ALASKA
Mt. Redoubt volcano spews ash on towns
WILLOW — Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano erupted five times overnight, 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 was falling Monday morning on small communities north of Anchorage. The ash began falling around daybreak and continued into midmorning.
"It's coming down," Rita Jackson, 56, said early Monday morning at a 24-hour grocery store in Willow, about 50 miles north of Anchorage. She slid her fingers across the hood of her car, through a dusting of ash.
Ash from Alaska's volcanos is like a rock fragment with jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. It can injure skin, eyes and breathing passages.
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The young, the elderly and people with respiratory problems are especially susceptible to ash-related health problems. Ash can also cause damage engines in planes, cars and other vehicles.
Alaska Airlines on Monday canceled 19 flights in and out of Anchorage International Airport because of the ash.
NEW JERSEY
Woman found in '94 is finally identified
TRENTON — A mute elderly woman known only as "Jane Doe" since she was found wandering in a New Jersey mall 15 years ago has finally been identified.
Lt. Eduardo Ojeda of the New Jersey Department of Human Services police discovered recently that the woman is Elba Leonor Diaz Soccarras, who turns 75 on March 28.
She has Alzheimer's disease and has been bedridden in a New Jersey psychiatric hospital for years. Her identity, partly obscured because she and her daughter had a falling out, was established thanks to tips from the public and Colombian officials.
Soccarras was found at the Woodbridge Center mall in 1994.
NEW YORK
Letterman weds after courtship of 23 years
David Letterman said he and longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko had a bumpy trip to matrimony last week.
During a taping Monday of CBS' "Late Show," Letterman said he and Lasko married March 19 at the Teton County Courthouse in Choteau, Mont., but only after their truck got stuck on a muddy road.
Letterman and Lasko, whose son, Harry, was born in November 2003, didn't take an immediate honeymoon. The late-night host was back at work in New York on Monday to deliver the news — and a few jokes about the marriage.
"Regina and I began dating in February of 1986, and I said, 'Well, things are going pretty good, let's just see what happens in about 10 years,' " Letterman, who turns 62 next month, said at the taping, according to a transcript.
Ohio
Actor Robin Williams has heart surgery
Robin Williams was recovering at the Cleveland Clinic after heart surgery that his doctors deemed successful, his publicists said Monday.
The 57-year-old actor had an operation to replace an aortic valve on March 13, publicists Mara Buxbaum and Chris Kanarick said. He was expected to make a complete recovery in the next eight weeks.
"His heart is strong and he will have normal heart function in the coming weeks with no limitations on what he'll be able to do," said Dr. A. Marc Gillinov, a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. "A couple of hours after surgery, he was entertaining the medical team and making us all laugh."
Williams was initially treated at University of Miami Hospital before being transferred to Cleveland. He had been in Florida earlier this month when he was forced to cancel the remainder of his one-man comedy show, "Weapons of Self-Destruction," after experiencing shortness of breath.
Lawmaker indicted on assault charges
NEW YORK — A freshman state senator sworn in to office despite allegations he slashed his girlfriend's face with broken glass in a jealous rage has been indicted on domestic assault charges, prosecutors said Monday.
A grand jury in Queens indicted Hiram Monserrate, a Democrat, on three counts of second-degree felony assault and three counts of third-degree misdemeanor assault.
Arraignment is expected later this week. Monserrate faces seven years in prison if convicted on the most serious charges.
Monserrate, who was in Albany on Monday for a legislative session, issued a statement saying he did not commit a crime.
The 41-year-old former police officer was arrested after Karla Giraldo's face was slashed on Dec. 19 at his New York City home.
The gash over her eye required 25 stitches. Both said the incident was an accident.
FLORIDA
Another VA hospital called infection threat
MIAMI — 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 involved only 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.
The VA also said 1,800 veterans treated at an ear, nose and throat clinic in Augusta, Ga., were alerted that they could have been exposed to an infection due to improper disinfection of an instrument.
Boy, 15, suspended over flatulence
LAKELAND — An eighth-grader was suspended from riding the school bus for three days after being accused of passing gas.
The bus driver wrote on a misbehavior form that a 15-year-old teen passing gas on the bus Monday to make the other children laugh, creating a stench so bad that it was difficult to breathe. The bus driver handed the teen the suspension form the next day.
Polk County school officials said there's no rule against flatulence, but there are rules against causing a disturbance on the bus.
The teen said he wasn't the one passing gas.
Whether he did it or not, he might have gotten off easy. A 13-year-old student at a Stuart school was arrested in November after authorities said he broke wind in class.
INDIANA
Money manager told to pay nearly $600K
INDIANAPOLIS — A money manager accused of trying to fake his death in a plane crash took another financial hit when an Indiana judge ordered him to pay nearly $600,000 in restitution and fines.
Under the administrative law judge's order made last week and announced Monday, Marcus Schrenker must pay $304,000 in restitution to bilked investors and $280,000 in state fines for violating state insurance rules.
It comes two months after Judge Doug Webber heard testimony from investors who said they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars through annuity investments handled by Schrenker, 38. Webber revoked Schrenker's Indiana insurance license a day after that hearing.
Before Webber's ruling, Schrenker already faced millions in judgments and potential penalties. Those range from an insurance company's lawsuit in Indiana seeking $1.4 million in commissions to an Alabama judge's order that he pay $12 million in a lawsuit over the sale of a plane.
Schrenker was arrested in a Florida campground on Jan. 13, two days after officials say he put his plane on autopilot and bailed out over Alabama to flee personal and financial problems.
The plane hit the ground about 200 miles away in Florida, where he faces federal charges in the crash near a residential area.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Comedian Colbert wins NASA name vote
WASHINGTON — NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won.
The name "Colbert" beat out NASA's four suggested options in the space agency's effort to have the public help name the addition. The new room will be launched later this year.
NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, "The Colbert Report," to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes.
Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.
NASA reserves the right to choose an appropriate name. Agency spokesman John Yembrick said NASA will decide in April but will give top vote-getters "the most consideration."
