The brother of an Israeli hostage held in the Gaza Strip has told the BBC that a Hamas video showing him emaciated and weak is a “new form of cruelty” that has left his parents shattered.

Hamas released the footage of Evyatar David, 24, on Saturday, drawing strong condemnation from Israel and Western leaders.

“He’s a human skeleton. He was being starved to the point where he can be dead at any moment, and he suffers a great deal. He barely can’t speak, he barely can move,” David’s brother Ilay said in an interview on Monday.

In the video, Evyatar says: “I haven’t eaten for days… I barely got drinking water.” He is seen digging what he says will be his own grave.

Hostages’ families have urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prioritise their release as reports suggest he might be planning to expand the military campaign.

The footage of Evyatar was released after Palestinian Islamic Jihad published video of another hostage, Rom Braslavski, thin and crying.

Both men were abducted from the Nova music festival during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

They are among 50 hostages still being held in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

Ilay David said his father had barely recognised his son Evyatar’s voice on the video and had not been able to sleep. He said his mother cried all day.

“Seeing those images of my brother as a human skeleton, we understood it’s, it’s, it’s a new kind of cruelty,” Mr David said. “It’s the lowest you can get.”

He called on world leaders to unite to save him and other hostages “from the cruel, twisted hands of Hamas”.

“So we have to be so focused on delivering the message, which is, Evyatar is dying, we need to give him medicine, to give him food, proper food, and you need to get this treatment now, or else will die.”

Hamas’s armed wing has denied it intentionally starves prisoners, saying hostages eat what their fighters and people in Gaza eat.

After the hostages’ videos were released, Netanyahu spoke with their families, telling them that efforts to return all the hostages “will continue constantly and relentlessly”.

But an Israeli official – widely quoted by local media – said Netanyahu was working to free the hostages through “the military defeat of Hamas”.

The possibility of a new escalation in Gaza may further anger Israel’s allies who have been pushing for an immediate ceasefire as reports of Palestinians dying from starvation or malnutrition cause shock around the world.

The main group supporting hostages’ families condemned the idea of a new military offensive saying: “Netanyahu is leading Israel and the hostages to doom.”

That view was pointedly made in a letter by some 600 retired Israeli security officials sent to US President Donald Trump urging him to pressure Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza.

“Your credibility with the vast majority of Israelis augments your ability to steer Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his government in the right direction: End the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering,” they wrote.

The group included former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, Ami Ayalon, former chief of Shin Bet – Israel’s domestic secret service agency – former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and former Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon among others.

“It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,” they said.

“At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all military objectives, this war ceased to be a just war,” said Ayalon.

The former top leaders head the Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS) group, which has urged the government in the past to focus on securing the return of the hostages.

“Stop the Gaza War! On behalf of CIS, Israel’s largest group of former IDF generals and Mossad, Shin Bet, Police, and Diplomatic Corps equivalents, we urge you to end the Gaza war. You did it in Lebanon. Time to do it in Gaza as well,” they wrote to the US president.

Israel launched a devastating war in Gaza following Hamas’s 7 October attack in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken into Gaza as hostages.

More than 60,000 people have been killed as a result of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

On Monday, the ministry reported that at least 94 people had been killed in Gaza in the past day, including dozens it said had died in Israeli strikes.

The territory is also experiencing mass deprivation as a result of heavy restrictions imposed by Israel on what is allowed into Gaza. The ministry says 180 people, including 93 children, have died from malnutrition since the start of the war.

Such reports have become almost daily in recent months but are hard to verify as international journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza.

UN-backed agencies have said the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out” in Gaza.

At 08:15 on August 6, 1945, as a nuclear bomb was falling like a stone through the skies over Hiroshima, Lee Jung-soon was on her way to elementary school.

The now-88-year-old waves her hands as if trying to push the memory away.

“My father was about to leave for work, but he suddenly came running back and told us to evacuate immediately,” she recalls. “They say the streets were filled with the dead – but I was so shocked all I remember is crying. I just cried and cried.”

Victims’ bodies “melted away so only their eyes were visible”, Ms Lee says, as a blast equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT enveloped a city of 420,000 people. What remained in the aftermath were corpses too mangled to be identified.

“The atomic bomb… it’s such a terrifying weapon.”

It’s been 80 years since the United States detonated ‘Little Boy’, humanity’s first-ever atomic bomb, over the centre of Hiroshima, instantly killing some 70,000 people. Tens of thousands more would die in the coming months from radiation sickness, burns and dehydration.

The devastation wrought by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – which brought a decisive end to both World War Two and Japanese imperial rule across large swaths of Asia – has been well-documented over the past eight decades.

Less well-known is the fact that about 20% of the immediate victims were Koreans.

Korea had been a Japanese colony for 35 years when the bomb was dropped. An estimated 140,000 Koreans were living in Hiroshima at the time – many having moved there due to forced labour mobilisation, or to survive under colonial exploitation.

Those who survived the atom bomb, along with their descendants, continue to live in the long shadow of that day – wrestling with disfigurement, pain, and a decades-long fight for justice that remains unresolved.

“No-one takes responsibility,” says Shim Jin-tae, an 83-year-old survivor. “Not the country that dropped the bomb. Not the country that failed to protect us. America never apologised. Japan pretends not to know. Korea is no better. They just pass the blame – and we’re left alone.”

Mr Shim now lives in Hapcheon, South Korea: a small county which, having become the home of dozens of survivors like he and Ms Lee, has been dubbed “Korea’s Hiroshima”.

For Ms Lee, the shock of that day has not faded – it etched itself into her body as illness. She now lives with skin cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and angina, a condition stemming from poor blood flow to the heart, which typically manifests as chest pain.

But what weighs more heavily is that the pain didn’t stop with her. Her son Ho-chang, who supports her, was diagnosed with kidney failure and is undergoing dialysis while awaiting a transplant.

“I believe it’s due to radiation exposure, but who can prove it?” Ho-chang Lee says. “It’s hard to verify scientifically – you’d need genetic testing, which is exhausting and expensive.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) told the BBC that it had gathered genetic data between 2020 and 2024 and would continue further studies until 2029. It would “consider expanding the definition of victims” to second- and- third-generation survivors only “if the results are statistically significant”, it said.

Of the 140,000 Koreans in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, many were from Hapcheon.

Surrounded by mountains with little farmland, it was a difficult place to live. Crops were seized by the Japanese occupiers, droughts ravaged the land, and thousands of people left the rural country for Japan during the war. Some were forcibly conscripted; others were lured by the promise that “you could eat three meals a day and send your kids to school.”

But in Japan, Koreans were second-class citizens – often given the hardest, dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Mr Shim says his father worked in a munitions factory as a forced labourer, while his mother hammered nails into wooden ammunition crates.

In the aftermath of the bomb, this distribution of labour translated into dangerous and often fatal work for Koreans in Hiroshima.

“Korean workers had to clean up the dead,” Mr Shim, who is the director of the Hapcheon branch of the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association, tells BBC Korean. “At first they used stretchers, but there were too many bodies. Eventually, they used dustpans to gather corpses and burned them in schoolyards.”

“It was mostly Koreans who did this. Most of the post-war clean-up and munitions work was done by us.”

According to a study by the Gyeonggi Welfare Foundation, some survivors were forced to clear rubble and recover bodies. While Japanese evacuees fled to relatives, Koreans without local ties remained in the city, exposed to the radioactive fallout – and with limited access to medical care.

A combination of these conditions – poor treatment, hazardous work and structural discrimination – all contributed to a disproportionately high death toll among Koreans.

According to the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association, the Korean fatality rate was 57.1%, compared to the overall rate of about 33.7%.

About 70,000 Koreans were exposed to the bomb. By year’s end, some 40,000 had died.

After the bombings, which led to Japan’s surrender and Korea’s subsequent liberation, about 23,000 Korean survivors returned home. But they were not welcomed. Branded as disfigured or cursed, they faced prejudice even in their homeland.

“Hapcheon already had a leper colony,” Mr Shim explains. “And because of that image, people thought the bomb survivors had skin diseases too.”

