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      Tuesday briefing: Why is the US suddenly spying so many UFOs?

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      Tuesday briefing: Why is the US suddenly spying so many UFOs?In today’s newsletter: The use of surveillance balloons has gone largely under the radar until several floating orbs were shot down in North America. But China’s not the only country full of hot air – a look at this mysterious twist in international espionage

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      Good morning. UFOs are being shot down over North America, and one of them is octagonal. OK, that’s a slightly breathless account of events since a Chinese balloon was sighted over Montana 10 days ago, and aliens probably aren’t involved – but the full story is almost as interesting.After that first balloon was brought down and US secretary of state Anthony Blinken postponed a trip to Beijing in response, three other mysterious objects have been taken out in US and Canadian airspace in the last few days – the last of them an “octagonal structure” with strings attached to it. The US views them as potential surveillance tools.China says the first one was a weather balloon, and in any case claims the US does the same thing itself. The US hotly denies it. UK defence secretary Ben Wallace says the UK will conduct a security review of its own airspace in response. Now, as debris from the first balloon is recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, a diplomatic spat that started with literal hot air is floating into the stratosphere.What on earth is going on here? Are balloons seriously part of the cutting edge of international espionage? And what exactly was that octagon? For today’s newsletter, Dr David Jordan, co-director of the Freeman Air and Space Institute at King’s College London and a director of the RAF Centre for Air and Space Power Studies, helps us towards some answers. The truth is out there, and after the headlines.Five big stories
      Policing | Police missed clear chances to identify Wayne Couzens as a danger to women before he murdered Sarah Everard, it emerged as he pleaded guilty to three offences of indecent exposure on Monday. Witnesses recorded either full or partial registration details of vehicles Couzens used, but the cases were not linked to the then-Metropolitan police officer.
      Turkey-Syria earthquake | Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a Syrian rebel leader with a $10m US government bounty on his head, has made an urgent appeal for international aid to Idlib, a province in the north-west under opposition control. Meanwhile, Syrian regime leader Bashar al-Assad has agreed to open two border crossing points with Turkey to allow more emergency aid to the regoin.
      UK news | The family of Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old from Warrington who was stabbed to death on Saturday, said her death “has left a massive hole in our family”. They described Brianna, who was transgender, as “strong, fearless and one-of-a-kind”, and thanked the public for their support.
      Israel | Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Jerusalem to protest against legislation introduced by the country’s hard-right government aimed at overhauling the judicial system. The changes, which give politicians greater control over the supreme court, could help prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoid conviction in his corruption trial, in which he denies all charges.
      Fan safety | Uefa bears “primary responsibility” for the catastrophic failures that turned last season’s Champions League final into a horrific experience for thousands of supporters, the organisation’s own review has concluded. The report found no evidence for claims that Liverpool fans were at fault.
      In depth: What’s behind the stratospheric attempts to protect US and Canadian airspace?Shortly after he left work on 1 February, Chase Doak spotted a mysterious white orb floating far above him. He decided to film it. “I am sitting in my driveway here in Billings, Montana … and this thing is up in the sky,” he said, in a video that went viral. “And I have no idea what it is.”Three days later, after identifying the orb as a Chinese surveillance balloon, the US shot it down. A week after that, last Friday, the US shot down another flying object off the coast of Alaska. On Saturday, a US jet acting on US and Canadian orders shot down another over Canada’s Yukon territory. On Sunday, that aforementioned octagonal thing was shot down over Lake Huron on the US-Canada border. (Leyland Cecco reports on local residents’ utter bafflement.) And overnight, the US military said it had recovered “significant debris” (pictured above) from the first incident.Dr David Jordan, an expert in air power and defence, has not previously been asked to give an interview about balloons. “The military use of balloons hasn’t gained much attention recently,” he said. “But it’s fair to say, no pun intended, that it probably goes on under the radar.”Why is the US suddenly spotting so many UFOs and balloons?While it’s quite exciting to imagine a sudden abundance of mysterious objects prowling North American skies, part of the explanation is comically prosaic: it looks like the US has just turned up the radar a bit.Melissa Dalton, the US assistant secretary of defence, said on Sunday: “We have been more closely scrutinising our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects.”That doesn’t really clear up whether this is a new problem or something ongoing that nobody’s been monitoring, though. “It might be a bit of both,” Jordan said. “It’s entirely understandable they haven’t been looking for them because you pick up so much other stuff like hobby drones, weather balloons – you get to a stage where it’s a bit, ‘Is it a bird, is it a plane?’ (Here’s a fascinating piece by Jonathan Yerushalmy explaining the problem of ‘sky trash’.)“But if you start to think – hang on, are we in a situation where a potential adversary is using these craft to conduct surveillance based on knowing it’s written off as clutter, they will want to go back and check. If it turns out it’s been going for a while, they will leave the filters turned off.”Why might they be useful?Balloons are useful tools for gathering intelligence, in part because they can stay in one place more easily than a satellite. “They help you maintain a fairly persistent surveillance capability,” Jordan said. “And you can launch them relatively covertly. A satellite launch is going to be detected – there’s not much to stop you letting a balloon off.”While satellites will remain the dominant means of collecting intelligence on what’s going on on foreign soil, they have downsides. “The Chinese have used dazzling lasers to block them,” Jordan said. “And the Americans know when satellites are passing over sensitive locations – so you get a window when you’ll be out of sight.”On the other hand, as James Lewis of the US thinktank the Center for Strategic and International Studies pointed out in this global overview of the use of the “poor man’s satellite”, balloons have issues of their own. “They go where the winds take them,” he said. “I’m surprised the Chinese would resort to it … Why not just send a guy in a campervan to drive around?”That might suggest a motive beyond pure intelligence. “It may be they’re sending a message – saying look, your vaunted air differences can’t stop us flying things over your territory,” Jordan said. “If it’s that sort of cunning wheeze, it has a limited lifespan, but it might still have been good while it lasted.”Is China the only country doing this?It’s worth noting that only the first object has been definitively attributed to China. On Monday, Beijing accused the US of flying its own balloons over Chinese airspace more than 10 times since the beginning of last year. While the US flatly denies that claim – and it seems surprising that it would only come up now – it is certainly true that China is not alone in seeing potential in their use.The US has significantly increased its investment in balloon projects: it went from spending $3.8m over the last two years to more than $27m in 2023, Politico reported – a marginal sum against the vast defence budget, but still a big change.The UK is also developing its own programme. The Ministry of Defence’s 2021 tender for a £100m contract, Project Aether, said the UK was seeking to strengthen its capacity for “Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance using Stratospheric Uncrewed Air Systems.”Even so, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the Chinese claim of US operations in its airspace are true. “My gut feeling is that it’s unlikely,” said Jordan. “You can pick up an awful lot of information from international airspace.”What was that octagon, then?There have been conflicting views from US officials over whether the objects sighted over Yukon and Alaska can be categorised as balloons, with little detail beyond the admirably specific line that they are about the size of “a Volkswagen Beetle”. None of that explains the “octagonal structure” shot down over Lake Huron in Michigan on Saturday.Part of the giddy fascination prompted by that incident was the result of a response from General Glen VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad), to a question about aliens: “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.”Yikes! Other defence officials hastened to add that, er, there was no evidence of aliens. So WHAT WAS THE OCTAGON?Part of the mystery is the result of the fact that the only sightings were from fighter jets travelling past at hundreds of miles an hour, the White House noted yesterday. Jordan doesn’t know for sure, but he has a fun speculation, drawing on the example of the Coléoptère, an ill-fated French experiment in wingless flight from the 1950s: while no propulsion system was detected, it’s not impossible this was a high-end drone.“It would be very unconventional,” he said. “ but even without wings an octagon could have an aerodynamically viable system with an engine piloted remotely – that would be sophisticated, but not revolutionary.” Again: probably not aliens, though.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIs North American airspace really what’s important here?Probably not. While the subject has come to the fore because of what started in Montana, balloons may be a more pressing issue in Taiwan, as part of preparation for a possible future Chinese invasion.On Sunday, the FT reported (£) that dozens of Chinese military balloons had been observed over Taiwan in recent years, with the most recent just a few weeks ago.Such operations are far more militarily relevant, Jordan said. “They want to fatigue Taiwan’s response – but they don’t want to add fatigue to their own. If the Taiwanese feel they have to intercept it, you probe their defences, you inflict attrition, you work out their response times and their tactics and procedures. So that is a more significant development.”What else we’ve been reading
