Witsel, it had previously been thought from sources close to the deal that Everton, armed by their new financial muscle, were in the box seat.

Witsel, 27, has been playing his club football at Zenit St Petersburg since 2012 and has one year remaining on his current deal but does not want to extend his stay in Russia.

The midfielder is currently on holiday after playing five games for Belgium at Euro 2016.

Meanwhile, Crystal Palace have slapped a £28million price tag on Yannick Bolasie's head to ward off the likes of Everton reckon the Mail.

The Blues are said to be interested in the DR Congo international winger but their plans might be hit on two fronts with Tottenham and West Ham also in the frame and the 27-year-old believed toClaims that a drug-addicted Brazilian woman was subjected to forced sterilisation are sparking accusations of a nightmarish "dystopia" in a country where a leading presidential candidate has stirred controversy with his own birth control proposals.

The facts of the case not under dispute are that Janaína Aparecida Quirino, an addict with numerous children, had her tubes tied after a ruling by a judge in Mococa, near São Paulo.

But according to a report in Folha de São Paulo newspaper, the woman was homeless and the procedure was performed without her consent.

By the time the judge's ruling came to appeal at a higher court, "the mutilation had already occurred," wrote the author of the report, the constitutional law professor Oscar Vilhena Vieira.

One advocacy group, the Institute of Penal Guarantees, said "Janaína