Month: August 2024

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VIENNA, AUSTRIA — The 19-year-old Austrian who masterminded a foiled plot to attack Taylor Swift fans at a concert in Vienna with a bomb or knife had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, authorities said on Thursday.

The main suspect, who has North Macedonian roots, made a full confession in custody, Austria’s general director for public security, Franz Ruf, told a news conference.

He swore loyalty to the IS militant group’s leader on the internet and kept chemicals and technical devices at his home in the town of Ternitz in preparation for an attack, Ruf said.

The 19-year-old, whose name was not given, was planning an attack with an explosive or knife among the estimated 20,000 “Swiftie” fans set to gather outside the stadium, said national intelligence head Omar Haijawi-Pirchner.

“There is currently no information that other concerts are subject to an explicit threat,” he said at the news conference.

Two other Austrian youths, ages 17 and 15, were also detained Wednesday over the foiled plot.

Swift’s three concerts in Vienna, due to start on Thursday for a sold-out audience of 65,000 each, were canceled, to the consternation of fans, many of whom had traveled far.

“It’s just heartbreaking, just frustrating. But at the end of the day, I guess it’s for everyone’s safety,” said Mark del Rosario, who had flown from the Philippines for the show.

U.S. broadcaster ABC cited law enforcement and intelligence sources as saying Austrian authorities had received information about the Swift concert threat from U.S. intelligence.

It cited the sources as saying at least one of the suspects had pledged allegiance to ISIS-K, a resurgent wing of IS, on Telegram in June, although the plot was IS-inspired rather than directed by the group’s operatives.

Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said foreign intelligence agencies helped with the investigation, as Austrian law does not allow monitoring of messenger apps.

Event organizer Live Nation urged fans of Coldplay, which is due to play at the same stadium on August 21, to stay calm and said it was in contact with authorities.

It did not comment on whether the show would take place.

British police said on Thursday there was nothing to indicate that the planned attack in Vienna would have an impact on her shows at Wembley Stadium in London next week.

Past attacks and plots

“Concerts are often a preferred target of Islamist attackers, large concerts,” said Karner, listing the 2015 attack on Paris’ Bataclan venue and the 2017 bombing at the Manchester Arena where U.S. pop star Ariana Grande had played.

The planned attack also recalled a foiled plot by three IS-linked suspects against Vienna’s gay pride parade last year.

Authorities have revamped their national security intelligence in the wake of a 2020 attack by a convicted jihadist in the center of Vienna that left four dead, the first such militant attack in the Austrian capital in a generation.

Swifties disappointed

The shows were to be part of the record-breaking Eras Tour by the American singer-songwriter, which started on March 17, 2023, in Glendale, Arizona, and is set to conclude on Dec. 8, 2024, in Vancouver, Canada.

Swift, 34, has not yet commented on the cancellations on her official Instagram account, which has 283 million followers.

Her fans were horrified at the threat, with some begging organizers to postpone the concert instead of canceling it outright. Promoters have said they will pay back tickets.

“I can’t believe the concert i’ve been waiting for over 10 years is now gone. I don’t think i’ll ever get over this,” wrote one fan on social media.

“As disappointing as not being able to go to this concert is TRUST ME u do not want to experience that,” added another.

Some who had traveled from abroad for the concerts planned to do some sightseeing or hang with friends instead.

“We’ll check out some museums, maybe catch up with a few friends who reside here,” said del Rosario. “But apart from that, maybe look at Swiftie-organized events. To be with fellow fans, you know, share the same pain and just dance it out. As I believe Taylor Swift would want us to have fun.”

One group of local Swifties said they had received permission to still hold tour parties in coordination with local police.
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BARCELONA, Spain — Former Catalonia leader Carles Puigdemont, who fled Spain after organizing an independence referendum in the wealthy Spanish region nearly seven years ago that was declared illegal, returned to the country on Thursday despite a pending arrest warrant.

Puigdemont defiantly appeared in Barcelona after traveling from Belgium and made a speech in front of a large crowd of supporters. He faces charges of embezzlement for his part in the attempt to break Catalonia away from the rest of Spain.

Addressing the crowd, Puigdemont accused Spanish authorities of “a crackdown” on the Catalan separatist movement.

“For the last seven years we have been persecuted because we wanted to hear the voice of the Catalan people,” Puigdemont said. “They have made being Catalan into something suspicious.”

He added: “All people have the right to self-determination.”

The 2017 referendum organized by Puigdemont was declared illegal at the time both by Spain’s central government and the Constitutional Court.

Puigdemont has dedicated his career to the goal of carving out a new country in northeast Spain — a struggle which is decades-old. His largely uncompromising approach has brought political conflict with other separatist parties as well as with Spain’s central government.

Puigdemont appeared in a central Barcelona park where several thousand separatist supporters who had gathered in expectation of his arrival waved Catalan flags. He punched the air to cheers on a bright, sunny day.

The event was organized by his political party Together for Catalonia (Junts), hours before a new regional government was to take office nearby.

