Orleans Police Department.

• Tape casts doubt on witness to 5 N.O. killings
The Orleans Parish district attorney's office only recently turned over to the defense a videotape in which a sole witness contradicts her courtroom account of the 2006 Central City massacre of five teenagers for which a jury in August sentenced Michael Anderson to death by lethal injection.