Brazilian police say they foiled a bomb attack planned for a Lady Gaga concert on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach that attracted an estimated 2.1 million people.
The plot was orchestrated by a group promoting hate speech and the radicalisation of teenagers, including self-harm and violent content as a form of social belonging, according to the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro, which worked in coordination with the country’s justice ministry.
“The suspects were recruiting participants, including minors, to carry out coordinated attacks using improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails,” the force said.
The justice ministry said the recruiters identified themselves as Gaga’s fans, known as “Little Monsters”.
It said Operation Fake Monster was based on a report by the ministry’s cyber operations lab following a tip-off from Rio state police intelligence, which uncovered digital cells encouraging violent behaviour among teenagers using coded language and extremist symbolism.
Authorities carried out over a dozen search and seizure warrants, and a man described as the group’s leader was arrested in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul for illegal possession of a firearm, and a teenager was detained in Rio de Janeiro for storing child abuse images.
Image: Lady Gaga performing at the huge open-air concert. Pic: Reuters
Gaga’s biggest ever show
Some 500,000 tourists travelled to watch the concert, which was paid for by the city in an attempt to boost the struggling economy.
Saturday night’s two-hour show, which marked Gaga’s biggest ever, marked the first time she had played in Brazil since 2012, having cancelled an appearance at the Rock in Rio festival in 2017 over health issues.
Gaga, who released her seventh studio album, Mayhem, in March, opened with a dramatic, operatic edition of her 2011 track Bloody Mary, before launching into Abracadabra, a recent track.
Image: Pic: AP
Image: Pic: AP
“Brazil! I missed you. I missed you so much,” she exclaimed, before launching into Poker Face, one of her biggest hits.
The American pop star drew in a similar crowd to Madonna’s in May last year, who performed at the same beach, which is transformed into an enormous dance floor for the shows.
Addressing the crowd in English and through a Portuguese translator, Gaga became emotional as she said: “I’m so honoured to be here with you tonight.
Image: Gaga addresses the crowd. Pic: Reuters
Image: Gaga seen performing on giant screens set up across the beach. Pic: Reuters
“Tonight we’re making history, but no one makes history alone. Without all of you, the incredible people of Brazil, I wouldn’t have this moment. Thank you for making history with me.
“The people of Brazil are the reason I get to shine today. But of all the things I can thank you for, the one I most am grateful for is this: that you waited for me. You waited more than 10 years for me.”
She said it took so long to come back because she was “healing” and “getting stronger”. The pop sensation cancelled many of her shows in 2017 and 2018 due to her fibromyalgia condition, which can cause pain and fatigue.
It is estimated Gaga’s show will have injected around 600 million reais (£79.9m) into the economy, nearly 30% more than Madonna’s show.
The large-scale free shows are set to continue annually until at least 2028, always taking place in May, which is considered the economy’s “low season”, according to the city’s government.
A hefty security plan was in place, including the presence of 3,300 military and 1,500 police officers, along with 400 military firefighters.
‘A dream come true’
Image: Pic: AP
The city has been swarmed with Gaga fans since her arrival on Tuesday, with some even keeping vigil outside of the hotel she has been staying at.
Many arrived at the beach at the crack of dawn on Saturday to secure good spots on the beach, despite the show not starting until 9.45pm.
Image: An aerial view shows fans gathering on Copacabana beach ahead of Lady Gaga’s arrival. Pic: Reuters
Ana Lara Folador, who attended with her sister, said it was “a dream come true”, and that Gaga had “really shaped a part of my personality, as a person and an artist”.
Ingrid Serrano, a 30-year-old engineer who made a cross-continent trip from Colombia to Brazil to attend the show, turned up in a T-shirt featuring Lady Gaga’s outlandish costumes over the years.
“I’ve been a 100% fan of Lady Gaga my whole life,” she said, adding the 39-year-old megastar represented “total freedom of expression – being who one wants without shame”.
Image: A fan dons an unusual face mask. Pic: AP
Image: A fan strikes a pose. Pic: AP
Matheus Silvestroni, 25, an aspiring DJ and a Gaga fan since the age of 12, endured an eight-hour bus ride from Sao Paulo for the show.
He said it was Gaga who had inspired him to embrace his sexuality and pursue his dream of becoming an artist.
“I was bullied because I was a fat, gay kid, so I was an easy target,” he said. “Gaga was very important because she sent a message that everything was okay with me, I wasn’t a freak, because I was ‘Born This Way’.”
Rio is known for holding massive open-air concerts, with Rod Stewart holding a Guinness World Record for the four million-strong crowd he drew to Copacabana beach in 1994.
Alan Yentob, the former BBC presenter and executive, has died aged 78.
A statement from his family, shared by the BBC, said Yentob died on Saturday.
His wife Philippa Walker said: “For Jacob, Bella and I, every day with Alan held the promise of something unexpected. Our life was exciting, he was exciting.
“He was curious, funny, annoying, late, and creative in every cell of his body. But more than that, he was the kindest of men and a profoundly moral man. He leaves in his wake a trail of love a mile wide.”
Yentob joined the BBC as a trainee in 1968 and held a number of positions – including controller of BBC One and BBC Two, director of television, and head of music and art.
He was also the director of BBC drama, entertainment, and children’s TV.
Yentob launched CBBC and CBeebies, and his drama commissions included Pride And Prejudice and Middlemarch.
Image: Alan Yentob (left) with former BBC director general Tony Hall in 2012. Pic: Reuters.
The TV executive was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the King in 2024 for services to the arts and media.
