New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary has been transferred to a general ward in hospital in Christchurch after being admitted to an intensive care unit earlier on Wednesday with a lung infection, New Zealand radio reported.

It said Sir Edmund's family had requested privacy.

No other details are available at this stage.

The radio said he had been providing commentaries and lectures aboard a cruise ship visiting Antarctica which docked on Wednesday morning.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
 

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