TEHRAN (Iran News) He collected eight points in nine rounds.

The Grand Prix took place from October 25 to November 1 in Cap d’Agde, France.

It was a 9-round Swiss system tournament with a time control of 90 min + 30 sec/move.

Sergey Fedorchuk (2685) of Ukraine and Loïc Travadon (2615) of France won silver and bronze repectively with 7/5 points.

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TEHRAN (Iran News) Amir Naderi led Iran with 19 points, while Viktor Viljamaa collected 16 points for Finland.

Iran is scheduled to meet France on Saturday.

The championship is being held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, from July 24 to August 3.

The post Iran to Meet France in 2025 FIVB Boys’ U-19 World C’ship SF appeared first on Iran News Daily.

The flicks are included in the program of three Iranian short films presented at the First Steps Towards the 3 Continents section of the festival along with two more works from Brazil and Senegal, IRNA reported.

“The Rainbow Fish” directed by Farkhondeh Torabi, “Shangoul and Mangoul” by Farkhondeh Torabi and Seid Morteza Ahadi, and “Lili Lili Little Pool” by the late Vajihollah Fard-Moghadam are the short animated films from Iran at the French event, which all have been produced by the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA).

The three stories are full of tenderness and emotion on the theme of the family, whose heroes are made from fabric, wool or paper cut-outs. They show a magical world inspired by Persian traditions.

The First Steps Towards the 3 Continents section offers a selection of films for children ages three and up and their families. This special selection for kids will also be made available to pre-school and primary-school classes in Nantes and throughout the Loire-Atlantique region, with special educational materials.

The IIDCYA is an Iranian institution with a wide range of cultural and artistic activities in the field of mental and cultural development for children and young adults. The organization is the platform through which many of Iran’s most regarded filmmakers and artists, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Morteza Momayez and launched their careers.

The Festival of 3 Continents is underway with a wide range of dramas and documentaries from Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Its program includes some 90 feature films, many of which are premiered at the event.

In addition to the official selection of recent films, the festival hosts a homage to pioneer Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye, a retrospective of prolific Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui, an anthology of Vietnamese cinema covering three decades (1970, 1980, 1990), blockbusters of popular Indian cinema from the 70s and 80s interpreted by superstar actor Amitabh Bachchan, and a program on the theme of memory.

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On Saturday, tens of thousands of angry people took to the streets nationwide to protest against the use of force by French police, arguing that state authorities are refusing to recognize and address the racist approach of the police.

Protesters in the suburbs of Paris, where marginalized communities have long complained of police discrimination, came under attack by officers, with clashes and shuffles breaking out.

The fatal shooting of a teenager with a minority background in Paris in June, which critics described as “execution style”, triggered over a week of violent unrest in the capital Paris and elsewhere.
In Paris, protesters of all ages and walks of society held up placards reading “Stop state violence”, “Don’t forgive or forget” and “The law kills”.

The protesters were heeding a call by the leftist parties in France to take to the streets.

The demonstrators took particular aim at a law passed in 2017, article 435-1 of the internal security code, which expanded the powers of French forces to use firearms and shoot at what they consider to be acts of non-compliance.

Critics have accused the police of widely misusing the new power that they enjoy.

Analysts say there is racism in France, especially if you are a non-white youth, and that article 435-1 has been used by police in a discriminatory fashion against minority groups.

Unions said some 80,000 people joined the protests across France, including 15,000 in Paris.

The latest demonstrations sparked by the controversial fatal police shooting of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old of Moroccan and Algerian descent in late June, have once more raised the question that French police unfairly target ethnic minorities.
While French authorities continue to claim that the national police have no problem with racism, research suggests the opposite.

Data shows that minorities are more than often targeted with discriminatory force during police searches as well as the level of violence against them in comparison with the rest of the population.

All of the victims from at least 16 fatal police shootings during traffic stops that have been recorded in France over the last 18 months have been men who are non-white.

Racism, discrimination, and stop-and-search are part of the racial profiling of many police forces in Western society, experts say.

But when it comes to acknowledging racism within the police ranks, France has a problem of not accepting the facts, which critics say will never pave the way to solving the problem.

After the killing of Merzouk, people took to the streets to protest against police violence and the excessive use of force in France’s poor and multi-ethnic suburbs. The five days of rioting that followed the Merzouk death brought back memories of riots in 2005 that were set off by the electrocution of two teenagers – a Black African and a North African descent – during a police chase.

And yet the Paris police prefect Laurent Nunez has repeatedly denied that French police are systematically racist.

“Yes, it happens that a certain number of police officers use racist language, but you are talking about systemic racism,” Nunez told a Paris city council meeting in July, just a day after telling French media there was no racism in the French police.

