Former president Jair Bolsonaro was rushed to a Brasília hospital after experiencing severe hiccups, vomiting, and low blood pressure while under house arrest, his son announced. Bolsonaro, who has endured ongoing intestinal problems and six surgeries following a 2018 stabbing, had visited the same hospital days earlier for skin lesion biopsies. On 11 September Brazil’s supreme court sentenced him to 27 years and three months in prison for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; he has not yet been imprisoned because of appeals and procedural delays. In a separate case, a federal court has fined him one million reais (£138,000) for racist remarks made in 2021. Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing, claiming to be the victim of political persecution, and Donald Trump has also called the trial a ‘witch-hunt’, but Lula has spoken of a ‘historic decision’ which safeguards Brazil’s democratic principles. Public opinion remains sharply divided over his sentence and political future.