Paris police

French authorities are bracing themselves for nationwide protests by agricultural workers scheduled for Monday in Paris. The farmers, dissatisfied with their pay and living conditions, have intensified their demonstrations over the past week, employing highway blockades and causing damage to public property, including government offices.

The 2024 Paris Olympics' opening ceremony will be held on the famed River Seine, taking place outside of a sports venue for the first time in the Games' history. But for the booksellers who have found a centuries-old sanctuary on the riverbanks, that day is all but ceremonious.

Protesters angry after police shot a 17-year-old boy dead set cars and buildings ablaze in Paris suburbs and unrest spread to some other French cities and towns Wednesday night and Thursday morning, despite increased security efforts and the president's calls for calm.

A strong explosion rocked a building in Paris' Left Bank on Wednesday, injuring at least 24 people, igniting a fire that sent smoke soaring over the French capital's monuments and prompting an evacuation of other properties, authorities said. Police were investigating suspicions that a gas leak caused the blast.

France's Senate voted early yesterday to approve a deeply unpopular reform to the country's pension system, hours after demonstrators took to the streets to oppose the cornerstone policy of President Emmanuel Macron's second term in office.

Alamy Photo

French media are reporting that people have been stabbed at a Paris train station and the interior minister says several people were injured before police "rapidly neutralized" the attacker.

Media reports, quoting unnamed police sources, say police opened fire early Wednesday morning on the attacker who was armed with a knife and injured several people.

A modeling agent who was close to disgraced U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead Saturday in his French jail cell, where he was being held in an investigation into the rape and sex trafficking of minors, according to the Paris prosecutor's office.

Protesters arrived in convoys from all over France, intending to enter the city in defiance of government bans determined to prevent any blockade of the capital.
Paris police have banned "freedom convoys" from entering the city this weekend as hundreds of vehicles set out from across France to block the capital.
Police stopped five hundred vehicles trying to enter Paris.

Paris police announced today that they will ban the so-called convoys of freedom, inspired by the protest of drivers against coronavirus restrictions, which paralyzed the Canadian capital Ottawa, AFP reported.

Trudeau says Blockades Organized by Protesters threaten the Canadian Economy

Violence erupted in Paris on Dec. 5 for the second consecutive weekend at a mass protest against a new security law, with demonstrators clashing with police, vehicles set alight and shop windows smashed.