Police yesterday fired tear gas on high school students who were hurling stones and set a car on fire during nationwide strikes and protests against raising the retirement age.
A few hundred youths and nearly as many police gathered yesterday morning in the Paris suburb of Nanterre at a high school that was closed because of clashes the day before.
The teens started throwing stones from a bridge, and police responded with tear gas and barricaded the area. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries or arrests.
Photo: AFP
Strikes over the government’s plans to raise the retirement age to 62 from 60 disrupted daily life and a wide swath of industry as workers and students took to the streets once again, with filling stations running dry and many flights canceled.
The coordinated protests are the sixth in a series of days of action against French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the pension age to 62, and follow days of strikes, skirmishes and full-blown street marches.
The education ministry said that 379 schools were disrupted by protests yesterday morning, the highest number yet.
“We need to be firm,” French Justice Minister Michele Alliot--Marie told Europe 1 radio. “There are rights, the right to strike, the right to demonstrate. There is no right to smash things up.”
The interior ministry said police on Monday arrested 290 rioters in various towns, and that four police officers had been injured.
Truckers staged go-slows on motorways near Paris and several provincial cities, drivers blocked access to goods supply depots and joined oil workers blocking fuel depots to defend their right to retire at 60.
With production at all France’s oil refineries shut down since last week, fuel shortages have hit more than 2,600 gas stations, or around one in five nationwide, according to an AFP tally of oil industry figures.
French fuel and heating federation FF3C said the “extremely worrying” situation “should definitely be called a shortage.”
“Fuel depots are being taken hostage in a political conflict, fuel is being exploited,” said Michel-Edouard Leclerc, who runs the E.Leclerc network of supermarkets.
“With the current rhythm of deliveries, there will be none left by the end of the week,” he said.
However, the International Energy Agency said France has “sufficient stocks.”
The interior ministry yesterday put a fuel delivery plan for the most affected regions into action, while authorities in the western region of Calvados requisitioned 12 gas stations for use by rescue and emergency services.
Half of flights from Paris Orly airport were to be canceled yesterday and around one in three at the main Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and regional airports.
Slightly over half of express TGV trains were expected to be running, while the Eurostar line under the Channel to London is expected to run normally and nine out of 10 high-speed Thalys connections will run to Belgium.
As well as train workers and truck drivers, postal workers, telephone employees, teachers and sections of the media are also on strike. Garbage collectors in the southern city of Toulouse yesterday joined striking colleagues in Marseille, where rubbish is piling up on the streets.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese