PARIS, January 20 -- France in flames: 84,000 Yellow Vest protesters take to the streets across six cities as they attack a bank and riot beside Napoleon's tomb in Paris on the TENTH weekend of demonstrations.
In Paris, some demonstrators carried mock coffins symbolising the 10 people who have died during the protests, mainly due to accidents when demonstrators blocked roads. Macron has launched a series of national debates to help quell public discontent and restore his standing. However, Angers member of parliament Matthieu Orphelin, a member of Macron's ruling 'Le Republique En Marche!' party, said he would cancel talks with members of the Yellow Vest movement in light of the trouble in Angers. 'It fills me with fury to see our beautiful town attacked in this way, in particular the damage caused to symbols of the Republic,' Orphelin said in a statement.
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PARIS, January 13 -- At least 24 people were injured on Saturday during the ninth round of protests in France, organized by the Yellow Vests movement, the French Interior Ministry said. A total of 22 people were diagnosed with serious injuries. Two people - a riot police officer and a protestor who suffered a heart attack - are in critical condition. The overall number of participants in protests all across France stood at 84,000 people, including some 8,000 who took to the streets of the capital Paris. The French capital’s police department said that 240 people were detained in France on Saturday. Some 200 of them were placed in custody. The protests, which have traditionally taken place on Saturdays, were organized in the country’s biggest cities - Paris, Marseille, Strasbourg, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse and Bordeaux. Clashes with police were reported in some of them, including Paris and Bordeaux. According to the BFM TV channel, today’s day of protest, just like the previous one held on January 5, was marred "by a series of protesters’ attacks on journalists." During the protest in Rouen, journalists of the LCI news channel were attacked. A TV crew of BFM was attacked in Paris. Since mid-November, France has been gripped by street riots over skyrocketing fuel prices, growing taxes and soaring living costs. The demonstrations spiraled into clashes with the police and a protest against the country’s leadership, whom protestors accuse of ineffective government and taking insufficient measures to fight poverty. Despite certain concessions made by the authorities, like cut taxes and wage hikes, the Yellow Vests are pledging to carry on these rallies. According to Agence France Presse, the nine weeks of protests claimed the lives of ten people, more than 1,600 received injuries of varying degrees. Analysts give conflicting forecasts regarding the tenth round of protests, because nationwide debates, intended to produce a realistic response to demands of Yellow Vests, are expected to begin soon. The debates were organized on the initiative of the country’s President Emmanuel Macron. On Monday, the French leader is expected to publish an open letter to the country’s citizens, in which he is expected to express his vision of the upcoming discussion and will call on the public to actively engage in it. PARIS, January 12 -- Thousands of French citizens launch protests gainst President Emmanuel Macron policies for the ninth weekend in a row. Yellow Vests protesters congregated at different points in France, for the ninth Saturday of demonstrations, against the austerity policies of President Emmanuel Macron. After last week's riots, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez elected to deploy a large group of police personnel, with some 80,000 agents mobilized across the country; 5,000 of them in Paris. In the early hours of Saturday, the Avenue des Champs Elysees, in Paris, had already been separated by a fence which ran from one side of the roadway to the next. The authorities have been forced to divert traffic to streets around the Republic Square and the North Station. Several demonstrators were acosted by the riot police in front of the Ministry of Economy and Finance. The Yellow Vests also arranged a meeting in Bourges, a small town in the center of France, to facilitate the participation of protesters coming from lesser populated provinces. Minister Nunez, through his Twitter account, warned that there would be "zero tolerance" for rioters. "If there are excesses, either in Paris or anywhere in France, we will give them an extremely firm response," the minister said. PARIS, January 5 -- For an eigth weekend yellow vest protesters have converged on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. They remain outraged at the cost of living and President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies. Saturday began peacefully but degenerated later in the afternoon. Protesters hurled missiles at riot police barricading bridges over the Seine river and torched rubbish bins. Officers fired tear gas to prevent hundreds of yellow vests crossing the river and reaching the