Ex-President Ford “doing well,” leaves clinic for Calif.
Rochester, Minn. – Former President Ford was discharged from the Mayo Clinic on Monday, nearly two weeks after being admitted for tests and undergoing a pair of heart procedures.
Ford, 93, flew home to Rancho Mirage, Calif., with his wife, Betty, Mayo spokesman Lee Aase said.
Ford received an implantable cardiac pacemaker last week to regulate his heartbeat. Later in the week, he underwent angioplasty with stents in two of his coronary arteries to increase blood flow.
“He’s doing well after having had those procedures in the last week,” Aase said.
Ford’s office issued a statement thanking “the American people for their prayers and countless messages of good wishes.”
Ford spent a few days in Colorado’s Vail Valley Medical Center in July because of shortness of breath. In January, he was hospitalized for 12 days in Rancho Mirage to treat pneumonia.
WASHINGTON
Newsweek: Armitage confessed 3 years ago
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage confessed to the FBI three years ago that he was the official who first tipped columnist Robert Novak about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband’s CIA mission, according to an article in Newsweek.
But Armitage was engaging in “chitchat” when he talked to Novak, not trying to undercut Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the White House rationale for invading Iraq, the article said.
The tip led Novak to write a July 14, 2003, column that outed Plame’s undercover status, leading to a still-active federal leak probe and a perjury indictment of former top vice-presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Armitage wasn’t charged because he didn’t know Plame was covert, the article said.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador
Nation will move embassy to Tel Aviv
El Salvador will move its embassy in Israel from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, saying it had made the decision following a U.N. cease- fire resolution on the conflict in Lebanon.
The decision comes a week after Costa Rica – the only other country with an embassy in Jerusalem – announced it was moving its diplomatic mission to Tel Aviv, which is used by other countries because of Jerusalem’s disputed status.
It was not clear when the embassy move would take place.
Israel has criticized Costa Rica’s decision, saying it could be interpreted as a “surrender to terror,” but there was no immediate reaction to El Salvador’s announcement.
NEW YORK
Second firefighter trapped in store dies
A second firefighter died Monday of injuries suffered when he and others were trapped in the basement of a burning store.
Lt. Howard Carpluk, 43, died a day after the blaze that also killed rookie firefighter Michael Reilly, 25, said Robert Sweeney, assistant fire chief of operations.
“The loss of these two heroic firefighters will stay with all of us for the rest of our careers and the rest of our lives,” he said.
Scores of firefighters were sent to the one-story building in the Bronx on Sunday, and five were trapped in the basement when the ground floor collapsed, authorities said. Two of them remained hospitalized Monday in serious condition.
TOKYO
Firm may have aided Iran nuke program
An investigation into a Japanese manufacturer suspected of exporting sophisticated measuring devices to Libya’s former atomic-weapons program has increasingly focused on whether the company sold similar equipment to Iran, a government official said Monday.
The police and regulators have broadened their investigation of the Mitutoyo Corp. as evidence has emerged that it may have sold equipment to Iran for use in making centrifuges to enrich uranium, said an official in the Trade Ministry.
On Friday, police arrested five Mitutoyo officials, including the president. Police say the equipment was shipped to Libya by a Malaysian firm linked to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who later confessed to selling nuclear technology.
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador
Earth’s oldest person laid to rest at 116
Maria Esther de Capovilla, the oldest person on Earth according to Guinness World Records, was laid to rest Monday in a simple ceremony after dying from pneumonia at the age of 116.
Capovilla died Sunday in a hospital in the coastal city of Guayaquil two days after getting sick, said her granddaughter, Catherine Capovilla. She was interred in a family tomb in a marble-columned mausoleum.
Born on Sept. 14, 1889 – the same year as Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler – Capovilla traced her lineage to Spanish nobility and enjoyed drinking donkey milk in her youth. She was married in 1917 to an Austrian sailor who visited Ecuador and was widowed in 1949.
Robert Young, senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World Records, said Elizabeth Bolden of Memphis, Tenn., is the likely successor as the oldest person. He said she is 116 but born 11 months after Capovilla.
