What happened
Brazil’s Supreme Court has sentenced former president Jair Bolsonaro to 27 years and three months in prison after convicting him of leading a conspiracy to overturn the 2022 election. Four of the five justices ruled that he was guilty of charges tied to efforts to keep him in power, including pressuring military leaders and undermining the electoral system.

Who said what
Justice Cármen Lúcia, casting the decisive third guilty vote, likened the coup attempt to a “virus” threatening democracy. Bolsonaro (pictured above) has dismissed the proceedings as a “witch hunt”. The ruling will “deepen political divisions” in Brazil, said Politico, and will “likely prompt a backlash from the United States government”. Following the court ruling, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his government would respond, but did not specify how.

What next?
Bolsonaro can still appeal, although the wide margin of his conviction means that success is unlikely. A final decision on where he will serve his sentence is expected later this year, with his health issues making house arrest, hospital care or a secure facility the most probable outcomes.

What happened
Ireland will not take part in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel also participates, according to the country’s national broadcaster RTÉ. Ireland’s stance follows similar declarations from Iceland, Spain and Slovenia in recent months.

Who said what
Ireland’s participation in the event “would be unconscionable given the ongoing and appalling loss of lives in Gaza”, said RTÉ.

Eurovision Director Martin Green said he “understood the concerns and deeply held views around the ongoing conflict in the Middle East”. “We are still consulting to gather views on how we manage participation and geopolitical tensions around the Eurovision Song Contest.”

Last year’s Eurovision “was overshadowed by protests over Israel’s participation in the contest while its military conducts an onslaught in the Gaza Strip”, said Politico.

What next?
RTÉ plans to make a final decision on whether it will withdraw once Eurovision’s organiser, the European Broadcasting Union, determines whether Israel can participate.

They are known as the victims of Mexico’s long-running “invisible war”. Since then president Felipe Calderón launched his “war on drugs” in 2006, more than 130,000 people have gone missing.

“In many cases those disappeared have been forcibly recruited into the drug cartels – or murdered for resisting,” said the BBC. But “while drug cartels and organised crime groups are the main perpetrators, security forces are also blamed for deaths and disappearances”.

Cases of people being reported missing or snatched from the street at gunpoint never to be seen again “were once rare in Mexico”, said The Washington Post. This began to change 15 years ago when huge numbers of disappearances “began to flare into global news, with the discovery of mass graves filled with putrefying bodies”.

By 2023 more than 5,600 mass graves had been recorded in Mexico, according to the collective of families and journalists A Dónde van los Desaparecidos. In March this year a cartel training and extermination camp was discovered on a ranch in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, complete with burned human remains and 200 pairs of shoes.

The “official narrative” is that Mexico’s violence is “entirely the fault of drug cartels, period”, said author Belén Fernández on Al Jazeera. “This rationalisation conveniently excises from the equation the Mexican state’s established track record of killing and disappearing – not to mention the lengthy history of collaboration between Mexican police and military personnel and cartel operatives.”

This is perhaps why the authorities have been hesitant to acknowledge the scope and scale of the crisis. “As Mexico’s invisible war rages on, disappearance may have already become normalised,” said Fernández.