      Ruth Michaelson and Lorenzo Tondo have a devastating report from north-west Syria, where the earthquake “has compounded layers upon layers of humanitarian crisis in Idlib”. They speak to Mohammed Hadi (above), whose wife died along with two of their five children after she ran back inside their home to try to save them. Archie
      Jedidajah Otte spoke to the people who have gone part-time, after realising that they are better off if they cut down their working hours, and asks what the implications are for a shrinking UK economy. Nimo
      Stuart Heritage compiles 27 great tricks from professional chefs to make your own dinners seem a little more restauranty. Why has nobody told me to put a teabag in my curry until now?? Archie
      Interweaved with the story of her courtship with her husband, Andee Tagle’s piece in the Atlantic (£) explores the enduring magic of mixtapes. “The gift of music curation is powerful, a love language to be wielded with care,” writes Tagle. Nimo
      After scenes of violent disorder outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley on Saturday, Diane Taylor writes about the problem of inflammatory rhetoric coming from the government itself: “The government needs to extinguish its anti-asylum-seeker rhetoric before the situation becomes too out of control to be reined in.” Archie
      SportFootball | Czech Republic international Jakub Jankto came out as gay in a social media video, becoming the most prominent current male footballer to come out publicly. Jankto (above) said he wanted to “live my life in freedom without fears, without prejudice, without violence, but with love,” adding: “I am homosexual, and I no longer want to hide myself.”Cricket | England trounced Ireland at the T20 Women’s World Cup, bowling their opponents out for 105 before reaching their target for the loss of six wickets. Meanwhile, seven players picked up contracts in the inaugural Women’s Premier League in India, including a £320,000 deal for Nat Sciver-Brunt, likely making her the best-paid female team athlete in the UK this year.Football | Liverpool triumphed in the Merseyside derby, beating Everton 2-0 thanks to goals from Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo. For Liverpool, writes Jonathan Liew, “the hopeful reading is that this comfortable win against their favourite opponents can restore a little of the old swagger”.The front pagesThe Guardian leads with “Police missed chances to arrest Couzens as sex offender suspect”. The Metro carries tributes to stabbing victim Brianna Ghey: “Strong, fearless, one of a kind”. The i has “Hunt urged to boost defence spending – or risk failing to deter Putin”, while the Daily Mail says “Rishi: RAF are ready to shoot down spy balloons”. More surveillance worries in the Daily Telegraph: “Police use of Chinese drones ‘risks UK security’”.The Times has “Exposed, the secret plot to sink tougher sewage rules” while the Daily Express warns “Millions face maximum council tax hikes”. “Cost of living it up” – the Sun is angry on our behalf that an energy company sent 100 “reps” on a Maldives jaunt. The lead story in the Daily Mirror is “M25 road rage killer claims: I’m not a threat to victim’s lover”. Top story in the Financial Times today is “Overseas bets on Vodafone mount as Liberty Global takes £1.2bn stake”.Today in FocusWhy anger is growing in Turkey a week after catastrophic earthquakesIt’s been an agonising time for survivors in Syria and Turkey – especially those whose relatives and friends are still trapped under rubbleCartoon of the day | Martin RowsonThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badSuzy Morrison had been working since she was 15, but money always disappeared quickly: “I couldn’t keep hold of it,” she says. “I never learned how to save money.” Morrison developed addictions to alcohol and other substances, holding down a job and raising two children while also funding her dependency by selling drugs. In her late 30s, though, Morrison joined a 12-step recovery programme. But while her life transformed in many ways, her dysfunctional relationship with money did not change. So in 2012, after a lifetime in debt, she joined Debtors Anonymous when she was 61. Ten years later, she is debt-free and works as a counsellor, giving Addiction 101 workshops and webinars. Her life could not look more different. Morrison says she is more self-assured than ever. “I’m at ease in my own skin,” she says. “There’s none of that fraud or impostor thing. Becoming easy in my skin feels like a radical act.”Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Also try out the Guardian’s new daily word game, Wordiply. Until tomorrow.
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      TopicsUS newsFirst EditionSurveillanceChinaAsia PacificUS militaryUS politicsCanadanewslettersReuse this content More

