The vice chairman of a task force set up by President Obama to restore the Gulf Coast criticized BP PLC. for what he described as an increasing reluctance to repair damage done by last year’s massive oil spill.

Garret Graves, the vice chairman of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force and a Louisiana coastal official, said on Monday that BP has become harder to work with.

BP did not immediately comment.

Mardi Gras is coming early to central Arkansas this year.

This weekend, 101 Runners New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Funk plans shows in Hot Springs and Little Rock.

The group is a percussion-based funk band backing a costume show featuring elaborate feathered outfits inspired by native American headdresses. Founder and conga player Chris Jones says New Orleans’ so-called Indian tribes parade through the streets during Mardi Gras to drums and tambourines, but his band has added a modern electric funk element to turn the show into a Big Easy party.

Here’s information on the two shows this weekend in central Arkansas. And here’s a site where you can see video of the band in action.

The murder rate in New Orleans is running about double what it was at this time last year. Police Chief Ronal Serpas thinks it’s an unacceptable and unrealistic change.

”So far this year there have been 39 homicide events, compared to 20 homicide events last year,” he said.

While the chief hunts for answers, Serpas says he is finding more and more of the shooters and victims know each other, and are already involved in crime. So what are the possible solutions?

”It has to do with raising children not to see violence as the answer, it has to do with keeping dangerous people in prison, as compared to letting them out on the streets,” Serpas explained.

It’s moving day for dozens of people living in a growing homeless camp.

Lina Gonzales, director of the New Orleans Mission, said police and sanitation crews removed all things belonging to dozens of people sleeping on the streets outside the mission Tuesday morning as part of the crackdown.

“(The homeless) are not fitting within the program by causing all this distraction out here. Our neighbors are all over us about this and so is the city,” Gonzales said.

A grove of trees and flowers that will soon be built is anchoring hopes of transforming a down-on-its-heels New Orleans neighborhood that’s been plagued by crime and poverty.

Meet Ken Smith, a prominent New York City landscape architect who’s put a roof garden atop the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, greened up Malcolm X Plaza in Harlem, designed a massive metropolitan park in Orange County, Calif., and made gardens flourish inside trash bins at Ohio State University.

A violent weekend ends with two people shot in New Orleans East.

Police say someone shot at two men outside an apartment complex on Bundy and Dwyer roads.

Investigators found a 27-year-old man shot several times. He died on scene. Police say a 25-year-old was shot in the leg. He was taken to the hospital where he is listed in stable condition.

Since Friday night, 11 people have been shot. Six of those shooting victims have died.

The recently-released 2010 census shows that New Orleans now has a population of 343,829, a drop of 140,845 residents from 484,674 in 2000. This 29 percent decrease reflects Hurricane Katrina’s displacement of the city’s population, though it has been noted that the city was already losing residents to the surrounding parishes of the metro area between 2000 and 2005. Overall, the metro area still has a population of 1.17 million, an 11 percent drop from 1.32 million in 2000. These harsh numbers, however, only tell part of the picture.

He works with a palette like any other, using the colors of the rainbow and beyond. It’s not the palette that makes French Quarter artist Craig Tracy unique.

It’s his canvas: human skin in all its glory, every hair, every goose bump, every wrinkle, every mole.

“It is a lot more interesting both to do and to view,” Tracy said.

Tracy said his Royal Street Gallery is a first-of-its-kind, the only one in the world, where live body paintings are captured and canvassed. He opened it just before Mardi Gras 2006, right after Hurricane Katrina, a new investment in a city struggling to survive.

More than 30,000 people who were forced out of their homes by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were still not permanently settled more than four years later, a new survey suggests.

Roughly 80 per cent of people living in the New Orleans area moved away for “at least a couple of weeks” after Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29 2005, according to data released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Of those, at least seven per cent — or 31,500 people — said they still do not consider themselves “permanently” settled.

A 4-month-old girl was shot and wounded Monday afternoon after being caught in an exchange of gunfire in a New Orleans neighborhood near the Mississippi River, police said.

Capt. Bob Bardy said the infant was among five people wounded and apparently has been “stabilized.” But he said two men who were hit are believed to be in critical condition.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu stopped by the site and deplored what he called “another senseless shooting.”