Such stigma made survivors stay silent about their plight, he adds, suggesting that “survival came before pride”.

Ms Lee says she saw this “with her own eyes”.

“People who were badly burned or extremely poor were treated terribly,” she recalls. “In our village, some people had their backs and faces so badly scarred that only their eyes were visible. They were rejected from marriage and shunned.”

With stigma came poverty, and hardship. Then came illnesses with no clear cause: skin diseases, heart conditions, kidney failure, cancer. The symptoms were everywhere – but no-one could explain them.

Over time, the focus shifted to the second and third generations.

Han Jeong-sun, a second-generation survivor, suffers from avascular necrosis in her hips, and can’t walk without dragging herself. Her first son was born with cerebral palsy.

“My son has never walked a single step in his life,” she says. “And my in-laws treated me horribly. They said, ‘You gave birth to a crippled child and you’re crippled too—are you here to ruin our family?’

“That time was absolute hell.”

For decades, not even the Korean government took active interest in its own victims, as a war with the North and economic struggles were treated as higher priorities.

It wasn’t until 2019 – more than 70 years after the bombing – that MOHW released its first fact-finding report. That survey was mostly based on questionnaires.

In response to BBC inquiries, the ministry explained that prior to 2019, “There was no legal basis for funding or official investigations”.

But two separate studies had found that second-generation victims were more vulnerable to illness. One, from 2005, showed that second-generation victims were far more likely than the general population to suffer depression, heart disease and anaemia, while another from 2013 found their disability registration rate was nearly double the national average.

Against this backdrop, Ms Han is incredulous that authorities keep asking for proof to recognise her and her son as victims of Hiroshima.

“My illness is the proof. My son’s disability is the proof. This pain passes down generations, and it’s visible,” she says. “But they won’t recognise it. So what are we supposed to do – just die without ever being acknowledged?”

It was only last month, on July 12, that Hiroshima officials visited Hapcheon for the first time to lay flowers at a memorial. While former PM Hatoyama Yukio and other private figures had come before, this was the first official visit by current Japanese officials.

“Now in 2025 Japan talks about peace. But peace without apology is meaningless,” says Junko Ichiba, a long-time Japanese peace activist who has spent most of her life advocating for Korean Hiroshima victims.

She points out, the visiting officials gave no mention or apology for how Japan treated Korean people before and during World War Two.

Although multiple former Japanese leaders have offered their apologies and remorse, many South Koreans regard these sentiments as insincere or insufficient without formal acknowledgement.

Ms Ichiba notes that Japanese textbooks still omit the history of Korea’s colonial past – as well as its atomic bomb victims – saying that “this invisibility only deepens the injustice”.

This adds to what many view as a broader lack of accountability for Japan’s colonial legacy.

Heo Jeong-gu, director of the Red Cross’s support division, said, “These issues… must be addressed while survivors are still alive. For the second and third generations, we must gather evidence and testimonies before it’s too late.”

For survivors like Mr Shim it’s not just about being compensated – it’s about being acknowledged.

“Memory matters more than compensation,” he says. “Our bodies remember what we went through… If we forget, it’ll happen again. And someday, there’ll be no one left to tell the story.”

A zoo in Denmark has appealed to the public to donate their healthy unwanted pets as part of a unique effort to provide food for its predators.

Aalborg Zoo has asked for donations of live chickens, rabbits, and guinea pigs, which it says are “gently euthanised” by trained staff.

The zoo also accepts donations of live horses – with owners able to benefit from a potential tax break.

Posting on Instagram, the zoo explains it has a “responsibility to imitate the natural food chain of the animals” and smaller livestock “make up an important part of the diet of our predators”.

The zoo says the food provided in this way is “reminiscent of what it would naturally hunt in the wild” – and that this is especially true for the Eurasian lynx.

Other predators being kept at the zoo include lions and tigers.

The small animals can be donated on weekdays, with no more than four at a time without an appointment.

On its website, underneath a picture of a tiger devouring a piece of meat, Aalborg Zoo lays out the conditions for donating horses.

To be eligible they need to have a horse passport and cannot have been treated for an illness within the previous 30 days.

