<\/p>\n
Brazilian police said Sunday they had arrested two people in connection with a foiled plot to attack Lady Gaga’s packed mega-concert in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n
Rio’s civil police force said that “together with the ministry of justice” it had “prevented a bomb attack that would have occurred at Lady Gaga’s concert in Copacabana” on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Officials said the superstar’s huge free gig on the beach, her first concert in Brazil since 2012, drew up to two million people.<\/p>\n
Writing on X, Rio police said it had arrested an adult who was “responsible for the plot” as well as a teenager in the operation codenamed “Fake Monster” — a reference to the US pop diva’s pet name for her fans, “Little Monsters.”<\/p>\n
It said those involved had recruited people online to “carry out attacks using improvised explosives” and Molotov cocktails as “a collective challenge with the aim of “gaining notoriety on social media.”<\/p>\n
The police added that the group behind the plot “spread hate speech,” radicalized youths, and used self-harm on digital platforms as mechanisms to develop social belonging.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Police carried out raids across Rio de Janeiro state as well as in the states of Sao Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, and Mato Grosso.<\/p>\n
Lady Gaga’s concert was the second million-strong show on Copacabana beach in a year after a huge concert last year by Madonna.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
‘Scared sick’<\/strong><\/p>\n Security was extremely tight for Saturday’s show, with some 5,000 officers, drones and both surveillance and facial recognition cameras deployed.<\/p>\n The 39-year-old star’s fans reacted with shock to the news of the foiled plot.<\/p>\n “THANK GOD. This would have had an impact on over 2 million people,” posted the LadyGagaFansTogether Instagram account, which has 307,000 followers.<\/p>\n Writing on the same account one fan said he was “scared sick about her (Gaga) being safe at all times.”<\/p>\n The gig was part of a strategy by Rio to hold mega-concerts in May in an effort to boost tourism during what is considered the low season.<\/p>\n All week, Gaga fans had flocked to Rio, a city famous for its annual Carnival that attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists from around the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mayor Eduardo Paes has also hinted that he plans to bring in Irish rock band U2, although no date has been given.<\/p>\n Lady Gaga had kicked off her show perched more than two meters (6.5 feet) above the stage in a massive scarlet hoop gown which opened to reveal a vertical cage from which her dancers exited to a rendition of her 2011 song “Bloody Mary.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Brazil, I missed you so much,” screamed the popstar, who performed several tracks from her latest album, “Mayhem,” as well as favorites from throughout her career.<\/p>\n (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n Brazilian police said Sunday they had arrested two people in connection with a foiled plot to attack Lady Gaga’s packed mega-concert in Rio de Janeiro. Rio’s civil police force said that “together with the ministry of justice” it had “prevented a bomb attack that would have occurred at Lady Gaga’s concert in Copacabana” on Saturday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4880,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4878\/revisions\/4880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n \n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"