Brazil’s Bolsonaro says he had partial memory loss after a fall this week

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro looks on as he leaves the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia, Brazil December 12, 2019. (REUTERS)
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Updated 25 December 2019
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Brazil’s Bolsonaro says he had partial memory loss after a fall this week

  • Earlier this month, Bolsonaro said he had been examined for skin cancer

SAO PAULO: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday night that he briefly lost his memory after falling at his presidential residence in Brasilia, the capital, earlier this week.
The president’s office disclosed on Monday that Bolsonaro, 64, had suffered a fall and was taken to a hospital Monday night for a brain scan, which detected no abnormalities. Bolsonaro spent the night in the hospital and was discharged on Tuesday.
“I had partial memory loss. This morning I managed to recover a lot of stuff,” Bolsonaro told the Band TV network Tuesday night. “Now I am fine. I did not know, for instance, what I had done in the previous day.”
Since September 2018, Bolsonaro has undergone four surgeries because of a knife attack he suffered during the election campaign.
Recently, the right-wing president also journalists he potentially had skin cancer, but a biopsy ruled out the disease.  


Australian bushfires raze homes, cut power to tens of thousands

Updated 58 min 1 sec ago
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Australian bushfires raze homes, cut power to tens of thousands

  • PM Anthony Albanese said the nation faced a ‍day of “extreme and dangerous” fire weather, especially in Victoria, where much of the state has been declared a disaster zone

SYDNEY: Thousands of firefighters battled bushfires in Australia’s southeast on Saturday that have razed homes, cut power to thousands of homes and burned swathes of bushland. The blazes have torn through more than 300,000 hectares (741,316 acres) of bushland amid a heatwave in Victoria state since the middle of the week, authorities said on Saturday, and 10 major fires were still burning statewide. In neighboring New South ‌Wales state, several ‌fires close to the Victorian border were ‌burning ⁠at ​emergency level, ‌the highest danger rating, the Rural Fire Service said, as temperatures hit the mid-40s Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit). More than 130 structures, including homes, have been destroyed and around 38,000 homes and businesses were without power due to the fires in Victoria, authorities said. The fires were the worst to hit the state since the Black Summer blazes of 2019-2020 that destroyed an area ⁠the size of Turkiye and killed 33 people. “Where we can fires will be being brought ‌under control,” Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan told ‍reporters, adding thousands of firefighters were ‍in the field.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the nation faced a ‍day of “extreme and dangerous” fire weather, especially in Victoria, where much of the state has been declared a disaster zone.
“My thoughts are with Australians in these regional communities at this very difficult time,” Albanese said in televised remarks from ​Canberra. One of the largest fires, near the town of Longwood, about 112 km (70 miles) north of Melbourne, has burned ⁠130,000 hectares (320,000 acres) of bushland, destroying 30 structures, vineyards and agricultural land, authorities said. Dozens of communities near the fires have been evacuated and many of the state’s parks and campgrounds were closed. A heatwave warning on Saturday was in place for large parts of Victoria, while a fire weather warning was active for large areas of the country including New South Wales, the nation’s weather forecaster said. In New South Wales capital Sydney, the temperature climbed to 42.2 C, more than 17 degrees above the average maximum for January, according to data from the nation’s weather forecaster.
It predicted ‌conditions to ease over the weekend as a southerly change brought milder temperatures to the state.