I don't get up to London much any more, but I'm in Paris about 3 times a month for work. I figured the summer tourist season would be prime time for the whacko crowd, but I will not be kept away to appease a few religious nut cases. If it's my time, then it's my time.

My wife and I enjoyed a month in Paris in February and stayed at an airbnb place about 5 minutes from the cathedral. During that time there were nightly high-energy protests going on somewhere outside central Paris (a cop had brutalized a Muslim youth) and NA media managed to report it daily as an ongoing "crisis" in Paris, causing me to have to tell people who emailed me that all was fine. (The only crisis my wife and I personally experienced was when an overhead heater in an outdoor cafes patio stopped working and forced everyone inside.)

Which is to say I agree with you, live your life, be as careful as you feel you need to be, and when your time comes, it comes, so be it. Having said that, I also feel for anyone in any major European city these days who is understandably twitchy. I wish I had an easy solution to suggest that would end the problem of terrorism, but I don't have one.

We cringe every time we hear of this week's latest mass shooting in the USA.

Still not enough to get me to ditch it all and become a hermit in some Himalayan cave.

CBS/AP June 6, 2017, 10:58 AM

Last Updated Jun 6, 2017 11:03 AM EDT


PARIS -- Paris police say a security operation is under way near Notre Dame Cathedral and are urging passers-by to stay away from the area.

The police department tweeted about the operation on Tuesday afternoon but did not provide any details. A police official would not provide further information.

French channel BFM TV reported that a policeman shot a man who tried to assault him. A police source told the Reuters news agency that the man approached the police officer with a hammer.

Large numbers of police cars filled the area on the Ile de Cite island in the River Seine in the center of Paris.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/notre-dame-shooting-paris-police-confirm-incident-warn-public-to-stay-away/

Paris (AFP) - A French police officer shot and injured a man who attacked him with a hammer outside Paris's Notre-Dame cathedral on Tuesday, authorities said.

Police sealed off the area in front of the cathedral, where the attacker lay injured on the ground.

The attack comes with France on high alert for more jihadist strikes after a weekend attack in London, where extremists used a van and knives to crush to death and kill seven people, one of them French.

Authorities in Paris asked the public to stay away from Notre-Dame, one of France's biggest tourist attractions situated on the banks of the Seine river in the heart of the capital.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/police-shoot-injure-attacker-outside-pariss-notre-dame-150332153.html