canadians have been asked to stay out of the center of ottawa tonight. it's still very tense around parliament with a major security presence in and around that building as you can imagine. nbc's ron allen there for us tonight. ron, good evening. >> reporter: good evening to you, brian. yes, we are on the edge of parliament hill. the area's still very much in lockdown. you can see up there the flashing lights, a heavy police presence right around the parliament building, the war memorial where earlier today chaos and mayhem in the streets as police descended on the area responding to the reports of gunmen attacking the parliament building. a heavily congested area here in the heart of the nation's capitol. just unbelievable scene. visitors in this area, college campus, mall here still shut down. people are in the streets milling about still trying to comprehend what happened. still a lot of young people here just trying to make sense of why this happened in this capital. police are...

this weekend. >> nightly news is next. >> bye. >>> on our broadcast tonight, shots fired in canada's halls of power. a soldier and suspect both dead. the capital city placed on lockdown. and in this country the fbi put on alert. >>> free and clear, our nbc news cameraman fresh out of the hospital talking with us tonight about surviving ebola. >>> sudden impact, a new warning about those defective airbags. passengers a now being told to stay out of the front seat until it's fixed. >>> and making a difference, in detroit a sanctuary for young people that was in danger of closing until so many of you stepped up. "nightly news" begins now. >>> from nbc news world headquarters in new york, this is "nbc nightly news" with brian williams. >>> good evening. this was an awful day for our northern neighbors in canada and