From the N.Y. Times:
PARIS, Aug. 5 - Britain aside, the response in Europe to the latest announcement of terror threats in the United States has ranged from official calm to unofficial cynicism.Ha-ha-ha! Don't you just love the humor of those Times reporters?
Since the Bush administration raised the terror alert to orange for five financial targets in and around New York and Washington, European governments have left their risk assessments unchanged.
Although British officials have arrested a dozen suspected Islamic militants, the possible links between those arrests and the American terror alerts remain unclear.
And while Germany, France and Britain have all confirmed that they remained on high alert, as they have been since coordinated train bombings in Madrid killed 191 people on March 11, they said their national intelligence services had unearthed nothing to suggest that terror attacks on European soil were more likely than before.
In a measure of how little the latest alerts raised concern in Europe, the European Union's counterterrorism director, Gijs de Vries, remained on vacation.
. . .
Some European counterterrorism experts have said that a highly publicized threat three months ahead of the presidential elections on Nov. 2 needed special scrutiny.
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