AP - Before the sun rises on the hotels of New Orleans, doctors in scrubs pile into elevators, shoulder-to-shoulder with construction workers wielding their sledgehammers. The doors open and they're off to work.

AP - Harold Hansford didn't make it home for Christmas. He just visited. Hansford spent part of Christmas morning wandering around the gutted house in the New Orleans suburb of Arabi that he, his wife and son called home for the past 17 years.

AP - Police officers shot and killed a man brandishing a knife in a confrontation that was partially videotaped by a bystander, setting off another internal investigation of the embattled department.

AP - An aid package to help the Gulf Coast rebuild after Hurricane Katrina will be siphoned from a dwindling FEMA disaster fund, leaving agency officials wondering Thursday whether they will need more money to help storm evacuees beyond next spring.