If they are successful in handing over their animals, horse donors can then receive a tax deduction.

In a statement, the zoo’s deputy director, Pia Nielsen, said the zoo’s carnivores had been fed smaller livestock “for many years”.

“When keeping carnivores, it is necessary to provide them with meat, preferably with fur, bones etc to give them as natural a diet as possible,” she explained.

“Therefore, it makes sense to allow animals that need to be euthanised for various reasons to be of use in this way. In Denmark, this practice is common, and many of our guests and partners appreciate the opportunity to contribute. The livestock we receive as donations are chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, and horses.”

A group of some 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, have written to US President Donald Trump to pressure Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza.

“It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,” the officials said.

“Your credibility with the vast majority of Israelis augments your ability to steer Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his government in the right direction: End the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering,” they wrote.

Their appeal comes amid reports that Netanyahu is pushing to expand military operations in Gaza as indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas have stalled.

Israel launched a devastating war in Gaza following Hamas’s attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken into Gaza as hostages.

More than 60,000 people have been killed as a result of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since then, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

On Monday, the ministry reported that at least 94 people had been killed in Gaza in the past day, including dozens it said had died in Israeli strikes.

At least 24 people had been killed while seeking aid, it added. Such reports have become almost daily in recent months but are hard to verify as international journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza independently.

The territory is also experiencing mass deprivation as a result of heavy restrictions imposed by Israel on what is allowed into Gaza. The ministry says 180 people, including 93 children, have died from malnutrition since the start of the war.

UN-backed agencies have said the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out” in Gaza.

The latest intervention by the top former Israeli officials came after videos of two emaciated Israeli hostages were released by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.

The videos were widely condemned by Israeli and Western leaders.

After the videos were released, Netanyahu spoke with the two hostage families, telling them that efforts to return all the hostages “will continue constantly and relentlessly”.

But an Israeli official – widely quoted by local media – said Netanyahu was working to free the hostages through “the military defeat of Hamas”.

The possibility of a new escalation in Gaza may further anger Israel’s allies which have been pushing for an immediate ceasefire as reports of Palestinians dying from starvation or malnutrition cause shock around the world.

The main group supporting hostages’ families condemned the idea of a new military offensive saying: “Netanyahu is leading Israel and the hostages to doom.”

That view was pointedly made in the letter to Trump by former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, Ami Ayalon, former chief of Shin Bet – Israel’s domestic secret service agency – former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and former Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon among others.

“At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all military objectives, this war ceased to be a just war,” said Ayalon.

The former top leaders head the Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS) group, which has urged the government in the past to focus on securing the return of the hostages.

“Stop the Gaza War! On behalf of CIS, Israel’s largest group of former IDF generals and Mossad, Shin Bet, Police, and Diplomatic Corps equivalents, we urge you to end the Gaza war. You did it in Lebanon. Time to do it in Gaza as well,” they wrote to the US president.

Israel has faced growing international isolation, as the widespread destruction in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinians spark outrage.

Polls around the world suggest that public opinion is increasingly negative about Israel, which is putting pressure on Western leaders to act.

But it is not clear what pressure, if any, Trump will choose to exert on the Israeli prime minister.

The US president has consistently backed his ally, even though he publicly acknowledged last week that there was “real starvation” in Gaza after Netanyahu insisted there was no such thing.

Has the relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin gone off the rails?

A popular Russian newspaper thinks so. It turned to trains to illustrate the current state of US-Russian ties.

“A head-on collision seems unavoidable,” declared tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets recently.

“The Trump locomotive and the Putin locomotive are speeding towards each other.

“And neither is about to turn off or stop and reverse.”

For the ‘Putin locomotive’, it’s full steam ahead, with the so-called ‘Special Military Operation’: Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Kremlin leader has shown no desire to end hostilities and declare a long-term ceasefire.

Meanwhile, the ‘Trump locomotive’ has been accelerating efforts to pressure Moscow into ending the fighting: announcing deadlines, ultimatums, threats of additional sanctions against Russia and hefty tariffs on Russia’s trading partners, like India and China.

Add to all of that the two US nuclear submarines which President Trump claims he’s repositioned closer to Russia.

