Author: Kevin Mcgill
-
New Orleans’ Carnival season marks Fat Tuesday with celebrities and pretend monarchs
Mardi Gras celebrations are in full swing in New Orleans
-
Mardi Gras 2024: What to know as Carnival season nears its rollicking end in New Orleans
Carnival season 2024 is entering its final days in New Orleans with big parades on the city’s main thoroughfares and smaller, offbeat walking clubs strolling the old French Quarter
-
Vaccine litigation lingers after lifting of military mandate
NEW ORLEANS • Federal appeals court judges closely questioned a Biden administration attorney Monday on the consequences military personnel might face for refusing COVID-19 vaccinations, even though Biden’s vaccine mandate for military personnel has been rescinded. Lawyers for a group of Navy SEALS and other Navy personnel who refuse to be vaccinated for religious reasons…
-
Appeals arguments set on immigrants brought to US as kids
NEW ORLEANS • Immigrant advocates gathered at a federal appeals court in New Orleans on Wednesday in the hope of saving an Obama-era program that prevents the deportation of thousands of people brought into the U.S. as children. A federal judge in Texas last year declared the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program illegal —…
-
Judge halts preparations for end of US asylum limits
NEW ORLEANS • The Biden administration must stop what amounts to the phasing out a pandemic-related public health rule allowing the expulsion of migrants without giving them an opportunity to seek asylum, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled Wednesday. The administration plans to end the policy on May 23. But it acknowledged in recent court…
-
Weather delays divers from searching for shipwreck survivors
PORT FOURCHON, La. • Families anxiously awaited news of the 12 people missing from a capsized oil industry vessel Thursday while stormy weather delayed divers from searching for survivors. Rescuers don’t know whether any of the missing might be caught inside the lift boat called the Seacor Power that flipped over Tuesday in hurricane-force winds…
-
Tornadoes pummel Alabama, killing at least 5
ATLANTA • Deadly tornadoes roared through Alabama on Thursday, toppling trees, demolishing homes and knocking out power to thousands, part of a broad swath of violent weather sweeping across the Deep South. At least five fatalities and an unknown number of injuries were reported. All of the deaths happened in eastern Alabama’s Calhoun County, Coroner…
-
Hurricane Zeta hits Louisiana with flooding, power outages
NEW ORLEANS • Hurricane Zeta slammed into the storm-weary Gulf Coast on Wednesday, pelting the New Orleans metro area with rain and howling winds that ripped apart buildings, knocked out power to thousands and threatened to push up to 9 feet of sea water inland in a region pounded by multiple storms this year. The…
-
Federal appeals court: Male-only draft is constitutional
NEW ORLEANS • A federal appeals court in New Orleans upheld the constitutionality of the all-male military draft system Thursday, citing a 1981 U.S. Supreme Court decision. In a decision that overturned a 2019 ruling by a Texas-based federal judge, a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said “only…
-
Authorities say deputy’s son behind fires at black churches
OPELOUSAS, La. • The suspect in a string of fires that destroyed three black churches in rural Louisiana is the white son of a sheriff’s deputy whose father helped arrange for his arrest, authorities said Thursday. Holden Matthews, 21, faces arson charges in the connection with the blazes in and around Opelousas, a city of…