While France officially bans the collection of statistics on race and ethnicity, studies have contradicted claims by Nunez and other officials.
Critics say that racism is unfortunately part of the way the French police operate, with racial profiling in identity checks a key element of policing in the French suburbs, where communities of minority backgrounds complain of being neglected.

In a 2017 survey of 5,000 people, France’s civil liberties ombudsman found that 80 percent of people perceived as black or of North African origin said they had been stopped by police in the previous five years, compared to 16 percent of the rest of those surveyed.

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the problem of racial profiling in 2020, admitting that “when you have a skin color that is not white, you are stopped much more. You are identified as part of a problem, and that’s intolerable.”

Examples of notorious police violence over the recent years 

• Nahel Merzouk, 17, shot dead by police at a traffic stop on 27 June 2023 in Nanterre. Video showed the teenager being shot at point-blank range while the vehicle was stationary, contradicting the initial police statement.

• Alhoussein Camara, 19, shot dead at a traffic stop in Angouleme on 14 June 2023. The officer was charged with voluntary homicide.

• Cedric Chouviat, 42, motorbike delivery rider who died in Paris in January 2020 after being held in a chokehold by police during a traffic stop.

• Michel Zecler, 41, music producer, was beaten up and racially insulted by white police officers in Paris on 21 November 2020 for not wearing a face mask during the Covid lockdown. The incident was captured on CCTV, and the four officers involved are awaiting trial, charged with assault.

• Theodore Luhaka, 22, was disabled for life after being sodomised with a police baton during a stop and search on 2 February 2017 in Aulnay-sous-Bois. Three officers are to stand trial for willful violence in January 2024.

• Adama Traore, 24, died in police custody after being pinned to the ground by three officers, following a police chase in Beaumont-sur-Oise on 19 July 2016. Experts concluded he had died of heart failure, aggravated by the use of physical restraint. No charges have been brought against the police and his family continues to campaign for justice.

• Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, were both electrocuted in an electricity sub-station in Clichy-sous-Bois after a police chase on 27 October 2005. Their deaths set off three weeks of rioting. Two police officers who had been accused of failing to help the teens were acquitted in 2015.

On 30 June, Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the United Nations human rights office, said Merzouk’s death and the rioting it sparked was “a moment for [France] to seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement”.

But the French Foreign Ministry responded defensively.

“Any accusation of racism or systemic discrimination in the police force in France is totally unfounded,” it said in a statement.

For political reasons and to attract the votes of the wider population, which is slowly swinging to the right, many politicians also feel the need to defend the police against criticism.

In France, experts say there is a long tradition of the police protecting the government but not the public.

Most observers agree the police are not sufficiently trained, arguing there is no doubt that there are problems within the national police, highlighting problems with training, guidelines, and difficulty passing on information to the public.

Despite the lessons that could have been learned from the 2005 riots, the French police did not reform itself.
That has left minority groups facing the worst level of violence by a police force that is hardening its approach in line with the far-right parties, who support a hardline approach to policing.
The use of force has seen the Yellow Vest uprising, nationwide protests against President Macron’s widely unpopular pension reform measures, as well as simple protests against environmental problems.

Critics argue that being shot to death by police at a routine traffic stop is not something that occurs in a civilized society.

This is essentially institutionalized racism, which without government authorization would be considered criminal.

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According to Niger’s new military officers, the French military forces have been deployed to several West African countries as part of the preparations for a military attack, in coordination with the regional bloc of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), against Niger.

Colonel Amadou Abdramane, a spokesman for Niger’s coup leaders and its new interim government, made the announcement on national television.

In a communique read on state television, the military officers, who ousted President Mohamed Bazoum in late July, also repeated their call for the departure of French troops from Nigerian soil.

The statement by Niger has appealed to “national and international opinion to witness the consequences of this aggressive, underhanded, and contemptuous attitude adopted by France.”

French “military cargo aircraft have enabled large quantities of war material and equipment to be unloaded in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Benin, to name but a few”, Abdramane said.

Relations between Niger and its former colonial power France have soured since Paris declared the new military-installed government as illegitimate.

Critics have accused France of being extremely hypocritical as Paris has previously supported interim governments that have come to power through military coups in various other countries in the region, including Algeria.

Analysts have said that France supports military coups in the continent depending on which French agenda they want to serve.

Amid a wave of anti-French sentiment, the military leaders in Niger have also followed the policies of the coup leaders in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso in seeking to end long-standing military ties with France. Numerous West African countries have accused the French armed forces of playing a destabilizing role in their countries to satisfy France’s economic interests.

