FRANCE: French police used teargas and water cannon when violence broke out as students demonstrated over prime minister Dominique de Villepin's jobs law yesterday, while his government struggled to defuse the crisis.
Stone-throwing protesters clashed with police at the end of a march by several thousand university and high school students in Paris and later outside the Sorbonne university. A kiosk was set on fire and several shop windows were smashed.
Protests have spread across France since hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out on March 7th against the law, which critics say reduces job protection for young people. The protests have been largely peaceful so far.
Student leaders said 300,000 to 600,000 marched across France and that 64 of the country's 84 universities were hit by the protests. Officials reported 247,500 protesters nationwide.
At least eight riot police were injured at the Sorbonne and several dozen youths, many of them hooded or masked, were arrested by police.
Police fired teargas after 100 students briefly occupied a town hall in the western city of Rennes yesterday. Thousands of students marched in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille and in Bordeaux in the southwest.
The protests could damage Mr Villepin's hopes of running for president in 2007.
He says the law will help reduce unemployment among the young, now running at 22.8 percent, more than twice the overall national rate.
Opinion polls show Mr Villepin's popularity has tumbled during the biggest test of his 10 months in office.
Meanwhile, trade unions plan another action day tomorrow and hope to top the one million protesters they estimated took part in the March 7th protests. Police estimates were half that figure.
With no end in sight to the standoff, ministers have offered six-monthly reviews of the law in an effort to defuse tensions.