The week at a glance...Europe

London

Soldier hacked to death: In what Home Secretary Theresa May called a “sickening and barbaric attack,” two men armed with knives and cleavers murdered a British soldier in broad daylight this week outside a London barracks. “These two guys were crazed, they were not there, they were just animals,” a witness said. “They were hacking at him, chopping him, cutting him.” Witnesses said the alleged perpetrators lingered at the scene for 20 minutes, even asking passersby to take their pictures, until police arrived and shot them. Prime Minister David Cameron said there were “strong indications” that the killing was a terrorist incident. One of the suspects was captured on video saying, “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”

Paris

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Public suicide: A far-right activist shot himself in the head at the altar of Notre-Dame Cathedral this week in front of hundreds of horrified tourists. Dominique Venner, 78, had been a leading voice against gay marriage and Muslim immigration and was once a member of a paramilitary group that opposed Algerian independence. In his last blog post, he told his readers to use next week’s planned protest against gay marriage to denounce the Islamicization of France. “There certainly have to be new actions, spectacular and symbolic, to shake up the sleepiness, to wake up the memory of our origins,” he wrote. Right-wing politician Marine Le Pen was criticized for tweeting her support for Venner’s “highly political gesture to try to awaken the people of France.”