When asked about the Nigerian military leaders’ latest remarks on a potential war, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “We do not recognize any legitimacy in the statements of the putschists.”

He refused to directly address the statements made by the Nigerian military that France was deploying troops elsewhere in West Africa as part of a plan to attack Niger.

The main regional bloc, ECOWAS, has imposed sanctions on Niger and activated a so-called standby force for the possible military intervention.

ECOWAS says the use of force would only be a last resort and that it would prefer a peaceful solution to the standoff. The regional bloc remains engaged in ongoing dialogue with Niger to try and find a diplomatic solution.

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, who holds the ECOWAS rotating chairmanship, has recently proposed a nine-month transition back to civilian rule, a measure that would satisfy regional powers. Niger’s junta has previously suggested a three-year timeline to restore order.

At the end of a two-day summit of G20 leaders in India, Macron was questioned on the roughly 1,500 French troops stationed in Niger. The French leader said any decision about their deployment would only be made in coordination with the deposed president.

“If we ever redeploy… I would do so only at the request of President Bazoum,” Macron told a news conference.

Experts believe that since the new leadership in Niger does not want to serve the French economic and colonial agenda, Paris is now leading the calls to push for a military attack.

What France has refused to acknowledge is the mass street protests that have been staged in Niger over the past weeks in support of the interim government.

Over the past seven days alone the people of Niger have been demonstrating and holding sit-ins outside the French military bases demanding that the French forces pack up and go home. It is a clear sign that Nigerians are against the French military presence in their country.

However, those calls have fallen on deaf ears. Paris has so far refused to address the protests or open dialogue with the coup leader’s interim government.

Experts have attributed this to the fact that France gets most of its uranium to run its nuclear power stations from Niger.
If France were to sever its relations with Niger, Paris would lose out on a major source of uranium for its electricity power plants, especially as French households are in vital need of electricity.

The Ukraine war which led to the cut of gas imports from Russia has pushed energy prices in Europe, including France.

The source of this electricity is something that France desperately requires at the moment.

From an economic standpoint, France also maintains its colonial mindset, with 50 percent of Niger’s revenues being deposited into the French treasury. This economic policy

which has been practiced for decades has contributed to high rates of poverty among Niger’s population of about 26 million.

Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is also suffering from a rising inflation rate.

Niger is not the only country in the Francophone West Africa region being forced to hand over 50 percent of its revenues to France.

Several years ago, ECOWAS mulled the idea of forming a common currency, known as eco, to bypass this process.

ECOWAS reached a consensus on the plan before France got involved and sabotaged the entire initiative, as it stood to lose a huge amount of financial income, in particular from the countries that were subject to France’s former colonial rule.

Analysts say this is just one of the reasons why there is so much anti-French sentiment in the West African region.

One of the reasons that military officers ousted President Bazoum was that his government failed to effectively counter militants despite cooperation with France.

Critics warn that military intervention in Niger will not eradicate terrorism in the country. Instead, they say, it will exacerbate the security situation by creating a power vacuum in the country which the terrorists will misuse to wreak more havoc on Niger and beyond.

All the coups in West Africa over the past several years, including Mali, Burkina Faso, and others, were staged with the aim of cutting relations with France.

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France endured a fifth night of violence with hundreds of arrests made following a day when mourners attended the funeral of a teenage boy whose killing by police sparked nationwide unrest and President Macron blamed social media for fueling unrest.

Violent night protests have hit a number of cities across France after Nahel Merzouk, a teenager of North African descent, was shot dead at point-blank range during a traffic stop captured on video.

Despite massive deployment of police forces, armored vehicles, air surveillance, curfews, and bans on demonstrations to end the unrest, more than 700 people were arrested on Sunday night, in what the Interior Ministry said was a provisional count.
On top of the 45,000 officers dispatched to major cities, Special Forces have also spread out nationwide to quell the violence.

On Saturday, the Interior Ministry revealed that French police had arrested more than 1,300 people on the fourth night of unrest. That’s in addition to at least 875 protesters detained on the third night. About 3,000 people have been arrested since Tuesday, according to government figures.

Protesters again clashed with security forces, throwing stones and fireworks and once again setting fire to trash bins.

The flashpoint cities of Marseille and Lyon saw police fighting youths around city centers late into the night.

Footage has also emerged of mass rallies of a peaceful nature with protesters from all walks of society.

The French capital and its suburbs, where some 7,000 officers were out in force, 126 people had been arrested by 1.30 am.

Scores of police vans have also been positioned at the entrance to the town of Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, where the unrest began on Tuesday and quickly spread across the country.

