American International Group Inc. said yesterday it would cancel most of its planned events after lawmakers castigated the insurer for hosting a $440,000 function at a resort while benefiting from an $85 billion government bailout.

The cancellations include an event that was scheduled at the Ritz-Carlton in California's Half Moon Bay for next week. The gathering that drew the rebukes was held last month at the St. Regis resort in Monarch Beach, California. About 100 independent insurance agents who sell coverage for New York-based AIG attended, spending $23,000 on spa services, among other things.

AIG, once the world's largest insurer by market value, accepted the government takeover last month after being on the brink of collapse. The company ran short on cash after incurring more than $18 billion in losses tied to the housing slump. On Sept. 16, it agreed to hand the U.S. a 79.9 percent stake in exchange for an $85 billion credit line.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Intelligence Committee is examining allegations by two former U.S. military linguists that the super-secret National Security Agency routinely eavesdropped on the private telephone calls of American military officers, journalists and aid workers.

NSA interceptors purportedly shared some intercepts of highly personal conversations, including "phone sex."

If the allegations are true, they could re-ignite a political firestorm over the administration's post-Sept. 11 eavesdropping operations and its efforts to collect vast quantities of data about Americans' tax, medical and travel records; credit card purchases; e-mails and other information.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Arkansas plans to reverse course and allow unmarried or same-sex couples to take on foster children on a case-by-case basis, even as voters prepare to decide the issue in November, the state Department of Human Services said yesterday.

The change comes as a conservative group campaigns in favor of a November ballot initiative that would ban unmarried couples from adopting or fostering children. The Arkansas Family Council says its measure specifically targets gay couples, though it would affect heterosexual couples, too.

MIAMI -- Two right-wing paramilitary warlords extradited earlier this year with 12 others with great fanfare from Colombia were ordered yesterday to spend decades behind U.S. bars after pleading guilty to roles in a far-reaching cocaine smuggling conspiracy.

The men were leaders of Colombia's right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, commonly known by its Spanish acronym AUC. The AUC has been blamed for hundreds of killings, kidnappings and other crimes considered some of the worst atrocities of Colombia's decades-old civil war.