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      Schumer says Chinese ‘humiliated’ after three flying objects shot down

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      Schumer says Chinese ‘humiliated’ after three flying objects shot down‘Chinese were caught lying’,’ says Senate majority leader as US and Canadian military scramble to recover pieces US and Canadian military are continuing to search by sea and land amid hostile weather conditions in a scramble to recover portions of three flying objects shot down over North American airspace in the past week.The Democratic majority leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that he had been briefed by the White House and that officials were now convinced that all three of the flying objects brought down by air-to-air missiles this week were balloons. He put the finger of blame firmly on China.“The Chinese were humiliated – I think the Chinese were caught lying,” he said. “It’s a real setback for them.”Hours later a spokesperson for the White House national security council tried to tamp down some of Schumer’s rhetoric, saying it was too early to characterise the two latest flying objects shot down over Alaska and Canada. Definitive answers would have to wait for the debris to be recovered, the official said.Schumer said that US military and intelligence agencies were “focused like a laser” on gathering information on the flying objects and then analysing what steps needed to be taken to protect American interests in future. He called it “wild” that the US government had no idea about the balloon spying program until just “a few months ago”.US and Canadian personnel are now scrambling to retrieve elements of the balloons from all three crash sites. In the most recent case, an unidentified flying object was taken down within Canadian airspace on Saturday by F-22 fighter planes with the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad.Canadian military on Sunday were attempting to reach pieces of the vessel in a remote, rugged area of Yukon. The object, described as cylindrical, had been flying at 40,000ft in Canadian territory and was considered a risk to civilian air traffic.Searches by US military are also continuing in difficult circumstances off the coasts of South Carolina and Alaska in the wake of the two previous interceptions. Some debris from the first balloon to be destroyed, the largest of the three objects, was shot down on 4 February about six miles off the South Carolina coast.Underwater survey and recovery teams have already retrieved pieces from the ocean floor 50ft down. The fragments are now being taken to military laboratories for analysis.US officials have told reporters that stormy seas are slowing the mission. The Chinese government has admitted that this balloon was its own, insisting though that it was used only for weather research.The Pentagon has disputed the characterization, saying that early indications suggest that the balloon was carrying powerful equipment that could intercept communications. The balloon, flying at 60,000ft, was tracked by US military for several days as it traversed the national airspace, having initially been spotted off the coast of Alaska on 28 January.The air force decided to wait until it was over the Atlantic before shooting it down out of concern for civilians on the ground, the Pentagon said.Schumer defended that decision on Sunday against mounting criticism from Republicans who have castigated the Joe Biden White House for failing to act immediately. By following the balloon across the country, the US had gained “enormous intelligence” on what the Chinese were doing, he said.Schumer predicted that the entire object would be pieced back together in coming days. “That’s a huge coup for the United States,” he told ABC’s This Week.A third search is being carried out in treacherous conditions off the coast of Alaska near Prudhoe Bay, a major oil drilling community. A flying object described by US officials as being roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle car was shot down by F-22 fighter jets using a Sidewinder air-to-air missle on Friday afternoon.Bits of the vessel have landed in frozen sea in an area of snow and ice which is very hard to navigate amid sub-zero temperatures. Retrieval teams are using helicopters and HC-130 search-and-rescue planes because naval boats are unable to reach the location.The confluence of three downed flying objects in a week has raised tension and jangled nerves on both sides of the US and Canadian border. As a sign of the jitters, late on Saturday night, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) closed parts of Montana’s airspace to air traffic after a “radar anomaly” was reported.Norad fighter jets were sent to scour the skies but reportedly found nothing. However, on Sunday, a Montana congressional representative, Matt Rosendale, tweeted slightly different information, saying military officials had advised him that they were confident an object was there and that it was not an anomaly.Additionally, on Sunday, the FAA similarly restricted civilian air traffic over Lake Michigan as there were local reports of military jets in the area but lifted them after a brief time. The FAA didn’t immediately say why it put the restrictions in place.The trio of flying objects has also generated political stresses internationally and domestically. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, postponed the first visit to Beijing by a senior American diplomat since 2018 in response to the high-altitude intrusion of the Chinese balloon.US officials have told news outlets that they have tracked the balloon program to a number of locations inside China.On the Chinese end of the billowing dispute, local news outlets cited by Bloomberg News reported on Sunday that China’s government was preparing to bring down an unidentified flying object said to have been spotted over the port of Qingdao. Fishermen in the surrounding area had been told to be alert, according to the reports.At home, the US congress has also seen rising tension between the new Republican leadership of the House and the Biden administration over the handling of the spy objects. Republicans were critical of the Pentagon’s decision to allow the Chinese balloon to fly across the heartlands of America before bringing it down, though they have been less forthright about explaining how it was that at least three suspected Chinese spying vessels entered US airspace under Donald Trump’s previous presidential administration apparently undetected.The Republican chair of the House intelligence committee, Mike Turner, on Sunday called on the Biden administration to be aggressive in its stance on the flying objects. “I would prefer them to be trigger happy than to be permissive,” he told CNN’s State of the Union.“This administration now needs to declare that it will defend its airspace.”Turner said that the three aerial objects in short succession exposed the gaps in US defenses. “What’s become clear in the public discussion is that we don’t really have adequate radar systems, we certainly don’t have an integrated missile defense system,” he said.TopicsUS militaryJoe BidenChinaUS politicsCanadaAlaskaEspionagenewsReuse this content More

