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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

AIG execs agree to return millions

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Monday that 15 employees who received some of the largest bonuses from American International Group Inc. have agreed to return the more than $30 million worth of payments in full.

In total, AIG employees have agreed to return about $50 million of the $165 million in bonuses awarded earlier this month by the troubled insurer, Cuomo’s office said.

Cuomo said he still hopes that more AIG employees will return their bonuses. At most, Cuomo said, his office could hope to recoup $80 million of the bonuses – roughly the amount paid out to American employees.

AIG has come under heavy criticism because the bonuses were given to employees after the company received $170 billion in government bailout money.

WILLOW, Alaska

Mount Redoubt erupts six times

Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano erupted six times, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles into the air in the volcano’s first emissions in nearly 20 years.

Residents in the state’s largest city were spared from falling ash, though fine gray dust fell Monday morning on small communities north of Anchorage.

Alaska Airlines on Monday canceled 19 flights because of the ash. In-state carrier Era Aviation canceled four, and Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage kept 60 planes, including fighter jets, cargo aircraft and a 747 commercial plane, in shelters.

The first eruption, in a sparsely populated area across Cook Inlet from the Kenai Peninsula, occurred at 10:38 p.m. Sunday. The sixth happened at 7:41 p.m. Monday, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The wind took the ash cloud away from Anchorage, toward Willow and Talkeetna, near Mount McKinley, North America’s largest mountain.

The 10,200-foot Redoubt Volcano, roughly 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, last erupted during a four-month period from 1989-’90.

MIAMI

VA colonoscopies were unsterile

Officials say more than 3,000 patients at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Miami had colonoscopies with equipment that wasn’t properly sterilized.

They’ve been told they should be tested for HIV and other diseases.

The VA insists the risk of infection is minimal and only involved tubing on equipment, not any device that actually touched a patient. But it’s the second recent announcement of errors during colonoscopies at VA facilities.

Last month, more than 6,000 patients at a clinic in Tennessee were told they may have been exposed to infectious body fluids during colonoscopies.

From wire reports