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  1. #1
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    Cool Aussie athletes robbed during fire evacuation at Olympic village

    Aussie athletes robbed during fire evacuation at Olympic village

    By Karen Graham 6 hours ago in Sports

    Rio De Janeiro
    - How much more could possibly go wrong for Australia's Olympic athletes? How about adding a robbery while the team was evacuated from their building because of a fire in the basement.

    According to Australian news outlet 9News, "at least three laptops and other personal possessions" were found missing after the athletes returned to their quarters following a fire evacuation at the Olympic Village on Friday.

    Australian Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Tancred told news reporters on Sunday that several laptop computers and a number of personal items, including team shirts were taken. “We did lose some shirts and a couple of laptops, one on the fifth floor from a cycling official and one in the office downstairs," he said.




    Banners of Australia are displayed at the apartments for the Australian Olympic team during the opening
    ceremony of the Olympic Village in Rio de Janeiro, on July 24, 2016
    Yasuyoshi Chiba, AFP/File

    The Olympic Village is a "no-smoking" venue. The fire was started in a rubbish bin in the basement car park. It appears a cigarette was tossed by a worker into the rubbish bin, sparking the fire.

    About 100 team members evacuated the building for about 30 minutes on Friday, and this is when the robberies occurred. But the robberies weren't the real zinger in the whole incident. The building's fire alarms had been turned off.

    The only thing that alerted the Australian team to a fire was the smoke filling the hallways and stairwells of the building. Members went door to door, knocking and warning people to get out of the building. Veteran shooter Warren Potent said later he slept through the scare, not hearing the knocking or phone calls.

    “Obviously, that is completely unacceptable that a) the fire alarm was disabled and b) that if it had to be, that we weren’t warned about that,” Australian chef de mission Kitty Chiller told reporters on Saturday.

    Bleacher Report
    is saying workers turned off the fire alarm system in the Australian building while they were working on maintenance of a building next door. It is not known at this time why it was necessary to turn off the fire alarms in the Australian building. Nor only that, but no one from the Aussie team was notified, leaving the question: Was this done on purpose?

    The Australian Olympics Committee has since installed elected fire wardens and security on each of the 18 floors of the building. This latest incident has raised serious concerns as to whether Brazil is up to hosting the Olympic Games.




    Australia Olympic Team

    The Sun's Oliver Harvey even went so far as to describe this year's Olympics as the "most shambolic Games ever. But Chiller says, “There was no point in laying blame or saying ‘could have or should have’ at that point last night." In just a few more days, the Olympic Games will begin, but with all that has gone on, will the athletes be at the peak of performance?

    Aussie athletes robbed during fire evacuation at Olympic village

  2. #2
    Senior Member European Knight's Avatar
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    Islamic State’s Portuguese posts spark terror fears at Rio 2016 Olympics

    IS suggests taking inspiration from 1972 Munich attacks; USA steps in to help Brazil in identifying threats.

    Written by Simon Romero , Michael Schmidt | Rio De Janeiro | Published:August 3, 2016 12:56 am


    Soldiers patrol the airport in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday as athletes arrive for the Rio Olympics, which begin on Friday. (Source: AP)


    Worried about possible terrorist attacks at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s government is working closely with American law enforcement and intelligence services to identify threats and thwart potential disasters at the Games.

    Despite its notorious battles with violent crime, Brazil has largely been spared the kind of brazen terrorist attacks that have rattled much of the world in recent years, with Brazilian officials long playing down the nation’s vulnerability to homegrown extremism.

    But jihadists are calling for mayhem at the Olympics, building on a wave of killings in Europe, the United States and elsewhere over the last year, including the massacre of 130 people in Paris and “lone wolf” attacks inspired by the Islamic State, that has raised broad fears about Brazil’s security preparations for the Games.

    American officials have been training Brazilian antiterrorism units on chemical and biological attacks. They are helping to identify soft targets like restaurants, night clubs and shopping malls that are away from well-guarded Olympic sites. And they have been working for many months to train Brazilian law enforcement and military personnel at large American sporting events, including the Super Bowl in February.

    The co-operation reflects a notable thaw in ties after the anger in 2013 over American surveillance of Brazil’s political leaders by the National Security Agency. And the shift came into sharp relief last month, when Brazilian investigators revealed that the F.B.I. had helped them identify and track several of the 10 men arrested on suspicion of planning attacks for a Brazilian Islamist militant group called the Defenders of Shariah.

    “The Americans are playing a key role in homing in on areas that we need to examine,” said Rafael Brum Miron, a prosecutor in the southern city of Curitiba. “I don’t know how the F.B.I. got their intelligence, but it turned out to be a very valuable lead.”

    Fears of terrorism are common before any Olympics. But the frequency of recent attacks around the world — and Brazil’s relative inexperience in grappling with terrorism — have led to a sense of urgency in Rio.