National Assembly. One riverboat restaurant was set ablaze and a policeman wounded when he was struck by a bicycle hurled from a street above the riverbank. In December Paris experienced its worst unrest in more than fifty years - a hundred cars were torched and the Arc de Triomphe vandalised. That led to some concessions by the government over controversial fuel tax rises, but on Friday it dismissed the yellow vests as agitators whose only goal was to topple President Macron. This weekend some of the protesters were told by organisers to leave their yellow vests at home to better evade the police. An estimated 25,000 took to the streets nationwide in what was dubbed Act VIII, BFM TV reported, barely 10 percent of the number in the first weeks of protests but higher than last week. All week I was nervous, making sure I ran all my new-migrant errands (get cheap winter clothes, take advantage of free tourism) before the streets went loopy. That Saturday, I locked myself in the house, watching the news on YouTube, waiting to hear screams and explosions. This wasn't the Paris I had been expecting. Protests can be deeply traumatic. Memories of chaos, violence, arrests and blood. I was ready to be PTSD’d out of my mind, but the French have a different approach. For one thing, we had almost a week’s advanced notice: on a Monday, the gilets jaunes were announcing demonstrations for that Saturday. That gave everyone, including the authorities, the chance to prepare.
I only heard the wind between the trees in front of my window. Maybe I was overreacting a bit. How could I not be, after all we went through? I arrived in France four weeks ago, without a clue about the riots that were just around the corner. After going through the traveling stress, the Parisian air was extremely refreshing; the beauty of its architecture, the colorful cafés, the underground tunnels, it all invites you to an adventure where you can actually explore your environment in less hostile fashion. Or so it was, before Paris caught on fire. Third wave exiles face a real challenge in seeing other nation’s problems as something we need to be concerned about. You’d imagine that, with riots in the capital, walking the streets would be out of the question, with everything closed as the state of emergency passes. Well, Paris is the first tourist destination in the world and, regardless of chaos, hundreds of shops, museums and restaurants are always ready to meet the demand. In my case, demonstrations determined whether you’d even leave your house that day; here, the protest is reduced to specific sectors, and life flows around it. In the second week of unrest, for example, some friends and I decided to go on a cruise party on the Seine. You know, buffet, bachata classes (for some reason the French think Latinos love it) and two areas for dancing until four in the morning, for just ten euro's, quite sweet when you come from a place where night clubs have no running water. We’d have to cross Paris from east to west, so you bet I was bracing for winter, but we didn't see any warning sign during the whole trip. What you see on TV? Not even a distant scream for us. There were only three closed metro stations, and the train just passed through them. The only real problem we faced was my Finnish friend who couldn't stop throwing up. The streets were calm and we walked like you would on any other day. Even the attitude of the police is super odd for the amateur spectator; at the beginning of the clashes, they tried to be as restrained as possible--demonstrators could flood the streets around the Arch of Triumph and shout without facing a single cop. It’s like, only the presidential palace was really protected. It took the Gilet jeunes’ violence for them to actually launch tear gas; many criminals use protests as a pretext to go on gang-stuff, from generating fires, to destroying luxury stores where losses reach millions of euro's. When that began, the police got really touchy, but one thing is for sure: No weapons were used, with live or rubber ammo. It’s just tear gas and water for crowd control. All of this is happening because the French government levied a new carbon tax, provoking a rise in a fuel price that was already expensive. Filling the tank of a small car goes for 80 euro's, and if you consider that minimum wage is around 1,400 euro's, you can see how some people are rather annoyed, having to fill their tanks several times a month. So, they protest, but only on Saturdays, and that is super puzzling to your classic demonstrator. See, the dynamic is based on weekly negotiations and waiting for government statements at the end of Fridays. If a satisfactory term isn't reached, the cycle begins again. People literally protest on their free days, the French system doesn't allow them to leave their posts for whatever the reason. ROTTERDAM, December 25 -- The yellow vest movement has spread to several countries around the world who are protesting similar issues. From France, Taiwan, Lebanon to Canada and far beyond:
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