Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro undergoes new surgery for bowel obstruction

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Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro undergoes new surgery for bowel obstruction

2025-04-14 09:03 Last Updated At：09:12

SAO PAULO (AP) — Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro underwent a new surgery for a bowel obstruction and doctors in Brasilia said the procedure ended late Sunday after more than 12 hours.

The conservative leader has been hospitalized since Friday due to problems related to long-term effects of being stabbed in the abdomen in September 2018. Doctors at the DF Star Hospital said new imaging exams revealed the need for surgery to remove intestinal adhesions and reconstruct the abdominal wall.

There were no complications during the procedure, and Bolsonaro is now recovering in intensive care in stable condition, they said in a statement.

Bolsonaro has been in and out of hospitals since the attack at a campaign event before Brazil’s 2018 presidential election. He underwent several surgeries during his presidency from 2019-2022.

Bolsonaro was admitted Friday to a hospital in Santa Cruz, a small city in Rio Grande do Norte, and later transferred to a hospital in the state’s capital, Natal. On Saturday, his family requested his transfer to Brasilia, doctors said.

Bolsonaro was set to start a trip across the Northeastern region to promote his party’s right-wing agenda, eyeing next year’s presidential election, though he himself is barred from running. The region traditionally has been a political bastion of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Jury begins deliberating in Lori Vallow Daybell's trial on charge she conspired to kill her husband

2025-04-22 06:37 Last Updated At：06:42

PHOENIX (AP) — Jurors began deliberating Monday afternoon in the Arizona trial of Lori Vallow Daybell, the Idaho woman with doomsday religious beliefs accused of conspiring to murder her estranged husband in suburban Phoenix.

Throughout the trial that began two weeks ago, the jury heard two vastly different versions of Charles Vallow's death at her home in 2019.

Prosecutors said that Vallow Daybell and her brother, Alex Cox, had planned to kill Vallow so she could collect money from his life insurance policy and marry her then-boyfriend, Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world.

“What we see is a very planned out, premeditated murder,” prosecutor Treena Kay told the jury Monday in her closing argument.

Vallow Daybell isn’t a lawyer but has chosen to defend herself. She didn’t call any witnesses or put on any evidence in her defense, but said in her opening statement and again Monday in her closing argument that her estranged husband's death wasn't a crime.

“This was a tragedy," she said Monday. "Don't let them turn my family tragedy into a crime.”

Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she would face a life sentence without the possibility of release until serving at least 25 years.

Cox, who said he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Vallow, died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs. Cox’s account was later called into question.

Vallow Daybell said in her opening statement that Vallow chased her with a bat during the encounter and Alex shot Vallow in self-defense after she left the house.

After the shooting, Cox waited 47 minutes before calling 911 “to stage the scene" and leave a bat near Vallow's head, Kay said.

The jury on Monday also listened to a recorded conversation between Vallow Daybell and the life insurance company. Vallow Daybell believed she was the beneficiary of her estranged husband's $1 million policy, Kay said.

In the recording, she is heard saying that Vallow had been shot and that “it was an accident.”

As Kay addressed the jury, Vallow Daybell kept glancing at the jurors.

She has already been convicted in Idaho of killing her two youngest children and conspiring to murder a romantic rival, for which she was sentenced to life in prison.

Last week at the Arizona trial, Adam Cox, another brother of Vallow Daybell, testified on behalf of the prosecution, telling jurors that he had no doubt his siblings were behind Vallow's death.

Adam Cox said Vallow’s killing occurred just before he and Vallow were planning an intervention to bring Vallow Daybell back into the mainstream of their shared faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He testified that before Vallow’s death, his sister had told people her husband was no longer living and that a zombie was living inside his body.

Four months before he died, Charles Vallow filed for divorce from Vallow Daybell, saying she had become infatuated with near-death experiences and had claimed to have lived numerous lives on other planets. He alleged she threatened to ruin him financially and kill him. He sought a voluntary mental health evaluation of his wife.

The trial over Vallow’s death marks the first of two criminal trials in Arizona for Vallow Daybell. She’s scheduled to go on trial again in early June on a charge of conspiring to murder Brandon Boudreaux, the ex-husband of Vallow Daybell’s niece, Melani Pawlowski.