    For weeks, the Islamic State has been translating its core propaganda into Portuguese and advertising that it needs Portuguese speakers, in what analysts fear is an attempt to recruit and create a network in Brazil to strike around the Olympics.

    Jihadist outlets have been increasing calls for attacks. On July 19, a channel titled “Inspire the Believers!” on Telegram, an encrypted phone app, advised that “Lone Wolf from anywhere in the world can move to Brazil now. Visas and tickets and travel to Brazil will be very easy to get in sha Allah.”

    The channel then went on to offer 17 suggestions for attacks around the Olympics, mentioning American, British, French and Israeli visitors as targets. It noted that attackers could drop “poisons or medicines” into food and drinks, or use “toy drones with small explosives,” according to SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist communications channels.

    1972 Games massacre

    The same channel had already suggested taking inspiration from the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics. Such messages come on the heels of the founding of a new group in Brazil, claiming to be made up of Brazilians, that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. About a year and a half ago, the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which has taken the lead in protecting American athletes abroad, expanded its footprint in Rio to begin preparing for the Games. The Brazilians have managed big international sporting events before, including the 2014 World Cup. Still, what the bureau initially found was a bit troubling, as it quickly identified several soft spots in Brazil’s security, according to senior American officials.

    The Brazilians appeared to have little training in how to deal with attacks involving biological or radiological materials. Brazilian counterterrorism operations also seemed to lack enough agents, while security experts argued that legislation to detain and prosecute suspects on terrorism charges lacked teeth.

    The United States offered training to the Brazilians, who were more open to American help than from recent Olympic hosts like Russia and China. Dozens of Brazilian officials, law enforcement officers and military personnel flew to the United States. Several attended events like the Super Bowl and the United States Open golf tournament to observe how the United States manages security at such high-profile contests.

    Still, some American officials worried that Brazil was not taking the threat seriously enough. Trying to avoid taking sides in foreign conflicts, including those in the Middle East, has been a pillar of Brazilian foreign policy. Some political leaders here contend that doing so could make Brazil a target for Islamist militant groups.

    But the assessment of Brazil’s vulnerability began to change around the end of last year, American officials and Brazilian security analysts said, as the Islamic State continued to show that it could carry out and inspire attacks in different parts of the world.

    In March, President Dilma Rousseff signed antiterrorism legislation that enhanced the government’s authority to arrest and jail people suspected of planning attacks. Human rights groups criticized the law as being too broad, but Ms. Rousseff, a leftist who was imprisoned as a youth over her involvement in a guerrilla group resisting the military dictatorship, signed the law despite fears that it could be used to infringe on civil liberties.

    “There is increasing awareness in Brazil of the threat of terrorism, and we are pleased that Brazil passed a new counterterrorism law in March,” said Liliana Ayalde, the American ambassador to Brazil. “The legislation has opened up new channels of cooperation between our two governments.”

    Islamic State?s Portuguese posts spark terror fears at Rio 2016 Olympics | The Indian Express

  3. #3
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    Brazil Arrests Terror Cell Ahead of Olympic Games

    Cooperating with the U.S., Brazil beefs up counter-terror forces after police arrested an ‘amateur’ cell of 12 terrorists planning an attack.

    Thu, August 4, 2016



    Brazil has enhanced its security cooperation on counter-terrorismwith the United States ahead of the Olympic Games, which begin in Rio de Janeiro Friday, August 5.

    Brazilian police have been training alongside the FBI and specialized American counter-terrorism units in order to ensure the country is prepared for the security challenges of the games. Brazil has so far not suffered any major terrorist threat and, as a consequence,its security forces were underprepared for the scale of the Olympics, which jihadist groups have threatened to attack.

    Dozens of Brazilian officials flew to the United States to train with American forces and to observe how the U.S. guards major sporting events such as the Super Bowl, according to the New York Times.

    In late July, Brazilian counter-terror police arrested a cell of 12 would-be terrorists who were plotting to mount an attack against the games, as reported by CNN. Ten were reportedly arrested initially followed by two later arrests.

    Police were able to catch the cell by monitoring communications on the messaging service WhatsApp. The group called itself the "Defenders of the Shariah."

    "It was an amateur cell without any planned preparation,” Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes said of the cell.

    The group reportedly attempted to purchase weapons online, something Moraes said no professional group would do and had not got beyond the early planning stage when they were arrested.

    The arrests followed the discovery of an Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL) affiliated group in Brazil also in July, which was disseminating ISIS propaganda using the encrypted messaging service Telegram.

    One such message distributed by the group read, "Lone Wolf from anywhere in the world can move to Brazil now. Visas and tickets and travel to Brazil will be very easy to get inshallah."

    Another message read, "If the French police cannot stop attacks on its territory, training given to the Brazilian police will not do anything."

    Brazil Arrests Terror Cell Ahead of Olympic Games

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