Almost 1M in France protest over Macron’s pension reform plans
PARIS — Police were out in force across France on Saturday as protesters held a sometimes restive fourth round of nationwide demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to reform the country’s pension system.
Over 960,000 people marched in Paris, Nice, Marseille, Toulouse, Nantes and other cities, according to the Interior Ministry. Protesters hoped to keep up the pressure on the government to back down, and further action is planned for Thursday.
In the French capital, authorities counted some 93,000 participants, the most to demonstrate in Paris against the pension changes since the protests started in January.
The weekend demonstrations drew young people and others opposed to the pension proposals who weren’t able to attend the previous three days of action, all held on weekdays.
This time, though, rail worker strikes did not accompany the demonstrations, allowing trains and the Paris Metro to run Saturday. However, an unexpected strike by air traffic controllers meant that up to half of flights to and from Paris’ second largest airport, Orly, were canceled Saturday afternoon.
French lawmakers began a rowdy debate last week on the pension bill to raise the minimum retirement age for a full state pension from 62 to 64. It’s the flagship legislation of Macron’s second term.
Saturday’s protests featured flashes of unrest. One car and several trash bins were set on fire on a central Parisian boulevard as police charged the crowd and dispersed protesters with tear gas. Paris police said officers arrested eight people for infractions ranging from possession of a firearm to vandalism.
The president has called the reforms “indispensable” for ensuring the long-term survival of the country’s pension system and noted that workers in neighboring countries retire years later.
Emmett Till lawsuit: A relative of Emmett Till is suing to try to make a Mississippi sheriff serve a 1955 arrest warrant on a white woman in the kidnapping that led to the Black teenager’s lynching.
The torture and killing of Till in the Mississippi Delta became a catalyst for the civil rights movement after his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago.
Last June, a team doing research at the courthouse in Leflore County, Mississippi, found an unserved 1955 arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant.
Till’s cousin, Patricia Sterling of Jackson, Mississippi, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the current Leflore County sheriff, Ricky Banks. The suit seeks to compel Banks to serve the warrant on Carolyn Bryant, who has since remarried and is named Carolyn Bryant Donham.
Till, who was 14, had traveled south from Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi in August 1955. Donham accused him of making improper advances on her at a grocery store in the small community of Money. A cousin of Till who was there has said Till whistled at the woman, an act that flew in the face of Mississippi’s racist social codes of the era.
Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him.
Now in her late 80s, Donham has lived in North Carolina and Kentucky in recent years. She has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that on his order a U.S. warplane shot down an unidentified object that was flying high over northern Canada, acting a day after U.S. planes took similar action over Alaska.
Shortly before Trudeau’s tweet, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said it had detected an object flying at high altitude over Canada. NORAD gave no further information, including when the object was first spotted or what it was.
A spokesman, Maj. Olivier Gallant, said both Canadian and U.S. warplanes operating as part of NORAD had been deployed.
The object was the third known to have violated North American airspace in
Canada aerial object:
the past two weeks.
The mayor of Canada’s largest city has stepped down after acknowledging he had an affair with a former staffer.
Toronto Mayor John Tory said at a late Friday night news conference that he developed a relationship with an employee in his office.
The 68-year-old was known as a straight-laced, moderate conservative — almost the polar opposite of Rob Ford, the previous mayor whose term was plagued by scandals involving public drinking and illegal drug use.
Calling the affair “a serious error in judgment on my part,” Tory said it “came at a time when Barb, my wife of 40-plus years, and I were enduring many lengthy periods apart while I carried out my responsibilities during the pandemic.”
Toronto mayor resigns:
Pakistan lynching: Hundreds of Muslims descended
on a police station in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province Saturday, snatched a blasphemy suspect from his cell and took him outside and lynched him, police said.
Senior police officer Babar Sarfaraz Alpa said a man identified only as Waris had been in police custody for desecrating pages of a copy of Islam’s holy book, the Quran. He said Waris pasted images of himself, his wife and a knife on several pages of the book, displayed them and threw them about in the rural district of Nankana.
Charges of blasphemy carry the death penalty under Pakistani law.
International and Pakistani rights groups say accusations of blasphemy have often been used to intimidate religious minorities and settle personal scores.
Oscar winner dies: Hugh Hudson, a British filmmaker who debuted as a feature director with the Oscar-winning Olympics drama “Chariots of Fire” and later made
such well-regarded movies as “My Life So Far” and the Oscar-nominated “Greystoke,” has died at 86.
Hudson’s family issued a brief statement announcing that he died Friday at a London hospital in London “after a short illness.”
A London native, Hudson started out as a documentary editor and producer and also worked in television advertising before finding work in feature films in the late 1970s as a second-unit director on Alan Parker’s “Midnight Express.” In 1981, producer David Puttnam asked Hudson to direct “Chariots of Fire,” which starred Ben Cross and Nigel Havers as British athletes of contrasting religions and backgrounds at the 1924 Olympics.
With its inspirational plot and sentimental theme music by the Greek composer Vangelis, “Chariots of Fire” was a solid commercial success and won four Academy Awards, including best picture and score. Hudson was a nominee for director.