Brazil's Bolsonaro recovering well, returns Thursday

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday in a video from his hospital bed that he is ready to go back to work after having a hernia operation and his spokesman said he will reassume the presidency on Thursday as planned.

Vice President Hamilton Mourão took over as interim president before Bolsonaro's surgery on Sunday. His doctors said he was in a stable condition after a five-hour operation to correct a hernia caused by the weakening of abdominal tissues from three previous operations after he was stabbed a year ago during the election campaign.

"Folks, I am just taking Monday off. Tomorrow I am back to work," Bolsonaro said in the video. Spokesman Otavio Rego Barros told reporters Bolsonaro would be back on top of government affairs on Tuesday, but Mourão was running the country through Thursday.

Bolsonaro still plans to travel to New York to open the United Nations General Assembly debate on Sept. 24, Rego Barros said. Brazil is the first state to speak every year.