Local police were deployed in a security ring around a section of the park where Catalonia’s parliament building is located behind walls. Puigdemont, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and tie, walked toward the building followed by masses of supporters.

Puigdemont had earlier announced publicly he was going back to Spain, though he gave no travel details.

Puigdemont’s presence in Spain is likely to generate renewed political tension over the smoldering issue of Catalan independence. The failed secession attempt triggered a protracted constitutional crisis.

It wasn’t immediately clear how authorities would proceed if Puigdemont was arrested.

A contentious amnesty bill, crafted by Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government, could potentially clear Puigdemont and hundreds of other supporters of Catalan independence of any wrongdoing in the illegal 2017 ballot.

But the bill, approved by Spain’s parliament earlier this year, is being challenged by the Supreme Court, which argues the pardon does not apply to embezzlement, unlike other crimes that Puigdemont had previously been charged with. Puigdemont could be placed in pretrial detention.

The former Catalan leader’s return threatened to complicate a deal brokered after months of deadlock between Salvador Illa’s Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and the other main Catalan separatist party and left-wing Esquerra Republicana (ERC).

That deal had ensured just enough support in Catalonia’s parliament for Illa to become the next regional president in an investiture debate Thursday.
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LONDON — Far-right demonstrations that had been anticipated by police in dozens of locations across Britain failed to materialize Wednesday as peaceful anti-racism protesters instead showed up in force.

Police had prepared for another night of violence at 100 locations following a week of rioting and disorder fueled by misinformation over a stabbing attack against young girls. Many businesses had boarded up windows and closed down in fear of what lay ahead.

Stand up to Racism and other groups had planned counter-protests in response, but in most places they reclaimed their streets with nothing to oppose.

In London, Bristol, Oxford, Liverpool and Birmingham, large, peaceful crowds gathered outside agencies and law firms specializing in immigration that had been listed by internet chat groups as possible targets of far-right activity. 

In resounding choruses they chanted: “Whose streets? Our streets!”

It was a vast change from the chaos that has erupted on streets throughout England and Belfast, Northern Ireland, since July 30.

Cities and towns have been wracked by riots and looting for the past week as angry mobs, encouraged by far-right extremists, clashed with police and counter-demonstrators. The disturbances began after misinformation spread about the stabbing rampage that killed three girls in the seaside community of Southport, with social media users falsely identifying the suspect as an immigrant and a Muslim.

Rioters spouting anti-immigrant slogans have attacked mosques and hotels housing asylum-seekers, creating fear in Muslim and immigrant communities. In recent days, reports have emerged of violent counterattacks in some areas.

The head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service said earlier Wednesday that officers were focused on protecting immigration lawyers and services. In addition to thousands of officers already deployed, about 1,300 specialist forces were on standby in case of serious trouble in London.

“We’ll protect those people,″ Commissioner Mark Rowley said. “It is completely unacceptable, regardless of your political views, to intimidate any sector of lawful activity, and we will not let the immigration asylum system be intimidated.”

By early late evening, though, with the exception of scattered disturbances and some arrests, trouble had not erupted. 

A crowd of immigrant supporters that quickly grew to several hundred in the London neighborhood of North Finchley found themselves largely alone with several dozen police officers.

The crowd chanted “refugees welcome” and “London against racism.” Some held signs saying, “Stop the far right,” “Migration is not a crime” and “Finchley against Fascism.” 

At one point, an unruly man who had been shouting at the group and pulling his shirt up to show off an eagle tattoo was punched by a protester. He was led away by someone and officers questioned a possible suspect. 

Outside an immigration center in the Walthamstow area in east London, an anti-racism protest leader barked “fascist scum” to which a crowd of hundreds responded: “off our streets.”

In Liverpool, hundreds showed up to defend the Asylum Link immigration center. A grandmother held a placard reading “Nans Against Nazis” and someone else held a sign saying, “When the poor blame the poor only the rich win.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has described the previous disturbances as “far-right thuggery,” rejecting any suggestion that the riots were about the government’s immigration policies. He has warned that anyone taking part in the violence would “face the full force of the law.”

Police have made more than 400 arrests and are considering using counter-terrorism laws to prosecute some rioters. The government has pledged to prosecute those responsible for the disorder, including those who use social media to incite the violence.

Among the first to be sentenced was Derek Drummond, 58, who received three years in prison after admitting to violent disorder and punching a police officer in the face in Southport on July 30. He was one of three men jailed after their cases were heard Wednesday at Liverpool Crown Court.
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Following last week’s prisoner exchange between Russia and Western nations, several of the political prisoners released by Moscow have arrived in Germany, historically a refuge for Russians fighting for change in their homeland. Marcus Harton narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in Berlin.
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GENEVA — Soaring temperatures in July have had detrimental effects on the well-being of hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have found the monthlong extreme heat too hot to handle, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

“The extreme heat, which continued throughout July after a hot June … has had really, really devastating impacts on communities, on people’s health, on ecosystems, also on economies,” WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis told journalists Tuesday in Geneva.

