Ex-Brazil president who has been in Florida since 30 December is being investigated for attempt to topple country’s government

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing investigation as part of an inquiry into an alleged attempt to topple the country’s government, has filed a request for a six-month visitor visa to stay in the US.

The former leader is understood to have entered the US on an A-1 visa reserved for sitting heads of state, which would expire on Tuesday, 30 days from the end of his presidential term.

Movement to tackle lack of diversity within Brazil’s foreign office coincides with Lula’s return to power

More than a century after Maria José de Castro Rebello Mendes became, in 1918, the first woman to enter Brazil’s diplomatic service, the country’s female diplomats have launched a new push for equal rights and opportunity. Women make up less than 25% of Brazil’s diplomatic corps and just 12% of ambassadors.

“We are blossoming at this moment of democratic government,” said Irene Vida Gala, a senior diplomat who served as ambassador to Ghana and is now the president of the newly created Association of Female Brazilian Diplomats.

Júlio Cesar de Arruda reportedly stopped police detaining suspected rioters who took refuge outside army headquarters

The head of the Brazilian army has been sacked by the country’s new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, after claims the commander tried to shield rightwing rioters from arrest after the 8 January insurrection in Brasília.

Gen Júlio Cesar de Arruda, who only took up the role in late December, was removed from his position on Saturday, nearly two weeks after supporters of the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro brought havoc to Brazil’s capital in what Lula’s administration called a botched coup attempt.

Bolsonaro supporters are also accused of armed criminal association and violent attempt to subvert democratic state of law

The office of Brazil’s prosecutor-general has presented its first charges against some of the thousands of people who authorities say stormed government buildings in an effort to overturn former president Jair Bolsonaro’s loss in the October election.

The prosecutors in the recently formed group to combat antidemocratic acts have also requested that the 39 defendants who allegedly ransacked the Brazilian congress building be imprisoned as a preventive measure, and that 40m reais ($7.7m) of their assets be frozen to help cover damages.

Lula’s government claims it has ‘absolute control’ after storming of capital by Bolsonaro supporters, but failed putsch is not over, say insiders

Sônia Guajajara should have been making history last Tuesday afternoon, being sworn in as the head of Brazil’s first ministry for Indigenous peoples at a ceremony at the presidential palace in Brasília.

Instead, with that building wrecked last Sunday by thousands of far-right extremists, she sat in her office overlooking Brazil’s similarly ransacked congress, reflecting on the stunning attempt to overthrow one of the world’s biggest democracies.