Nahel’s murder has revived long-standing grievances and complaints about racist behavior by police against ethnic-minority communities in France’s low-income suburbs.

After chairing a second emergency meeting with senior officials to discuss the crisis gripping the nation, President Emmanuel Macron criticized social media platforms for provoking what he branded as “copycat violence”.

He also said that state agencies will call on social media platforms to remove the most “sensitive content” and cooperate with the government to identify wanted suspects.

Macron has also canceled a state visit to France’s closest European ally, Germany, in another sign of the major crisis he faces.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin had earlier declared an “exceptional” mobilization of security forces, including paramilitary gendarmes”, to avoid more violent protests.

Extra forces were dispatched to the cities of Lyon, Grenoble and Marseille, which have witnessed war-like scenes. But all the security measures have fallen short of bringing back calm.

Nahel was laid to rest in a private ceremony at a local mosque in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where he had been shot dead by a police officer.

A passenger who was with Nahel on the day of his murder has spoken out to “establish the truth… because there are a lot of lies”.

The eyewitness posted a video on social media detailing how an officer put a gun to Nahel’s head and said, “Don’t move or I’ll put a bullet in your head.” A second officer is said to have told his colleague “Shoot him”.

According to the passenger, both officers struck Nahel with the butts of their weapons, causing him to release his foot from the brake pedal, which led the car to move forward.
He says the second officer then fired his weapon at Nahel, which led him to panic and put his foot on the accelerator.
“I saw him in pain, he trembled,” he says. “We hit a barrier. I was afraid. I got out of the vehicle. And I ran away. I thought they might shoot me. So I ran.”
A prosecutor says the officer’s use of a weapon was not legally justified.
While the Interior Minister has said that the level of violence has been “unacceptable”, the government has declared that all options are on the table, but it has not yet reached the point of declaring a state of emergency.

Asked on French media whether the government could declare a state of emergency, Darmanin said, “Quite simply, we’re not ruling out any hypothesis and we’ll see after tonight what the President of the Republic chooses.”

President Macron has been wary of calling a state of emergency, trying his best to balance the highly sensitive situation in a country where there have already been mass protests and strikes over his controversial pension measures as well as inflation hurting millions of homes.

According to Darmanin, France witnessed a quieter night than before, which he attributed to “the resolute action of the security forces”.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has announced the cancellation of large-scale events across the country.

The unrest has raised concerns abroad, with France hosting a major sports tournament in the autumn and then the Paris Olympic Games in summer 2024.

Recently, France has faced months of anger and, at times, violent demonstrations after Macron pushed through a pension overhaul.

European countries have updated or revised their travel advice, warning tourists to stay away from areas affected by the violence.

The French tourism industry has also expressed concern over the unrest, with hotels and restaurants facing cancellations.

“Our hotel members have suffered a wave of cancellations of reservations in all the territories affected by the damage and clashes,” the main association for hotel and catering industry employers said.

The latest unrest has revived longstanding grievances about policing and racial profiling in France’s low-income and multi-ethnic suburbs.

On Friday, the UN Human Rights office said the killing of a teen from North African descent was “a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement.”

A foreign ministry statement dismissed the allegation as “totally unfounded”.

Events on the ground, over the decades, show there has been widespread police violence and discrimination against minority groups, with critics accusing French police of using indiscriminate force.

“We have to go beyond saying that things need to calm down,” said Dominique Sopo, the head of the campaign group SOS Racisme. “The issue here is how we ensure we have a police force that, when they see blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them and in some cases shoot them in the head.”

Beyond the institutional racism common in many Western police forces, French policing has a more frequent tendency to resort to violence against minority groups, something that has been repeatedly highlighted by international rights human groups. Police truncheons, teargas grenades, rubber bullets, and larger “flash balls” have inflicted extensive physical injuries during demonstrations and left protesters paralyzed for life.

Darmanin has admitted that the images of his killing on social media were “extremely shocking”.

But France saw a record 13 incidents of police killing ethnic minorities in France last year, so this is nothing new.

Racial profiling has been a long-time taboo in France. In November 2005, then French President Jacques Chirac, unable to quell nearly two weeks of civil unrest after two teenagers of African origin were electrocuted while hiding from police, invoked a state of emergency for three months for the first time in 50 years.
Experts say France should have addressed the root cause of the issue then.
Nearly two decades later, the same police racism and violence against minority groups has yet to be addressed.

The post Revolt against racism shakes France appeared first on Iran News Daily.

