AP - Tropical Storm Zeta formed Friday in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, another installment in a record-breaking hurricane season that officially ended last month.

AP - At a cost of as much as $20 million, more than 200 National Guard soldiers returning to Louisiana from Iraq are staying on active duty for up to a year so they can have full-time work in their hurricane-ravaged hometowns.

AFP - Four months after New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas were leveled by Hurricane Katrina, efforts to help the region recover from the biggest disaster in US history have been hampered by political infighting.

AFP - The annual New Year's Eve bash in New York's Times Square this weekend will honour the relief efforts that followed the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans four months ago.

Reuters - Nearly three years after President George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security after the September 11 attacks, the sprawling agency still faces management problems that were partly to blame for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina, an internal audit showed.

AFP - Federal prosecutors have indicted 49 people suspected of conning the American Red Cross out of cash earmarked for victims of the hurricanes that devastated the Gulf Coast this year.

Reuters - A Sarajevo-based body which helped identify victims of the 1990s Yugoslavia wars and last year's Asian tsunami said on Thursday said it would help identify victims of Hurricane Katrina.

AP - Weaknesses in FEMA's response system during Hurricane Katrina were just one symptom of major management challenges at the Homeland Security Department, an internal report issued Wednesday concludes.

Reuters - New Orleans police officers who gunned down a knife-wielding man during an incident partly caught on videotape appeared to have acted properly, but the shooting remains under investigation, the city's police chief said on Wednesday.

AP - The number of people indicted in a scheme that bilked thousands of dollars from a Red Cross fund designated for Hurricane Katrina victims has risen to 49, federal authorities said.

USATODAY.com - The New Orleans Police Department was quick to distinguish Monday's fatal shooting of a knife-wielding man by police officers from the string of incidents that has battered the department's reputation since Hurricane Katrina.

AP - In a surprising but nonthreatening curtain call to the Atlantic's busiest-ever hurricane season, Tropical Storm Zeta formed in the open ocean Friday, trying a record for the latest-developing named storm.

Reuters - The New Orleans Saints football team will return to New Orleans and plans to play all its 2006 home games in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina forced a move to San Antonio this year, team owner Tom Benson said on Friday.

Reuters - Tropical Storm Zeta formed in the eastern Atlantic Ocean on Friday, a month after the official end of a record busy hurricane season but forecasters said the straggler storm did not threaten land.

AFP - Yet another tropical storm formed in the Atlantic, one month after the official end of the year's record-smashing hurricane season, forecasters said.

AP - The number of people indicted in a scheme that bilked thousands of dollars from a Red Cross fund designated for Hurricane Katrina victims has risen to 49, federal authorities said.

AP - In a surprising but nonthreatening curtain call to the Atlantic's busiest-ever hurricane season, Tropical Storm Zeta formed in the open ocean Friday, trying a record for the latest-developing named storm.