Boeing's unveiling of its new 787 was a huge media event -- part news event but also a big party of sorts with music, giant screens and 10,000 people watching and smiling.

What is interesting to me is yesterday and continuing into today, Boeing's own employees have been walking up to the plane not to work on it, but just to marvel at it. Even reach out to touch it.

It's funny, these people see planes come and go every single day, but somehow this one is different. 

From our perch two floors above the factory floor, you can see these employees are clearly proud of their accomplishment. 

Tonight, correspondent Tom Costello will bring you more about the revolutionary technology used to build this plane and what new comforts are in store for airline passengers worldwide.

The image that comes to mind when I think of a Marine is the recruiting campaign "The Few, The Proud, The Marines," where you see a Marine in full dress uniform and standing at attention bring a sword up to his side.  The Marines in the recruiting poster look serious, ready for battle.

Tonight, Campbell Brown will introduce you to a different side of the Marines.

At Bethesda's National Naval Medical Center, the job falls to the 22-member-strong liaison unit, a group sometimes called the softer side of the Marines, who take care of the every need of wounded Marines, but their families as well. They compare themselves to a concierge service at a five-star hotel, but they are much more than that.  When notified of the arrival of a new patient, they go to work, making plane reservations, picking up family at the airport, even checking them into a hotel so they don't need to stop at the front desk and getting family settled before their loved one arrives at Bethesda. Many in the unit are the first uniformed service member to greet the family and subsequently deal with the raw emotion that a loved one has been hurt. They take it in stride however, learning that compassion is what they need and sometimes just someone to listen. Many family members come to completely rely on them for every need.

It's not just the family they take care of, but also all of the non-medical needs of patients, from organizing the thousands of donated paperbacks and videos to explaining the medical benefits and pay issues of the hospitalized. More importantly, they become a shoulder to lean on for an injured Marine; someone who gets what it's like to be a Marine, far away from unit and friends. 

The unit's commander, Lt. Col. John Worman told me he tells the injured Marines and their families when they arrive that "When you leave here, you will miss us and if you don't miss us then we haven't done our job."

Every Marine and every family member we talked to told us they are touched by this unit's hard work, whether it be something as easy as bringing up a new T-shirt or DVD, or something as difficult as helping them cope with the major changes they or their loved ones are going through.

The injured Marines we met all could have come off that recruiting poster, many with injuries from improvised explosive devices that will take years to recover from, but all the while proud to be one of the few.

Editor's note: Jay wrote this post on June 16, but the story ended up not airing in the broadcast. It was promoted today on the NBC television network, so look for it tonight on "NBC Nightly News."

Gas for my 2000 Ford Explorer costs about $60/week, and it hurts to watch the numbers on the pump go up and up. So imagine if you were a major airline like American and filling up a Boeing 767 for a flight from New York to Los Angeles. It takes 7,500 gallons of fuel and more than $15,000.

With a fleet of 700 aircraft, American will consume nearly 3 billion gallons of jet fuel this year.  With their fuel costs skyrocketing, the airline has instituted a new program called Fuel Smart. It's a company-wide effort to save fuel by making major and minor changes to the way they operate aircraft, which saves incredible amounts of money.

Shutting down one engine when a plane taxis to the gate saves money. For the cost of just one minute of taxi time, you could fill up 20 SUVs. And it saves American $4 million each year.

Correspondent Tom Costello and I went to Dallas to see how American is making these changes and how they are working. We'll share other examples with you tonight on the broadcast. But standing on the ramp at DFW airport and watching jets taxi endlessly by, you can really see how the dollars would add up.

The pump may not be the only place you feel the pain of high gas prices. That's the topic of the story I'm producing tonight with correspondent Tom Costello. The skyrocketing cost of fuel is affecting many of the commercial sectors of our nation's economy, from pizza to flowers to trash pickup. Businesses are feeling the pinch and passing it on to the customer. The number of gallons of gas used by some of these companies is incredible... one company in our story tonight, EDS Waste in Denver, uses between 700-800 gallons of gas A DAY. One limo company's gas bill has climbed from about $6,000/month to almost $19,000.

While many companies are passing on the costs, others we spoke to are trying desperately to hold off and having it cut into their bottom lines. The bottom line for consumers: it's going to be an expensive summer and not just at the gas station.

TALLMANSVILLE, W. Va. - It's obvious here that family was of the utmost importance to the miners who lost their lives. Yesterday I interviewed the family of Terry Helms, who was the fire boss at the Sago mine. Among the poignant details: His daughter, Amber, would talk to her Dad for hours, just talk. He would also drive hours for a 20-minute visit with her while she was away at college. And he wouldn't allow his 25-year-old son, Nick, to become a miner, discouraging him from spending his days underground, away from home, instead encouraging him to follow his dreams and become a golf pro.

