The News in 2 Minutes

Hastert leaving Congress after this term
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, 65, who served as speaker of the House longer than any other Republican in history, intends to retire next year at the end of his current term, party officials said Tuesday.

A formal announcement was planned for Friday.

Hastert’s planned retirement is likely to set off a lively scramble between the two political parties for a House seat that he has held easily since 1986.

Hastert’s decision has been expected since the GOP lost control of the House last November, costing him his powerful post. He had been speaker, second in the line of presidential succession behind the vice president, for eight years.

His immediate predecessor, Republican Newt Gingrich of Georgia, was dogged by scandal when he stepped down as speaker after two terms, then resigned from Congress a short while later. Before Gingrich, Democratic Rep. Tom Foley of Washington was defeated for re-election in 1994. Foley’s predecessor, Democratic Rep. Jim Wright of Texas, resigned under an ethics cloud in 1989.

Hastert declined to run for minority leader after his party’s defeat in the 2006 elections, taking on a role as elder statesman among Republicans.

He has been a strong supporter of the war in Iraq.

27 Arizona inmates charged in Indiana riot
NEW CASTLE, Ind. — Prisoners enraged over a transfer from Arizona to Indiana pummeled a guard and littered a prison yard with drill bits, socks stuffed with batteries and other improvised weapons during an April riot at New Castle Correctional Facility.

Several threw rocks and sprayed hoses at correction officers. Others ganged up to attack Capt. Ron Deaton as he tried to leave the yard, according to documents filed last month in Henry Circuit Court.

Details of the April 24 riot emerged Tuesday as Henry County Prosecutor Kit Crane brought 28 inmates — all but one from Arizona — into a makeshift prison courtroom to face charges connected to the disturbance.

Eight prisoners and two staff members— Deaton and grievance counselor Barry Holder — were injured in the riot, none seriously.

Suicide bombers kill at least 175 in Iraq
BAGHDAD — Four suicide bombers hit Kurdish Yazidi communities with nearly simultaneous attacks on Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounding 200 others, said Iraqi military and local officials in northwest Iraq.

The death toll was the highest in a concerted attack since Nov. 23, when 215 people were killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City.

The bombs tore through the districts near Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, said Abdul-Rahman al-Shimiri, the top government official in the area, and Iraq army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.

Yazidis are members of an ancient, primarily Kurdish, religious sect that worships an angel figure some that Christians and Muslims believe to be the devil.

Ruling says hospitals can require full payment
PHOENIX — A state appellate court on Tuesday ruled in a case with bottom-line impact for health-care consumers, deciding that all hospital patients aren’t entitled to discounts given to many group insurance plans.

Seven patients and their insurance company, Medical Savings Insurance Co., had appealed a Maricopa County Superior Court judge’s ruling in favor of Phoenix-based Banner Health, a major Arizona hospital company.

The case revolved around the widespread practice in the American health-care industry for hospitals and other providers to give sharp price discounts to group plans that agree to steer patients to those providers.

Banner had rebuffed partial payments offered by Medical Savings on behalf of the patients as reasonable amounts for the care provided. Banner then sued to recover after the patients refused to pay Banner’s full bills for their care.

All the patients or family members had signed admission papers agreeing to pay their hospital bills. Some of those agreements specifically referred to rates which Banner had filed with state regulators.

Experts question mine’s stability
HUNTINGTON, Utah — As frustration mounts over the slow pace of the digging to free six trapped miners, more questions arose Tuesday about whether risky mining methods may have left parts of the coal mine dangerously unstable.

Some mining companies consider the “retreat mining” methods used at Utah’s Crandall Canyon so dangerous, they will leave behind coal rather than risk the safety of their workers.

Video images taken early Tuesday showed miners working to clear a heavily damaged mine shaft. They were only a third of the way to the presumed location of the trapped miners — eight days after a thunderous collapse blew out the walls of mine shafts.

Much of the rescuers’ time is spent shoring up walls and ceilings before a 65-ton machine can resume clawing away at the rubble-filled mine shaft.

Mine co-owner Robert Murray said the retreat mining took place before he took over the mine a year ago. He said no retreat mining was taking place at the time of the collapse, which he insists was triggered by an earthquake. Government seismologists say the mine’s collapse registered as an earthquake.

“There’s no connection between retreat mining and the natural disaster that occurred here,” Murray said Tuesday. “I’ve said that from the beginning, and that’s the way it will eventually come out.”

Around the clock, shifts of 80 miners are digging and helping to remove the rubble.

Above ground, crews drilling another camera hole were about halfway to breaking into a rear section of the mine where they believed the men may have taken refuge in an air pocket. Murray said it could take another day for the drilling to break through.

Netanyahu sweeps race to lead Israel’s Likud
JERUSALEM — Benjamin Netanyahu swept the race to lead Israel’s hardline Likud Party, a party official said, boosting his ambitions to reclaim the country’s premiership.

Netanyahu, crowned in recent polls as the front-runner for Israel’s top job, faced off against far-right West Bank settler Moshe Feiglin, who would bar Arabs from Israel’s parliament and favors their emigration.

A partial tally gave Netanyahu 73 percent of the vote to Feiglin’s 22 percent, party executive director Gad Arieli said. World Likud Party Chairman Danny Danon trailed with 4 percent.

Avandia, Actos to get heart failure warnings
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The diabetes drugs Avandia and Actos will be labeled with severe warnings about a risk of heart failure to some patients, health officials said Tuesday.

The makers of the drugs, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., have agreed to add the “black-box” warnings, the Food and Drug Administration said.

The warnings, the most severe that prescription drugs can bear, stress the medicines may cause or worsen heart failure and that patients should be closely monitored.

The warnings also apply to combination drugs that include the active ingredients in Avandia, made by Glaxo, or Takeda’s Actos. The drugs help patients with Type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar levels.