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The article reports on tourism in New Orleans, Louisiana. Prior to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, the population of the metropolitan area was 1,337,726 people. As of a few months ago, it was approximately 936,408, up from 662,174 in 2006. On a typical preKatrina year for New Orleans tourism, the city hosted approximately eight million visitors. That figure dropped to 3.7 million in 2006, but it has continued to rise ever since. The city's most important industry is tourism.

This article reports that Anthony A. Williams, the mayor of Washington, D.C., would not seek a third term next year. Williams, the city bureaucrat turned mayor, admits that the challenge that he faced to revive a struggling city that had fallen into disrepair before he took office in 1998 was the toughest job he has ever experienced. Before he became mayor, the city was in bankruptcy and lost an estimated 5,000 residents each year, many who decided to relocate to the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs. It is rumored that former Mayor Marion Barry, whom constituents seemed to forgive for a very public personal scandal in the early 1990s that landed him in prison, is interested in running again.