BRAZIL: President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva is recovering in an intensive-care unit after undergoing surgery for an intracranial haemorrhage, the Sirio-Libanes hospital said in a statement today.

The procedure was performed after the president felt headaches doctors believed resulted from a fall at home in October.

The hospital said Lula is “well, under monitoring in an ICU bed” after the bleeding was drained.

FRANCE: Two French Mirage fighter jets flew out of Chad today, signalling the beginning of the withdrawal of its military forces from the former French colony in central Africa that last month broke off its defence co-operation agreement with Paris.

The fighter jets took off after noon from a French base in the capital, N’Djamena to return to a French air force base in Nancy in eastern France, military spokesman Colonel Guillaume Vernet said.

POLAND: Prime Minister Donald Tusk said today that negotiations over the war in neighbouring Ukraine could start “in winter” as his country prepares to take over the rotating presidency of the European Union on January 1.

“Our presidency [in the EU] will be co-responsible for the shape of the political landscape, what will the situation look like probably during the negotiations that, perhaps — there are still question marks here — will begin in the winter of this year,” Mr Tusk told his cabinet.

EGYPT: An apartment building collapsed today in Egypt’s capital, killing at least eight people, authorities said.

The Health Ministry said in a statement that the collapse of the six-storey building in Cairo’s western neighbourhood of Waili also injured three people, who were hospitalised.