The week at a glance ... United States

Dillingham, Alaska

Stevens dies in crash: Former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who served in Congress longer than any other Republican, died this week after a single-engine plane carrying him and eight others slammed into a remote mountainside in southwestern Alaska. Former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe, his 13-year-old son, Kevin, and two other passengers survived. Rescuers found the plane, which had been flying in low visibility on its way to a fishing camp, about 15 minutes from the Dillingham airfield where it had taken off. Stevens, 86, served in the Senate for 40 years, rising to the chairmanship of the powerful Appropriations Committee. He lost his seat in 2008 following a conviction on corruption charges, which was later overturned. Stevens survived a 1978 plane crash that killed his wife, Ann.

Gulf of Mexico

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Relief well nearly done: With a tropical storm brewing in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, BP this week suspended work on a nearly completed relief well expected to permanently seal its runaway Macondo well. The relief well, which BP expects to be completed early next week, will intercept the well 12,000 feet beneath the sea floor. According to BP, oil has stopped flowing from the well after a successful “static kill” cemented the upper well shut last week. The Justice Department, meanwhile, announced that it had agreed with BP on the details of a previously announced $20 billion fund to compensate Gulf Coast residents and businesses for damages from the spill. BP has so far deposited $3 billion to the fund.

New York City

Anti-mosque ads: The Metropolitan Transit Authority this week agreed to accept ads opposing a controversial Muslim community center planned for a site two blocks north of Ground Zero. The ads, which will be posted on the sides of 26 city buses, reproduce a photo of the second plane flying into the World Trade Center on 9/11, and juxtapose that image with a rendition of the proposed Cordoba Center. The ad text reads: “Why There?” The $8,000 ad buy was paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a conservative New Hampshire–based group. A recent poll found that 53 percent of New Yorkers oppose building the Cordoba Center at the site.

New York City

Take this job and … : A Jet Blue flight attendant became an instant cultural hero after he unleashed a profanity-laced tirade aboard his just-landed flight, and then deployed the plane’s emergency chute to slide to the tarmac at New York’s Kennedy airport, pausing only to grab two beers from the beverage cart. Steven Slater, 38, was later arrested and arraigned on charges including reckless endangerment. He said he lost his temper after an unruly passenger, ignoring his order to sit, pulled a bag from an overhead bin, striking Slater in the head. After cursing the passenger over the plane’s intercom, Slater added, “It’s been a good 20 years. I’ve had it.” Slater’s actions inspired more than 50,000 “friends” to join Facebook pages supporting him. “The culture climate is right to make this guy a folk hero,” says social critic Adam Hanft. “The escape chute is so symbolic.”

Washington, D.C.

State aid passes: President Obama this week signed a law providing $26 billion to cash-strapped states to help them avoid layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and other public-sector workers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled legislators from their August break to approve the bill after Senate Democrats had passed it, over Republican opposition. Supporters said it would keep tens of thousands of government employees and emergency workers on the job. Republicans criticized the measure, a potential issue in this fall’s campaigns, for increasing the federal debt.

Cambridge, Mass.

Army leaker’s troubled life: Bradley Manning—the U.S. Army private accused of passing hundreds of thousands of classified documents on Afghanistan to WikiLeaks, the whistle-blower website—had chafed under Army discipline and struggled to conceal his homosexuality, according to a report this week in The New York Times. Manning, 22, is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Va., under suicide watch. He had a troubled childhood, friends told the Times, shuttling between his divorced parents in Oklahoma and Wales. In the Army he complained of wasting his brainpower fetching coffee for officers. As investigators closed in on him, Manning wrote in an e-mail that he wouldn’t mind spending his life in prison except for “having pictures of me plastered all over the world press.”