Katrina: Two Years Later

This week marks the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Click here to read the New Orleans Times-Picayune's coverage. Click here to read the Biloxi Sun Herald's story "Where did the money go?" ...

Villagers mourn after bombings

McClatchy's Leila Fadel reports from Tal al Azizziyah, Iraq, a week after four bombs killed at least 354 people there. Fadel writes:

The pungent smell of the dead hangs low in this village, and not even the colorful headdresses the men have wrapped across their faces can keep it out.

“Come here,” a man shouts from atop a pile of rubble, summoning help from other men who are digging through the debris. His shovel has hit something. The digging quickens and dust fills the air. Then a lifeless arm appears, and soon the top half of a woman has been uncovered. The remains are placed in a pink floral comforter and carried off.

Nearly one week after four bombs blew apart this village and a neighboring one, Sheikh Khadar, the dead are still being recovered, adding to the toll that already had made last Tuesday’s bombings the deadliest terrorist attack since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Bridge Collapse - A City Responds

Minneapolis Star Tribune staff responded to the I-35 bridge collapse with thorough breaking news coverage, including stories from survivors and narratives of community action.

Staff writers Myron P. Medcalf and Tim Harlow describe a prayer gathering in St. Paul:

Hundreds of faithful kneeled, bowed their heads and clenched their fists this afternoon at churches in Minneapolis and St. Paul, praying for the people lost, injured, grieving or helping out after a bridge crashed into the Mississippi River.

Staff writer Kevin Giles, who was driving home when the bridge collapsed, tells of witness reaction at the scene:

Nobody smiled. They were for the most part a silent, showing reverence for the devastation they saw before them. Showing respect for the crumpled cars they could see, for the dying and injured they couldn't. And reverence for each other in the way that people reach out in times of need.

Columnist Nick Coleman writes of the profound sadness, and heroic response, immediately after the tragedy:

The focus at the moment is on the lives lost and injured and the heroic efforts of rescuers and first-responders - good Samaritans and uniformed public servants. Minnesotans can be proud of themselves, and of their emergency workers who answered the call.

For full coverage, including how to help, see StarTribune.com.