Taylor Swift’s Austria Shows Cancelled After Police Arrest Two Men Plotting Terror Attacks │ Exclaim!
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Austrian federal and state police have taken two men into custody for alleged planned attacks at major events in Vienna, including a run of three sold-out Taylor Swift Eras Tour concerts set to begin tomorrow (August 8) at Ernst Happel Stadium.
UPDATE (8/7, 4:33 p.m. ET): Swift’s three concerts in Austria have now been cancelled, as per a statement from local ticket retailer oeticket and event organizer Barracuda Music. “With confirmation from government officials of a planned terrorist attack at Ernst Happel Stadium, we have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for everyone’s safety,” they wrote, adding that all tickets will be automatically refunded within the next 10 business days.
There are currently no plans to cancel the shows, which will continue with increased security measures — including heavy weapons teams, K-9 units, bomb squads and tactical vehicles — with fans being told to expect delays for extensive visitor and vehicle checks. A police official told reporters that “the concrete danger has been minimized” [via NBC News].
Authorities reportedly discovered chemical substances when one of the suspects — a 19-year-old who allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS after being radicalized online — was taken into custody in Ternitz, with investigators working to determine if the substances could have been utilized to build a bomb. The other man is also said to have a loyalty to the terrorist group, and the pair allegedly had detailed specific plans on how to carry out an attack.
The shows in Austria’s capital city will mark the second to last city of the UK and European leg of the pop star’s culturally seismic concert tour, which is set to return to North America this fall and make its Canadian debut in Toronto with a six-night Rogers Centre stint in November. Last Friday (August 2), an event listing for a seventh concert was added to (and then promptly removed from) Ticketmaster — an incident that has still gone unexplained.
Likewise, many are pointing to Swift’s latest Instagram post as a covert endorsement of Kamala Harris’s bid for US presidency. In the carousel of Warsaw concert photos, one image sees the singer-songwriter joined on stage by what appears to be the politician’s silhouette. (It’s surely just one of her dancers; isn’t the whole point of an endorsement to be overt?)
What’s much less lighthearted and silly is that three children were killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga class at the end of July in Southport, England. When it was reported, that attack — at the hands of a 17-year-old boy from Cardiff — was not being treated as terror-related, but it certainly feels like more than a coincidence for her concerts to be targeted a mere nine days later.
