So, we had a couple of airlines in the U.S. that recently had to cancel hundreds of flights in order to re-inspect planes for safety. That was nothing compared to what happened in Great Britain. They opened the new Heathrow Terminal 5 last week. It was to bring an end to delays and cancellations and “Heathrow hell.”

What happened? Well, the computers and the baggage system crashed and British Airways and the airport’s owner BAA found their $9 billion terminal in chaos. Travelers were everywhere — waiting.

Meantime, the British “feel-good factor” dropped to its lowest point ever. The Daily Telegraph reports that “households have lost faith in the Labour Party and Prime Minister Gordon Brown.” As Americans, undergoing our own economic crisis, we say: “Join the club!”

At Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II was properly annoyed when helicopters overhead drowned out the national anthem being played after the arrival of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni.

To make matters worse, at the State Banquet, the Queen and President Sarkozy sat down at the top table only to find an empty seat because P.M. Brown did not arrive. The Queen didn’t know a microphone was open nearby, and her question, “Has the Prime Minister got lost?,” went out to 150 waiting guests. (Mr. Brown had been ushered in a wrong door; he arrived eventually.)

Did anybody have a good time? Evidently the French president’s controversial wife enjoyed herself immensely sitting with the Queen’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, who kept her in fits of laughter.

The French press then pronounced Carla Bruni’s understated style, in her grey, violet and purple Dior clothes, as having been “faultless.” She has momentarily made the French forget those nude pictures of her as a younger model.

People were less charitable about the white tie and tails rented by the president of France. He wore a belt with his pants and Savile Row pronounced this “simply not correct.” (I am asking, but how did anyone manage to see his belt?)

In New York, about a week ago, the divorced wife of the French president — Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz — married the Moroccan-born Richard Attias, an events planner. She said, “Richard is the person I have loved the most in my life. I think that I had never loved before meeting him.”

This was said to be her revenge on President Sarkozy, who only put three months between his divorce from Cecilia to his marriage to Carla.

Can you keep up with all of this? It’s just like Hollywood.

Elsewhere in the world — the Russians stopped sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea for five years to try to prevent over-fishing by caviar hunters … The Dutch banned all smoking except for marijuana. You can light up now in Holland as long as you don’t add tobacco to your weed. They did this so the numerous Dutch coffee shops won’t go out of business … The King of Spain advised his son, Crown Prince Felipe, that “We all are to a degree slaves of the media, which can elevate or pull down a person or an institution. The press needs to be respected, but it is also necessary to make it respect you.”… And here’s the good U.S. news. The cherry blossoms are out and very beautiful now in Washington, D.C.(But they’re about the only things that are beautiful in the nation’s capital at the moment.)

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