“Extreme heat has a domino effect across society,” she said, noting that the world’s hottest day on recent record was registered on July 22. “All of this is really yet another unwelcome indication, one of many, of the extent that greenhouse gases from human activities are, in fact, changing our climate.”

WMO data show widespread, intense and extended heat waves have hit every continent in the past year and global average temperatures have set new monthly records for 13 consecutive months from June 2023 to June 2024.

“At least 10 countries in the past year have recorded daily temperatures of more than 50 degrees Celsius [122 degrees Fahrenheit] in more than one location,” Nullis said. “You can well imagine this is too hot for the body to handle.”

WMO reports that Death Valley in California, considered to be the hottest place on Earth, registered an average monthly temperature of 42.5 degrees Celsius (108.5 degree Fahrenheit) at Furnace Creek, “which is a record for the site and possibly the world.”

WMO normally does not measure monthly temperature records. But Randall Cerveny, chief rapporteur for the WMO’s committee for evaluating climate and weather extremes, said ”the record appeared to be reasonable and legitimate.”

While human-induced activity is largely responsible for the long-term warming trend, meteorologists cite above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica as another contributing factor.

According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, this has resulted in anomalies of more than 10-degrees Celsius above average in some areas, and above-average temperatures in parts of the Southern Ocean.

WMO climate expert Alvaro Silva said two consecutive heat waves that hit Antarctica over the last two years have contributed to record global temperatures.

“The reason is still under research, but it seems to be related with the daily sea ice extent,” he said, noting the Antarctic daily sea ice extent in June 2024 “was the second lowest on record. … This follows the lowest extent that we have in Antarctica in terms of sea ice in 2023.”

Sea ice extent is the surface area of ice covering an ocean at a given time.

Speaking from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, Silva provided a sobering regional overview of the heat waves and extreme heat events, which are contributing to record global temperatures.

He observed that July was the warmest on record in Asia, while in Africa, he cited record-breaking temperatures in Morocco as having had “an important impact in terms of human health and deaths.”

He said intense heat waves in southern and southeastern Europe have “caused casualties and severe impacts on health.” At the same time, he pointed out that the fallout of heat waves in North America have been quite severe, noting that on August 1, “more than 160 million people, about half of the United States population, were under heat alert.”

WMO officials say evidence of our rapidly warming planet underscores the urgency of the Call to Action on Extreme Heat initiative launched by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres July 25.

In issuing this call, the U.N. chief warned that “Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere” and this was posing an increased threat to “our socio-economic and environmental well-being.”

WMO officials also stressed the importance of adaptation to climate change as a lifesaving measure, noting that recent estimates produced by WMO and the World Health Organization indicate the global scale-up of heat-health-warning systems for 57 countries alone “has the potential to save an estimated 98,000 lives per year.”

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said bolstering heat early warning systems in line with her agency’s Early Warnings for All Initiative would ensure at-risk populations receive timely alerts so they can take “protective actions.”

But, she emphasized, climate adaptation alone is not enough.

“We need to tackle the root cause and urgently reduce greenhouse gas levels, which remain at record observed levels.”
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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey on Wednesday filed a request with a U.N. court to join South Africa’s lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, the foreign minister said. 

Turkey’s ambassador to the Netherlands, accompanied by a group of Turkish legislators, submitted a declaration of intervention to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. 

With the development, Turkey, one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s actions in Gaza, becomes the latest nation seeking to participate in the case. Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua and Libya have also asked to join the case, as have Palestinian officials. The court’s decision on their requests is still pending. 

“We have just submitted our application to the International Court of Justice to intervene in the genocide case filed against Israel,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan wrote on the social media platform X. “Emboldened by the impunity for its crimes, Israel is killing more and more innocent Palestinians every day.” 

“The international community must do its part to stop the genocide; it must put the necessary pressure on Israel and its supporters,” he said. “Turkey will make every effort to do so.” 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Israel of genocide, called for it to be punished in international courts and criticized Western nations for backing Israel. In May, Turkey suspended trade with Israel, citing its assault on Gaza. 

In contrast to Western nations that have designated Hamas a terrorist organization, Erdogan has commended the group, calling it a liberation movement. 

South Africa brought a case to the International Court of Justice late last year, accusing Israel of violating the genocide convention through its military operations in Gaza. 

Israel has strongly rejected accusations of genocide and has argued that the war in Gaza is a legitimate defensive action against Hamas militants for their October 7 attack in southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people and in which 250 hostages were taken. 

If admitted to the case, the countries who joined would be able to make written submissions and speak at public hearings. 

Preliminary hearings have already been held in the genocide case against Israel, but the court is expected to take years to reach a final decision. 

“No country in the world is above international law,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said on X earlier. “The case at the International Court of Justice is extremely important in terms of ensuring that the crimes committed by Israel do not go unpunished.” 

Keceli also called for the immediate implementation of precautionary measures ordered by the court, including a halt to military offensives and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza. 

Since Erdogan took power in 2003, former allies Turkey and Israel have experienced a volatile relationship, marked by periods of severe friction and reconciliation. The war in Gaza has disrupted the most recent attempts at normalizing ties.
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