New Orleans is bidding a typically joyous farewell to Carnival season with Mardi Gras parades and street parties.

Carnival season 2024 is entering its final days in New Orleans with big parades on the city's main thoroughfares and smaller, offbeat walking clubs strolling the old French Quarter.

With their purple, gold and green colors and toy babies hidden inside, king cakes are staples of Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans.

The lead-up to New Orleans’ annual Mardi Gras celebration is intensifying with events big and small.

Alabama’s port city is holding a main event of its Carnival season, a quirky bash honoring the man credited with helping make the nation’s first Mardi Gras celebration what it is.

Break out the beads! Mardi Gras is back in Galveston!

In mid-February, Texas’ largest Mardi Gras celebration, Mardi Gras! Galveston, returns after a break in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

New Orleans' health director says she won't take part in a satirical Mardi Gras-season parade, one of the season's earliest, citing threats since COVID-19 restrictions were resumed.

In February, Texas’ largest Mardi Gras celebration, Mardi Gras! Galveston, returns after a break in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

New Orleans is bringing back an indoor mask mandate to fight the spread of COVID-19 while preparing for an influx of visitors for the Mardi Gras season.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell helped usher in the city's Carnival season by sampling a city delicacy — king cake — at a morning event.

(AP Photo/Channi Anand)NEW DELHI — Health officials in India say cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa and Brazil have been found in India. Over 150 cases of another variant first detected in the United Kingdom have previously been found in India. ___SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea is reporting 621 new coronavirus cases. State health officials on Tuesday reported 1,132 new COVID-19 cases and three additional deaths. Spain has officially reported more than 3 million virus cases -- just over 6% of the population -- and attributed more than 65,400 deaths to the virus.

Tourists from Brooklyn take photos on a nearly deserted Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021. “We were expecting a little bit lower key than the normal Mardi Gras,” Wheeler said. Coronavirus-related restrictions in New Orleans included canceled parades, closed bars and a near shutdown of rowdy Bourbon Street. That, and unusually frigid weather, prevented what New Orleans usually craves at the end of Mardi Gras season: streets and businesses jam-packed with revelers. To the east, Mobile, Alabama, which boasts the nation's oldest Mardi Gras celebrations, had also canceled parades.

People walk past parts of Mardi Gras floats past and present, at Mardi Gras World, where Kern Studios creates and stores some of their floats, in New Orleans, Friday, Feb. 12, 2021. New Orleans' annual pre-Lenten Mardi Gras celebration is muted this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Mardi Gras joy is muted this year in New Orleans as authorities seek to stifle the coronavirus's spread. Mardi Gras joy is muted this year in New Orleans as authorities seek to stifle the coronavirus's spread. None of it is worth putting people's lives in danger.”AdNew Orleans' Mardi Gras has had hard times before.

More than 6,300 people have died in Minnesota and more than 470,000 people have had confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic. So far, just over 46 million doses have been administered, and the administration’s goal is to ramp up daily doses to 1.5 million. By next week, states will be sent a total of 11 million doses, an increase of 500,000 compared with this week. Iran plans also to import some 17 million doses of vaccine from the international COVAX program and millions more from individual countries. AdActing Health Secretary Alison Beam says the moves are intended to hold hospitals, pharmacies and other providers accountable for the vaccine doses.

COVID-19 is tamping down the joy — and the revenue — associated with Carnival season in New Orleans. Live music is all but dead. The lounge was becoming popular for live music and Brazilian food. They cautiously reopened after Labor Day at restricted capacity and without live music. They also understand that live music will probably be one of the last things to return after the virus is fully defeated.

FILE - In this Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020, file photo, Mondo Kayo parades down Chartres Street during Mardi Gras, in New Orleans. The Mardi Gras season always starts on Jan. 6 and ends on Fat Tuesday, which this year falls on Feb. 16. The Krewe de Jeanne d’Arc is a club that annually pays homage to the fallen French hero with a parade through the French Quarter on the official start of the Carnival season. In Mobile, Alabama, dozens of parades, balls and other events also have been canceled. The city on the Gulf of Mexico calls itself the birthplace of Mardi Gras since celebrations began there a few years earlier than in New Orleans.

(AP) – A person was struck by a float and fatally injured Saturday evening during one of the iconic parades of the Mardi Gras season in New Orleans, authorities said. The fatality comes as New Orleans was already mourning the death of a 58-year-old woman who witnesses said was run over by a parade float Wednesday night in the runup to Mardi Gras. Witnessed said the woman, later identified by authorities as Geraldine Carmouche, had apparently tried to cross between two parts of a tandem float but tripped over a hitch connecting the sections. Tandem floats are multiple floats connected together and pulled by one tractor. In 2008, a rider getting off a three-part float after the Krewe of Endymion parade in New Orleans was killed when the float lurched forward and the third section ran over him, police said.