When you switch from talking about locomotives to nuclear subs, you know things are serious.

But does that mean the White House is really on a “collision course” with the Kremlin over Ukraine?

Or is a visit to Moscow this week by Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, a sign that for all the posturing, a deal between Russia and America to end the fighting is still possible?

In the early weeks of the second Trump presidency, Moscow and Washington appeared well on track to reboot their bilateral relations.

No hint of a head-on collision. Far from it. At times it seemed as if Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were in the same carriage, moving in the same direction. In February the United States sided with Russia at the United Nations, opposing a European-drafted resolution that had condemned Russia’s “aggression” in Ukraine.

In a telephone call that month the two presidents talked about visiting each other’s countries. It felt like a Putin-Trump summit could happen any day.

Meanwhile the Trump administration was exerting pressure on Kyiv, not on Moscow, and picking fights with traditional US allies, such as Canada and Denmark. In speeches and TV interviews, American officials were fiercely critical of Nato and of European leaders.

All of this was music to the Kremlin’s ears.

“America now has more in common with Russia than Washington does with Brussels or with Kyiv,” political scientist Konstantin Blokhin from the Russian Academy of Sciences Centre for Security Studies told the Izvestia newspaper in March.

The following month the same newspaper was crowing:

“The Trumpists are revolutionaries. They are wreckers of the system. They can only be supported in this. The unity of the West is no more. Geo-politically it is no longer an alliance. Trumpism has destroyed the Transatlantic consensus confidently and quickly.”

Meanwhile Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, had become a regular visitor to Russia. He made four trips here in just over two months, spending hours in talks with Vladimir Putin. After one meeting, the Kremlin leader presented him with a portrait of Donald Trump to take back to the White House.

President Trump was said to be “clearly touched” by the gesture.

But President Trump was looking for more than just a painting from Moscow. He wanted President Putin to sign up to an unconditional comprehensive ceasefire in Ukraine.

Confident that Russia holds the initiative now on the battlefield, Vladimir Putin has been reluctant to stop fighting, despite his claim that Moscow is committed to a diplomatic solution.

Which is why Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the Kremlin.

In recent weeks he has condemned Russia’s relentless attacks on Ukrainian cities as “disgusting”, “disgraceful” and accused President Putin of talking “a lot of bullshit” on Ukraine.

Last month, Donald Trump announced a 50-day ultimatum to President Putin to end the war, threatening sanctions and tariffs. He subsequently reduced that to ten days. The deadline is due to expire at the end of this week. So far, there is no sign that Vladimir Putin will yield to pressure from Washington.

Then again, how much pressure does Vladimir Putin really feel under?

“Because Donald Trump has changed so many deadlines and he’s twisted one way or another, I don’t think Putin takes him seriously,” believes Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at The New School, a university in New York City.

“Putin’s going to fight for as long as he can, or, unless Ukraine says, ‘We’re tired, we are willing to accept your conditions.’

“I think Putin sits there in the Kremlin and thinks that he’s fulfilling the dreams of the Russian tsars, and then the general secretaries such as Joseph Stalin, in showing the West that Russia should not be treated with disrespect.”

From the picture I’ve painted so far it may look as if a head-on collision between the Putin and Trump locomotives is inevitable.

Not necessarily.

Donald Trump sees himself as a great dealmaker and, from the look of things, he hasn’t given up trying to secure one with Vladimir Putin.

Steve Witkoff is due back in Russia this week for talks with the Kremlin leader. We don’t know what kind of an offer he may bring with him. But some commentators in Moscow predict there will be more carrot than stick. It did not go unnoticed that on Sunday President Trump said Russia “seem to be pretty good at avoiding sanctions”.

On Monday, Ivan Loshkarev, associate professor of political theory at MGIMO University, Moscow

told Izvestia that to facilitate dialogue, Mr Witkoff may present “advantageous offers of cooperation [to Russia] that would open up after a deal on Ukraine”.

Might that be enough to persuade the Kremlin to make peace after three-and-a-half years of war?

There’s no guarantee.