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      Tucker Carlson calls Boris Johnson a ‘coward’ after ex-British PM scorns GOP for being ‘scared’ of Fox host

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      Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Fox News host Tucker Carlson lashed out at former British prime minister Boris Johnson and called him a “coward” for not coming on his show. On Thursday, Carlson said on his […] More

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      George Santos denies reports that he competed as drag queen in Brazil

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      George Santos denies reports that he competed as drag queen in BrazilNew York Republican under pressure over fabrications about his career, past and alleged criminal behaviour George Santos on Thursday tweeted an angry denial that he competed as a drag queen in Brazilian beauty pageants 15 years ago, claims made by acquaintances that have highlighted the contrast between the Republican congressman’s past actions and now staunchly conservative views.Republicans defend George Santos as report details alleged sick dog fraudRead moreThe New Yorker, who says he is gay, dismissed the story as an “obsession” by the media, which he insisted, without irony, “continues to make outrageous claims about my life”.Santos is facing calls from Democrats and his fellow New York Republicans to step down over fabrications about his career and history and amid reports of investigations at local, state and federal level in the US and in Brazil over the use of a stolen checkbook.In another contradiction exposed on Wednesday by a New York Times analysis of immigration records, Santos’s insistence that his mother was in the World Trade Center during the 9/11 terrorist attacks was found to be false.Santos has admitted “embellishing” his résumé but otherwise denied wrongdoing and said he will not resign.The claim that Santos was a drag performer came from a 58-year-old Brazilian who uses the drag name Eula Rochard, Reuters reported.Rochard said she befriended Santos when he was cross-dressing in 2005 at the first Pride parade in Niterói, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Three years later, Santos competed in a drag beauty pageant in Rio, she added.Another person from Niterói who knew Santos, but asked not to be named, said he participated in drag queen beauty pageants under the name Kitara Ravache, and aspired to be Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro.Santos is now a hardline conservative on numerous social issues, especially those targeting non-binary communities. Republicans have taken aim at drag shows and performers in several states, claiming they are harmful to children.In Texas, one proposal would brand venues that host such shows as “sexually oriented” businesses.Santos, the first out gay Republican to win a House seat in Congress as a non-incumbent, has supported Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, which marginalizes the LGBTQ+ community and prohibits discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms.Responding in October to criticism of his support for the Florida bill, Santos told USA Today: “I am openly gay, have never had an issue with my sexual identity in the past decade, and I can tell you and assure you, I will always be an advocate for LGBTQ+ folks.”Republican leaders have so far stood by Santos. He supported the new speaker, Kevin McCarthy, through 15 rounds of voting for that position, and was rewarded with seats on two House committees in a slim Republican majority.But despite McCarthy’s support, increasing numbers of senior party officials have pleaded with Republican leadership to cut him loose. They include several of Santos’s fellow New York congressmen.The Daily Beast reported on Thursday that a “shadow” race was under way in Democratic and Republican circles to replace Santos in New York’s third district, in the expectation that he will eventually be forced out. Republicans, the Beast said, are looking for “a candidate with an immaculate, bulletproof résumé who can patch up the Long Island GOP’s scarred reputation”.Democrats are seeking somebody who can turn the district blue again after Santos’s surprise win in November.As for Santos’s alleged drag show exploits, Rochard said the congressman was a “poor” drag queen in 2005, with a simple black dress, but in 2008 “he came back to Niterói with a lot of money” and a flamboyant pink dress to show for it.Santos competed in a drag beauty pageant that year but lost, Rochard said, adding: “He’s changed a lot but he was always a liar. He was always such a dreamer.”Santos’s tweet on Thursday was his second denial in two days concerning a claim about his past. On Wednesday, he was embroiled in allegations he took money from an online fundraiser intended to help save the life of a sick dog owned by a military veteran.“The media continues to make outrageous claims about my life while I am working to deliver results,” Santos said. “I will not be distracted or fazed by this.”On Thursday, Santos called “reports that I would let a dog die … shocking and insane”.But the veteran told CNN Santos should “go to hell”.Richard Osthoff added that if he spoke to Santos now, he would ask: “Do you have a heart? Do you have a soul?’“He’d probably lie about that.”TopicsGeorge SantosHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS politicsDragBrazilAmericasnewsReuse this content More