Even more touching are the notes the miners left behind. Martin Toler, Jr. telling his family: "It wasn't bad. I just went to sleep. I love you." It seems the miners even considered themselves family. Terry Helms' body reportedly had a note left on it, thought to be written by one of his fellow miners, saying he also died peacefully.

We may never know for sure, but it seems these men, in their last moments when they knew they were going to die, didn't think of themselves. They thought about the legacy they'd leave behind and made an effort to tell their families they'd be OK.

TALLMANSVILLE, W. Va. - The irony of today is that it's the first nice day we've had since we've been here. I drove through fog and rain from Washington on Monday through the West Virginia hills. Since then, the weather has seemed to match the mood. So it's ironic that today is the first sunny and warm day, yet today is  the worst day of this story.

Last night we thought we had ourselves covered. We had a crew watching the families and we had a crew watching the briefings. I got back to the hotel and was going to check my e-mail for the first time in the day. This is one of those areas where even BlackBerries don't work. The next thing I know I get a call from Dateline Field Producer Matt Fields who was on the scene. All I heard was: "My phone's going to die and they're all alive."

I called all the crews and correspondents back in and we all raced back to the mine. We all thought they were alive and that it was a repeat miracle, like what happened at the Quecreek Mine in Somerset Co., Pa. in 2002, which I also covered. We saw how happy people were, jumping up and down, how they were so pleased. You see all those happy pictures and you're relieved for those people, because all you've seen are looks of desperation.

So we're sitting there and all of a sudden the wires start to buzz that one person is alive and 12 are dead. And you sort of know what it feels like for these people. You think it's a great story and your adrenaline is going, and all of a sudden the bottom comes out. You feel like you got punched in the stomach, because all of a sudden you're covering this massive tragedy.

The scene here is as surreal as anything else. We're standing across the street from a coal pile and a coal processing facility. Everywhere you look are satellite trucks. The CBC is here, all the networks, all the locals. Everyone's cables are muddy. It's challenging to make a cell phone call and communications during liveshots are poor at best. It's a challenging story to cover, but while the rescue portion has come to a conclusion, why this happened is far from being known.

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. - Our hotel here, Days Inn, opened less than a month ago. Everything is new, from the bed spreads to the TVs, because the old hotel was destroyed by hurricane Charley in August 2004.

As the rain and wind began to howl, small pieces of debris fell from the hotel, a light cover, a piece of siding, a small sign. The front desk clerk smiled when I handed her the sign. You could tell she was thinking, that's nothing compared to Charley's wrath.

We were on the north side of the storm... a lot of rain and near hurricane-force winds. The one thing that struck me was how quickly the temperature dropped. At 4 a.m. it was 75, at 9 a.m. it felt like it was about 55.

More than a year after hurricane Charley, residents here were in no mood to welcome Wilma. The city still shows its wounds from last year... the telltale blue tarps covering roofs, restaurants still closed and tree trunks dotting many neighborhoods. As we drive around Punta Gorda today you wonder what damage is new and what just hasn't been fixed yet. For the most part, the area seems to have dodged a bullet.

Tonight on the broadcast, correspondent Tom Costello will show you what Wilma was like as it came through this morning and you'll see the damage through the eyes of Sgt. Jim Kirdy of the Punta Gorda Police Department.

For months, high energy costs have been the talk in the newspapers and on television. Everyone from the suppliers to the government to President Bush has warned Americans that keeping warm this winter may be more expensive than ever before. Hurricane Katrina and Rita's devastation of the industry infrastructure added to an already major problem. Today, the Department of Energy put it in terms everyone can understand. If you heat with oil, expect to pay $378 more this winter, propane $325 more and natural gas $350 more.

Tonight, NBC Correspondent Tom Costello will introduce you to a Philadelphia resident named JoAnn Baker. Living with a disability and on a fixed income, she is STILL trying to pay off the hundreds of dollars she owes from last winter's energy bill. Like many others in this country, she will struggle this winter to decide whether to eat, take her medicine or turn the thermostat up to keep warm. You'll also hear from a booming segment of the heating business, the wood stove industry, which has seen business double since last winter as people look for ways to save money.

This is our second story on heating prices in as many weeks. It touches everyone who owns or rents... homes and businesses. Last week, we gave you some tips on how to make sure your heat isn't escaping the house and how to make sure the frigid cold of winter doesn't get in. You can also go to www.energysavers.gov for more helpful hints.