Beijing’s annual independent queer film festival has been cancelled after what is understood to have been a campaign of sustained harassment from authorities.

Beijing Queer film festival, which was due to begin on Friday in China’s capital, is one of the country’s oldest independent film festivals. Founded in 2001 by a group of Peking University students, the festival grew to become the only film festival in mainland China to offer a public forum for films and discussions exploring LGBTQ+ issues. But it is understood that police had increased pressure on the festival through repeated phone calls in recent weeks.

The Chinese authorities have grown increasingly intolerant of open discussion of feminist or LGBTQ+ issues. Film festivals in particular attract particular scrutiny because they provide an opportunity to platform narratives that sit outside the Communist party’s worldview. Beijing Independent film festival, China’s most prominent independent film festival, was closed down in 2014 after the authorities detained the founders and shut off the electricity supply to the venue. Last year, an independent Chinese film festival that was due to be held in New York was cancelled after harassment from the Chinese authorities, an incident which raised concern about transnational repression.

Hongwei Bao, a professor of Chinese studies at the University of St Andrews who focuses on LGBT issues, said that the festival was “a beacon for LGBT resilience” in China, so the shutdown is going to have a chilling effect for the Chinese queer community. Maya Wang, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said: “The Chinese government under Xi has been relentlessly tightening social and ideological control, and so any activities outside of those sanctioned by the party-state are subjected to intensifying scrutiny and often also official harassment.

Young adults in China looking for a cheaper, low-maintenance alternative to having children or pets have found an answer: raising bricks.

Bricks may not be as cuddly as cats or as life-affirming as human offspring, but they also cost next to nothing. “No cats, no dating, I started raising a brick,” wrote one brick parent on social media. A hashtag related to the trend has attracted more than 5m views on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.

Chinese commentators have linked the trend to young people looking for low-effort routes to finding meaning in life; One brick “parent” even told Chinese media the hobby created “a sense of accomplishment no less than completing a long-term project”. Raising “brick babies” is easier than caring for house plants, involving spraying them with water a few times a day then waiting for moss spores already present in the atmosphere to attach themselves and grow. One Chinese media article described the bricks as being “practically immortal”. “If you forget to water them, the moss goes dormant. If you remember to water them again, the greenery returns.”

Young people in China are increasingly shunning the traditional expectations of society, such as having children and working long hours in strenuous jobs, assuming they can find one in the first place. Nearly one in five 16- to 24-year-olds, excluding students, are unemployed, according to official statistics. Some estimates put the unemployment rate much higher. The trend has become so popular that Chinese media have started to warn about the health risks; Xuedong Li, a retired professor of moss from Beijing’s Capital Normal University, urged people to keep their bricks in an enclosed environment, because cultivating moss could lead to the spread of mould, with some “brick parents” reportedly complaining of itchy eyes and runny noses.

Flávio Bolsonaro declared himself the “true president” of Brazil after losing last Sunday’s presidential election and fleeing to the United States.

After landing on a private jet with his family in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday morning, the far-right senator published the claim in a letter – even though his own party has recognised the legitimate victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as have all of Brazil’s institutions, and international observers who monitored and endorsed the vote.

Bolsonaro, the son of the jailed former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, took off on the jet with his wife and two teenage daughters at about 11.30pm, bound for Guayaquil in Ecuador, reportedly to avoid Brazilian airspace. They made a brief stop in Ecuador and continued on to the Miami-Opa Locka airport, a private aviation hub about 11 miles north of downtown Miami catering to corporate executives and wealthy travelers. He disappeared for more than 24 hours, until Argentina’s migration authorities said he had entered the country by land on Tuesday night. The senator later deleted the letter and published a new one in which, instead of calling himself the “true president”, he described himself as “the leader of Brazil”.

Bolsonaro is under investigation in at least two criminal cases, one of them examining suspicions that the senator was involved in a money-laundering scheme worth about £680m ($905m) involving betting companies. Brazil’s three main newspapers all described Bolsonaro’s declaration as “coup-mongering”. Brazilian newspapers also reported that he and his family had been granted humanitarian visas in the US, and Trump on Tuesday said he would approve their move to the country.