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      Brazil capital attack complicates US relationship with Bolsonaro

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      Brazil capital attack complicates US relationship with BolsonaroThe former Brazilian president has taken up residence in Florida, and some Democrats are calling for his visa to be revoked The future of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who flew to Florida in his last days in office, is emerging as a potential diplomatic issue between Brazil and the US amid calls for his expulsion for inciting insurrection.Bolsonaro has distanced himself from the mob which stormed government buildings in the capital, Brasília, on Sunday, denying accusations from his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that he had encouraged the rioters from the US.‘They were in ecstasy’: how Bolsonaro mob’s orgy of violence rocked BrasíliaRead moreLeading Democrats have called for Bolsonaro’s visa to be revoked, so that he would not be allowed to use Florida as a base for destabilising Lula’s government.“Bolsonaro should not be in Florida,” Joaquín Castro, a Democratic congressman, told CNN. “The United States should not be a refuge for this authoritarian who has inspired domestic terrorism in Brazil. He should be sent back to Brazil.”Joe Biden issued a joint statement on Monday with the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, condemning “the January 8 attacks on Brazil’s democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power”.“We stand with Brazil as it safeguards its democratic institutions. Our governments support the free will of the people of Brazil,” the statement said, adding that the three leaders looked forward to working with President Lula.The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told journalists on Monday that there had been no contact between the administration and Bolsonaro, and the US had yet to receive any requests from the Brazilian government related to the former president.“Of course, if we did receive such requests, we treat them the way we always do. We treat them seriously,” Sullivan said.Democrats are concerned that Florida, run by a hardline Republican governor and presidential contender, Ron DeSantis, is increasingly becoming a hotbed for far-right putschists. Recent attempted coups in Haiti and Venezuela have been plotted from there and the state has become the permanent home of Donald Trump, a close Bolsonaro ally who continues his refusal to acknowledge his own election defeat in 2020, at his Mar-a-Lago resort.The Washington insurrection by Trump supporters on 6 January 2021 is widely seen as a model for the Brasília attacks, and a top Trump aide, Steve Bannon, has been linked to the Bolsonaro family, spreading false claims on social media alleging that last year’s Brazilian presidential election was rigged and referring to the Brazilian rioters as “freedom fighters”.“There’s a kind of hotbed of far-right communities there, that are clearly building on each other,” said a US congressional aide familiar with discussions on the unfolding situation in Brazil. “Governor DeSantis and former president Trump’s presence at Mar-a-Lago have both made Florida a place where these things seem to happen, so I wouldn’t be surprised if any of the planning for this had happened in Florida.”Republicans, including Trumpists, have largely stayed silent on the Brasília riot, with the exception of a Pennsylvania congressman, Brian Fitzpatrick, a member of the House foreign affairs committee, who condemned the violent attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power. Fitzpatrick said on Twitter he looked forward to working with Lula.Bolsonaro is reported to be staying in Kissimmee, near Orlando’s Disney World, in the vacation home of a retired Brazilian martial arts star, José Aldo, part of a resort condominium near a busy highway. On Monday he was reported to have been admitted to hospital, complaining of “severe abdominal pains”.Bolsonaro arrived in Florida on 30 December when he was still president, in which case he could have entered on an A-1 visa reserved for foreign leaders. The state department said on Monday it could not comment on individual cases, but said in general if a foreign official entered the US on an A-1 visa and then ceased to be engaged on official business, it would be the responsibility of that official to leave within 30 days, or be subject to removal by the Department of Homeland Security.The Brazilian government inquiry into the Brasília insurrection is also likely to focus on the role of Anderson Torres, Bolsonaro’s justice minister who was in charge of security in Brasília, who was also in Orlando over the weekend. Torres, who was fired on Sunday, claimed to be there on a family holiday and to have had no contact with Bolsonaro.If Brazil’s supreme court issued an arrest warrant for Bolsonaro and he then refuses to return to Brazil to give himself up, Brazil could issue an Interpol red notice prompting his arrest by US federal agents. Bolsonaro could then try to fight extradition and seek asylum in US courts, potentially triggering a prolonged legal battle.TopicsJair BolsonaroFloridaBrazilUS politicsAmericasLuiz Inácio Lula da SilvaInterpolnewsReuse this content More

