Illness lands Ford back in hospital

Rancho Mirage, Calif. Former President Ford was undergoing treatment for pneumonia Monday at the same facility where he was briefly hospitalized a month ago, his chief of staff said. He was said to be doing well.

Ford, 92, was admitted Saturday to Eisenhower Medical Center near his home in Rancho Mirage in Southern California, Penny Circle said.

“Based on his age, it is prudent for his initial course of treatment – IV antibiotics – to be done at the hospital,” Circle said.

Ford was expected to be released from the hospital Wednesday or Thursday, she said.

“He’s doing very well,” she said.

Tests confirm girl died from bird flu

Ankara, Turkey A 12-year-old girl who was hastily buried by torchlight was infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, officials said Monday, the fourth Turkish child to die of the disease and the country’s 20th human case.

Experts were awaiting the results of tests on three children hospitalized with symptoms in the western city of Istanbul. If it is established that the virus has gained a foothold there, it would bring the illness to the doorstep of Europe.

The latest fatality, Fatma Ozcan, died Sunday in the eastern city of Van but initially had tested negative for H5N1. The Health Ministry ordered new tests after her 5-year-old brother, Muhammet, tested positive, and officials said those confirmed she was infected. Her brother was being treated for fever and a lung infection, officials said.

Death row inmate’s age appeal denied

San Francisco The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from a 76-year-old convicted killer who argued that he was too old and feeble to be executed.

The ruling cleared the way for Clarence Ray Allen – legally blind, nearly deaf and in a wheelchair – to be executed by injection early today for a triple murder he ordered from behind bars to silence witnesses to another killing.

He raised two claims never before endorsed by the high court: that executing a frail old man would violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and that the 23 years he spent on death row were unconstitutionally cruel as well.

The high court rejected his requests for a stay of execution, about 10 hours before he was to be put to death.

Austria may have to give up Klimt canvases

Vienna, Austria It was a seven-year legal struggle with dazzling stakes – five precious paintings by Austrian icon Gustav Klimt that a Los Angeles woman says were stolen from her Jewish family by the Nazis.

Now, a court ruling made public on Monday will likely resolve the high-profile case against Austria’s government in her favor.

The Austrian arbitration court determined the country is legally obligated to give the paintings to Maria Altmann, one of the heirs of the family that owned them before the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, the Austria Press Agency reported.

Though the court’s ruling is nonbinding, both parties have previously said they will abide by it, and Austria’s government is expected to give up the works of art that have been displayed for decades in Vienna’s ornate Belvedere castle.

The pictures have been estimated to be worth at least $150 million.

But for lovers of Klimt, at least one of the disputed paintings – the oil and gold-encrusted portrait “Adele Bloch-Bauer I” – is priceless.