Brazil police foil Lady Gaga gig bomb plot

Netizens 'recruited' to carry out attacks

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Brazilian police said on Sunday they arrested two people in connection with a foiled plot to bomb Lady Gaga's packed mega-concert in Rio de Janeiro.

Rio's civil police force said that together with the ministry of justice it "prevented a bomb attack that would have occurred at Lady Gaga’s concert in Copacabana” on Saturday night.

Officials said the superstar’s huge free gig on the beach, her first concert in Brazil since 2012, drew up to 2 million people.

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”.

It said they 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”.