After all, so far in Ukraine Vladimir Putin hasn’t budged from his maximalist demands on territory, Ukraine’s neutrality and the future size of the Ukrainian army.

Donald Trump wants a deal. Vladimir Putin wants victory.

Donald Trump has threatened to “substantially” raise tariffs against India over its purchase of oil from Russia.

“They [India] don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,” the US president wrote on his online platform, Truth Social, on Monday.

India is currently among the largest buyers of Russian oil. It has become an important export market for Moscow after several European countries cut trade when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Trump did not specify what the new tariff would be, but it comes just days after he unveiled a hefty 25% levy on India.

Delhi called Trump’s warning “unjustified and unreasonable”.

In a statement, a spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, Randhir Jaiswal, said the US had encouraged India to import Russian gas at the start of the conflict, “for strengthening global energy markets stability”.

He said India “began importing from Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the outbreak of the conflict”.

India also criticised the US – its largest trading partner – for introducing the tariffs, when the US itself is still doing trade with Russia. Last year, the US traded goods worth an estimated $3.5bn (£2.6bn) with Russia, despite tough sanctions and tariffs.

“Like any major economy, India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security,” the foreign ministry statement said.

Last week, Trump had described India as a “friend” but said its tariffs on US products “are far too high” and he warned of an unspecified “penalty” over its trade with Russia.

His latest Truth Social post again struck a critical tone.

“India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits,” he wrote.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not ordered India’s oil refineries to stop buying Russian oil, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Ajay Srivastava, a former Indian trade official and head of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a Delhi-based think tank, said Trump’s claims about India’s oil trade with Russia are misleading for several reasons.

He told the BBC that the trade has been transparent and broadly understood by the US.

Mr Srivastava said India ramped up purchases of oil to help stabilise global markets after Western sanctions disrupted supplies – helping to stop a global oil price shock.

He also said that India’s oil refineries – both public and private – decide where to buy crude oil based on factors like price, supply security, and export rules. They operate independently of the government and do not need its approval to buy from Russia or other countries.

• I’m ‘disappointed but not done’ with Putin, Trump tells BBC

Though relations between the US and Russia warmed after Trump returned to the White house in January, the US president has more recently toughened his rhetoric against the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump has questioned whether Putin is truly committed to peace with Ukraine. In Monday’s Truth Social post he used stern language, describing the Russian military as the “Russian War Machine”.

Russia’s leader has repeatedly said he is ready for peace but only if Kyiv meets certain conditions, such as recognising Ukrainian territories that Russia has occupied.

Trump has threatened Moscow with severe tariffs targeting its oil and other exports if a ceasefire with Ukraine is not agreed by 8 August.

US envoy Steve Witkoff is due to visit Russia later this week, where he is expected to meet Putin.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered that the former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro be put under house arrest.

He is standing trial over allegations he plotted a coup, which he denies.

President Donald Trump has used Mr Bolsonaro’s trial, which he calls a “witch-hunt”, as a justification for imposing 50% tariffs on some Brazilian goods despite the US having a trade surplus with Brazil.

The judge in charge of investigating Mr Bolsonaro, Alexandre de Moraes, said the decision was because Mr Bolsonaro hadn’t complied with restraining orders put on him last month.

Mr Moraes, who the US has also sanctioned, said Mr Bolsonaro had used the social networks of his allies including his sons to spread messages that encouraged attacks on the Supreme Court and foreign intervention in the Brazilian judiciary.

On Sunday, pro-Bolsonaro rallies were held in various Brazilian cities. One of his sons, Flávio, who is a senator, briefly put his father on speakerphone to the crowd in Rio de Janeiro.

Flávio also reportedly later published a video, which he deleted afterwards, of his father on the other side of the call sending a message to supporters.

Mr Moraes also banned him from receiving visits, except from lawyers or people authorised by the Supreme Court, and from using a mobile phone directly or through third parties.

He had already, previously, been ordered to wear an ankle tag, to adhere to a curfew, to not use social media, and to not contact his son Eduardo Bolsonaro who has lobbied US officials on his behalf in the US.

These restrictions were imposed because of allegations he was encouraging Donald Trump to interfere in the case.