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.

Former justice minister Anderson Torres was capital’s security chief when far-right rioters stormed government buildings

• Jair Bolsonaro to be investigated as part of inquiry into far-right Brazil riot

One of Jair Bolsonaro’s key allies, the former justice minister Anderson Torres, has been arrested in Brazil’s capital in connection with last week’s alleged attempt to overthrow the country’s new government.

Torres, who was Brasília’s security chief at the time of the attacks, flew back from Florida, where he had purportedly been holidaying, on Saturday morning and was arrested by federal police at the city’s international airport.

Former president shared a video questioning last year’s election result after his supporters stormed Brasília’s democratic institutions

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro will be investigated as part of an inquiry into an alleged attempt to topple the country’s new government, the supreme court has announced.

Thousands of radical followers of the far-right populist marauded through Brazil’s three most important democratic institutions last Sunday, apparently convinced by a tsunami of fake news that last October’s presidential election – which Bolsonaro lost – was rigged.

President vows thorough investigation and says ‘many people were complicit … the truth is the palace was full of Bolsonaristas’

The Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said he suspects hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro among the presidential staff facilitated the entry of insurrectionists who stormed his presidential palace seeking to overthrow Brazil’s government.

Speaking to a group of political journalists in Brasília’s Planalto palace – one of three buildings trashed by the pro-Bolsonaro mob last Sunday – Lula vowed to carry out a “thorough screening” of employees in the wake of the historic attack.

Alexandre Padilha says insurrection by Bolsonaro supporters was well-organized ‘act of terrorism’ aimed at toppling government

The insurrection that shook Brazil’s capital was a well-organised coup attempt that was thwarted thanks to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s swift and firm reaction, one of the president’s top ministers has told the Guardian.

Speaking at the presidential palace on Tuesday, the minister of institutional relations, Alexandre Padilha, said he believed Sunday’s far-right assault on the three branches of Brazil’s government was “an act of terrorism” designed to bring down Lula’s week-old government.

In today’s newsletter: For years Jair Bolsonaro set the anti-democratic tone that fomented Sunday’s attacks. Our Latin America correspondent explains how

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Good morning. Almost exactly two years after the January 6 Capitol attack in the United States, Brazil has seen a far-right coup attempt of its own.

On Sunday, as many as 3,000 extremists stormed the architectural treasures of the presidential palace, the supreme court and the Congress in Brasília. They smashed windows, threw rocks, destroyed works of art and a replica of the constitution, stole documents, beat and bloodied at least one police officer, and lit fires. “This is a historic moment,” one protester said on a livestream. “This is the invasion, no, the occupation, of the National Congress.”

NHS | Strikes by paramedics and nurses will go ahead from this week despite Rishi Sunak’s major U-turn on new pay negotiations. While the government is understood to be considering a one-off payment to health workers, unions were frustrated at ministers for not making a concrete offer in a meeting yesterday.

Environment | A United Nations report has found that the hole in the ozone layer, which was once the most feared environmental threat, is on course to be completely healed across most of the world by 2040. The areas over the north and south pole will be repaired by 2045 over the Arctic and 2066 over the Antarctic.

Conservatives | The MP Andrew Bridgen has been suspended from the House of Commons for five days after being found to have breached lobbying rules. Bridgen failed to overturn a finding that he had approached ministers and officials on behalf of a forestry company that had given him a donation.

Health | More than 100,000 people with type 1 diabetes in England are to be offered an artificial pancreas, which experts believe could become the “holy grail” for managing the disease. A world-first trial on the NHS found it was more effective at managing diabetes than current devices.

Space | A historic space mission that took off from Cornwall has ended in huge disappointment after a rocket carrying the first satellites launched from British soil failed to reach orbit.

Riots, popular uprisings and other forms of mass unrest are different from traditional coups. The police are usually the first line of response to such mass action. And that gives them tremendous power to affect outcomes, for one simple reason: They can decide whether or not to show up.

Army and riot police clear Bolsonaro supporters from Brasília as US, Mexico and Canada say they ‘stand by’ democratic institutions

The far-right storming of Brazil’s supreme court, congress and presidential palace was a “grotesque and failed assault” on its institutions, the country’s ambassador to the UK has said, as troops moved in to break up protest camps set up by supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro.

A day after the would-be insurrectionists attacked all three branches of government in a brazen effort to topple the democratically elected government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Fred Arruda, Brazil’s ambassador in London, said: “What happened in Brasília yesterday was a grotesque and failed assault on our institutions. As President Lula put it, democracy requires people to respect the institutions.”