Political Scene

ALASKA

Stevens burial set at Arlington

ANCHORAGE | Former Sen. Ted Stevens will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony with relatives and friends.

In a statement, the family said the decorated World War II pilot and president pro tempore of the Senate will be buried Tuesday afternoon with honors.

The 86-year-old Stevens was one of five people killed Aug. 9 in a plane crash while on a fishing trip near Dillingham in southwestern Alaska.

HUD

Housing touted in New Orleans

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said solid progress has been made in the past 18 months to return families to their homes in New Orleans.

Mr. Donovan said there is still “much ahead of us” to expand housing assistance in the city, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina five years ago.

But Mr. Donovan said in an interview aired Sunday that 40,000 families were in trailers or on emergency housing vouchers when President Obama took office, and thousands were at risk of losing their homes within weeks.

He said that “98 percent of those families are in permanent housing” today. He said four public housing projects are being rebuilt and “hundreds of families have moved back in.” Mr. Donovan spoke from New Orleans on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

SENATE

NRA declines to endorse Reid

Sen. Harry’s Reid’s support for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees has cost him the endorsement of the National Rifle Association in his re-election bid.

The NRA is a force in rural states such as Nevada, where many voters own guns and hunt. The absence of the NRA’s blessing represents a setback that Mr. Reid’s campaign was quick to address Friday by noting that NRA executive Wayne LaPierre once called him a “true champion of the Second Amendment.”

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