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      George Santos: Brazil reactivates fraud case against fabulist congressman-elect

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      George Santos: Brazil reactivates fraud case against fabulist congressman-electRepublican is accused of using stolen checkbook and fake name at shop outside Rio de Janeiro in 2008 As the fabulist New York Republican representative-elect George Santos prepares to be sworn in on Tuesday, Brazilian prosecutors say they are reopening a criminal fraud case against him.Santos, who faces federal and state investigations involving possible criminal activity related to his two congressional campaigns, is accused of using a stolen checkbook and fake name at a clothing shop outside Rio de Janeiro in 2008, the New York Times reported on Monday citing court documents.House of lies: outrage as Republicans prepare to swear in fantasist SantosRead moreThe case languished for more than a decade, however, as Brazilian authorities did not know where Santos was.Santos reportedly told police in 2010 that he and his mother stole the checkbook from a man that she had once worked for, and then used it to make illicit purchases, per the Times.He seemed to come clean about the purported fraud to the store’s proprietor the next year on a Brazilian social media website, allegedly writing: “I know I screwed up, but I want to pay.”While a judge in Brazil greenlit a charge against Santos in 2011, he had already gone to the US. Because Brazilian authorities needed to officially notify him to the charges before the case could proceed, the case ground to a halt. Brazilian prosecutors will now file a petition in court asking that Santos respond to the charges, after which Brazil’s justice ministry will send it to the US justice department.If convicted, the maximum penalty is five years imprisonment as well as a fine, the New York Times said.Santos has insisted on his innocence. “I am not a criminal here – not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world,” he told the New York Post after the story was first revealed. “Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”Santos has admitted to lying about integral parts of his biography, such as claims that he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, as well as completing college. “My sins here are embellishing my résumé. I’m sorry,” Santos said.He also tried to dispel criticism that he misrepresented having Jewish heritage. On Santos’s campaign website, he claimed that his mother was Jewish and that his grandparents fled the Nazi regime in the second world war.Santos is now claiming that he is “clearly Catholic”, but that his grandmother recounted being Jewish and later becoming Catholic. “I never claimed to be Jewish,” he told the newspaper. “Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish’.”Santos has since faced calls to step down by some members of his own party. The Texas Republican representative Kevin Brady, formerly the ranking member of the House ways and means committee, said on Fox News that Santos “is certainly going to have to consider resigning”, while the outgoing Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, recently said that Santos’s falsehoods were “unacceptable” and needed to be investigated by the ethics committee.TopicsRepublicansHouse of RepresentativesBrazilUS politicsAmericasnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden convenes ‘emergency’ G7 and Nato meeting after Russian-made rockets strike Poland

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      Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Leaders of Nato and G7 nations have agreed at a emergency meeting convened by US President Joe Biden to support Poland’s investigation into a strike on its territory by a Russian-made […] More