Following the Wednesday Night tradition of honoring major figures who have died recently, the evening opened with coverage of the death of the remarkable Simon Wiesenthal, "the [censored] Hunter" at the age of 97 Reality TV In an exceptional segue to last week's aviation safety topic, guests were treated to the riveting live coverage of the crippled JetBlue A-320 landing at Los Angeles airport. Happily, the landing was perfectly executed. The extraordinary aspect of this event was that the plane’s monitors carried live DirectTV broadcasts on the plane’s problems until the landing, giving a whole new meaning to in-flight entertainment. The world economy Katrina and a partially related world oil crisis have been responsible for dark clouds on the horizon, largely ignored in the recent weeks, but now becoming more evident. The devastating cost of the restoration in the southern states added to that of an expensive war and an alarmingly rising national debt, as well as the political and economic problems in the European Union, are all cause for concern. Increasing energy costs have begun to affect the price of consumer goods, hourly wages and salaries. Rising interest rates in the U.S. may very well slow down the economy, and with housing sales having peaked, the retail sector having slowed down, there is very little optimism for the near term. In Asia, there is skepticism about Chinese banks particularly in view of western banks moving in to buy state-run industrial banks,the situation in Europe is disastrous with the (sort of) election of Angela Merkel; and political problems in Italy and France are certainly not cause for celebration. The U.S. There is increasing disillusionment with the current United States government. The cronyism and appointment of unqualified people to key positions seems more widespread than in other administrations. Katrina seems to have proven at least as destructive to President Bush’s reputation as to the geography of the U.S. South. The fear of acting illegally without following the request protocol was (apparently) largely responsible for the federal delay, but this merely points to the usual reluctance of elected officials and civil servants alike to take personal risks in the face of disaster. None of the three levels of government is blameless. The appointment of an independent commission to investigate the failures and recommend effective solutions is absolutely essential, but in the meantime preparations for the onslaught of Hurricane Rita appear to be benefiting from some of the lessons learned from Katrina.