ATLANTA (Reuters) – Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina swept infants out of their mothers’ arms, filled whole neighborhoods with dirty water, flooded schools and hospitals and turned New Orleans into a byword for disaster.

What happened next?

The question is at the heart of Emmy Award-winner Spike Lee’s new film “If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise”, a two-part, four-hour documentary on New Orleans and the Gulf coast set to haunting music.

/CHICAGO (Reuters) – Bob Dudley is not one to wear his disappointment on his sleeve.

Even as a kid, “Bobby” as he was then known “was completely unflappable,” remembers Charles Brent, Dudley’s hometown friend in southern Mississippi in the 1960s.

/CHICAGO (Reuters) – Bob Dudley is not one to wear his disappointment on his sleeve.

Even as a kid, “Bobby” as he was then known “was completely unflappable,” remembers Charles Brent, Dudley’s hometown friend in southern Mississippi in the 1960s.

By Matthew Bigg

VENICE, La. (Reuters) – Gulf Coast native Kindra Arnesen is so anxious about the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill she is packing up her family and leaving town.

“Stress? Dude my clothes are falling off me (because of weight loss). The level of stress here is tremendous. My husband has aged 10 years in two months,” Arnesen said on Friday as she loaded possessions into a van outside her trailer home in Venice.

BAY JIMMY, Louisiana (Reuters) – Summer storms are pushing oil from a BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico deeper into Louisiana’s wetlands and temporarily slowing efforts to contain damage.

The storms are also responsible for washing oil into Lake Pontchartrain, which borders New Orleans, further polluting Mississippi’s beaches and halting tests on a supertanker adapted to skim large quantities of oil from the surface.

LONDON/NEW ORLEANS, July 5 (Reuters) – Shareholders in BP
BP.L BP.N balked on Monday at reports the energy giant would
seek a strategic investor to ward off takeover bids while the
company’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico spread.

On the disaster’s 77th day, BP spokesman Mark Proegler
confirmed that government tests showed tar balls that washed up
on the Texas coast near Galveston were from the spill, but only
about five gallons were found.

LONDON/NEW ORLEANS, July 5 (Reuters) – Shareholders in BP
BP.L BP.N balked on Monday at reports the energy giant would
seek a strategic investor to ward off takeover bids while the
company’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico spread.

On the disaster’s 77th day, BP spokesman Mark Proegler
confirmed that government tests showed tar balls that washed up
on the Texas coast near Galveston were from the spill, but only
about five gallons were found.

LONDON/NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Shareholders in BP balked Monday at reports it would seek a strategic investor to ward off takeover bids, as the clean-up costs of its massive U.S. oil spill topped $3 billion.

As containment efforts continued in the devastated Gulf of Mexico, where a ruptured well has been spewing crude since April 20, tests on a supertanker adapted to skim large quantities of oily water from the surface were inconclusive because of high seas, ship owner TMT Shipping Offshore said.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Tests on a supertanker adapted to skim large quantities of oily water from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico are inconclusive because of high seas, ship owner TMT Shipping Offshore said on Monday.

Tests on the so-called “super skimmer” conducted just north of the blown out BP Plc well were supposed to be completed on Monday but have been extended because of the weather, said spokesman Bob Grantham.

LONDON/NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Shareholders in BP balked Monday at reports it would seek a strategic investor to ward off takeover bids, as the clean-up costs of its massive U.S. oil spill topped $3 billion.

As containment efforts continued in the devastated Gulf of Mexico, where a ruptured well has been spewing crude since April 20, tests on a supertanker adapted to skim large quantities of oily water from the surface were inconclusive because of high seas, ship owner TMT Shipping Offshore said.