In a tribute, the BBC’s director-general Tim Davie said: “Alan Yentob was a towering figure in British broadcasting and the arts. A creative force and a cultural visionary, he shaped decades of programming at the BBC and beyond, with a passion for storytelling and public service that leave a lasting legacy.
“Above all, Alan was a true original. His passion wasn’t performative – it was personal. He believed in the power of culture to enrich, challenge and connect us.”
BBC Radio 4 presenter Amol Rajan described him on Instagram as “such a unique and kind man: an improbable impresario from unlikely origins who became a towering figure in the culture of post-war Britain.
Gillian Anderson has warned homelessness is a growing problem in the UK – one that will only get worse if we enter a recession.
The award-winning actress, who is playing a woman facing homelessness along with her husband in her latest film, The Salt Path, told Sky News: “It’s interesting because I feel like it’s even changed in the UK in the last little while.”
Born in Chicago, and now living in London, she explained: “I’m used to seeing it so much in Vancouver and California and other areas that I spent time. You don’t often see it as much in the UK.”
Her co-star in the film, White Lotus actor Jason Isaacs, chips in: “You do now.”
“It’s now becoming more and more prevalent since COVID,” said Anderson, “and the current financial situation in the country and around the world.
“It’s a topic that I think will be more and more in the forefront of people’s minds, particularly if we end up going into a recession.”
Image: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in The Salt Path. Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
The film is based on Raynor Winn’s 2018 memoir, which depicts her and her husband’s 630-mile trek along the Cornish, Devon and Dorset coastline, walking from Minehead, Somerset to Land’s End.
Written from her notes on the journey, The Salt Path went on to sell over a million copies worldwide and spent nearly two years in The Sunday Times bestseller list. Winn’s since written two more memoirs.
Isaacs, who plays her husband Moth Winn in the movie, told Sky News that Winn told him she “hopes [the film] makes people look at homeless people when they walk by in a different light, give them a second look and maybe talk to them”.
With record levels of homelessness in the UK, with a recent Financial Times analysis showing one in every 200 households in the UK is experiencing homelessness, the cost of living crisis is worsening an already serious problem.
Image: Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
The film sees Ray and Winn let down by the system, first by the court which evicts them from their home, then by the council which tells them despite a terminal diagnosis they don’t qualify for emergency housing.
Following the loss of their family farm shortly after Moth’s shock terminal diagnosis with rare neurological condition Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD), the couple find solace in nature.
They set off with just a tent and two backpacks to walk the coastal path.
Isaacs says living in a transient way comes naturally to actors, admitting like his character, he too “lives out of a suitcase” and is “away on jobs often”.
Shot in 2023 across Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Wales, Anderson says as a city-dweller, the locations had an impact on her.
Anderson reveals: “As I’ve gotten older, I have become more aware of nature than […] when I was younger, and certainly in filming this film and being outside and so much of nature being a third character, it did shift my thinking around it.”
Meanwhile, Isaacs says he discovered a “third character” leading the film just the day before our interview, when speaking to Winn on the phone.
Isaacs says the author told him: “I feel like there’s three characters in the film,” going on, “I thought she was going to say nature, but she said, ‘No, that path'”.
Isaacs elaborates: “Not just nature, but that path where the various biblical landscapes you get and the animals, they matter.
“The things that happen on that path were a huge part of their own personal story and hopefully the audience’s journey as well.”
The Salt Path comes to UK cinemas on Friday 30 May.
A weapons supervisor who was jailed for involuntary manslaughter over the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Alec Baldwin movie, Rust, has been freed.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was released on parole from the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility in Grants on Friday, after serving her 18-month sentence, NBC News, Sky’s US partner said, quoting New Mexico Corrections Department spokesperson, Brittany Roembach.
Gutierrez-Reed was released to return home to Bullhead City, Arizona, where she will be on parole for a year for the manslaughter case.
Image: Hannah Gutierrez-Reed in court as she was jailed for 18 months for involuntary manslaughter. Pic: Rex/Shutterstock
Image: Halyna Hutchins pictured in 2017. Pic: Rex/Shutterstock
She was in charge of weapons during the production of the Western film in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in October 2021, when a prop gun held by star and co-producer Alec Baldwin went off during a rehearsal.
Cinematographer Hutchins died following the incident, while director Joel Souza was injured.
Gutierrez-Reed was acquitted of charges of tampering with evidence in the investigation, but will be on probation over a separate conviction for unlawfully carrying a gun into a Santa Fe bar where firearms are banned weeks before Rust began filming.
Image: Alec Baldwin reacts after the judge threw out the involuntary manslaughter case against him. Pic: AP
Involuntary manslaughter means causing someone’s death due to negligence, without intending to.
At her 10-day trial in New Mexico in March last year, prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of Rust and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols.
The 18-month sentence she was given was the maximum available for the offence.
Baldwin, 67, was also charged with involuntary manslaughter, but the case was dramatically dismissed by the judge during his trial last July over mistakes made by police and prosecutors, including allegations of withholding ammunition evidence from the defence.
The actor had always denied the charge, maintaining he did not pull the gun’s trigger and that others on the set were responsible for safety checks on the weapon.
Rust was finished in Montana and released earlier this month, minus the scene they were working on when Hutchins was shot, Souza, speaking at November’s premiere in Poland, said.
Rust is billed as the story of a 13-year-old boy who, left to fend for himself and his younger brother following their parents’ deaths in 1880s Wyoming, goes on the run with his long-estranged grandfather after being sentenced to hang for the accidental killing of a local rancher.