·     “Cold blood” murder of teenager at a traffic stop sparks outrage

·       Angry protests have expanded across France since Tuesday

·       Rallies turn violent after clashes with security forces

·       Macron postpones Brussels trip to chair second emergency meeting on Friday

·       40,000 officers deployed nationwide to confront protesters

·       UN calls on France to address police violence

Major French cities have been gripped by angry protests and riots after the fatal shooting of a teenage boy of Algerian and Moroccan descent during a routine traffic stop.

In a sign of the surging unrest, 40,000 police officers had been deployed across France on Friday night in comparison with the 4,000 that were mobilized only two days earlier.

On Tuesday, in the western town of Paris, French police opened fire at the teenage boy during traffic stop, fatally shooting him in the chest. The victim has only been identified as Nahel M and died at the scene.

Police initially reported that one officer had shot at the teenager because he was driving his car at him. But that narrative was quickly contradicted by footage that went viral on social media and authenticated by French news agencies.

A lawyer for the boy’s family says, “You have a video that is very clear: a police officer killed a young man of 17 years. You can see that the shooting is not within the rules.”
The lawyer added, “The images clearly showed a policeman killing a young man in cold blood.”

The murder triggered angry protests at police discrimination against ethnic groups. The protesters that began in Nanterre quickly spread nationwide and escalated to heavy clashes with police for three consecutive nights now.

Security forces in riot gear have used violence to crackdown on the protests, including the use of tear gas, batons and firing flash-balls. They were met with a barrage of projectiles. Paris is bracing for more violence.

In north-eastern Paris, security forces fired flash-balls at protesters who were burning rubbish. The crowd responded by throwing bottles.

National police said on Thursday night that officers faced new incidents in Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse and Lille, including fires and fireworks.

In Marseille, France’s second city, police fired tear gas grenades during clashes with youths, the city’s main paper La Provence reported.

Macron had already convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday. On Friday, the French president canceled a planned trip to Brussels and chaired a second emergency meeting to address the growing violence.

Unrest has also been reported in other areas across France, including in the northern cities of Lille and Amiens, along with Dijon in the east and Toulouse in the south.

According to France’s interior ministry, police have arrested 667 people in the latest overnight rallies. The ministry added that the unrest has also left 249 police officers wounded, none of whom have sustained serious injuries. At least 150 people had been arrested following the second night of protests.

Authorities have little hope that their appeals for calm will lead to any form of de-escalation. They have opted for curfews, air surveillance, and halting transport in the capital after 9pm local time as part of efforts to restore calm. Reports say police stations elsewhere have also been targeted.

But the measures and heightened security have done little to deter unrest on Thursday night.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne says “all options” are being reviewed. The government has so far ruled out declaring an emergency.

The murder has fueled long-standing complaints from rights groups of police violence and systemic racism among police agencies against racially mixed suburbs that surround the major cities of France.

According to rights groups, police brutality against Africans and other minority groups is rampant in France, which has a long history of its security forces using deadly force and violence against non-white residents. That, in turn, has led to a huge gap of mistrust between minority groups and French leaders.

With the emergence of mobile phone cameras and social media, it has become easier for the public to establish real facts.

So far in 2023, Tuesday’s killing was the third fatal shooting during traffic stops in France. There were a record 13 similar murders by police last year.

Speaking to France 5 channel in her first media appearance since Tuesday’s murder, Nahel’s mother said, “[the police] didn’t need to kill my son. A bullet? So close to his chest? No, no,” the single mother told the channel in tears.

The officer “saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life,” she said.

“How long is this going to go on for? How many other children are going to go like this? How many mothers will find themselves like me?” she added.

“We are sick of being treated like this. This is for Nahel, we are Nahel,” two young men calling themselves “avengers” told the Guardian. One said his family had lived in France for three generations, but “they are never going to accept us”.

The United Nations has called on France to address deep issues of racial discrimination in its police and address the use of force by its security forces.

“We are concerned by the killing of a 17-year-old of North African descent by police in France on Tuesday,” UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a media briefing in Geneva.

“This is a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement. We also emphasize the importance of peaceful assembly. We call on the authorities to ensure use of force by police to address violent elements in demonstrations always respects the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, precaution and accountability.

“Any allegations of disproportionate use of force must be swiftly investigated.”

In December, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination voiced its own deep concerns about the frequent use in France of identity checks, discriminatory stops, and criminal fixed fines that the committee said disproportionately targeted members of certain minority groups.

French celebrities, including footballers, have voiced their anger at what some have branded an “execution”.

Prominent football star and French national team captain Kylian Mbappe wrote on social media “I hurt for my France. Unacceptable situation. All my thoughts go to the family and loved ones of Nael, this little angel gone much too soon.”

Mike Maignan, another French international player, also posted on social media about the sense of injustice he felt. “A bullet in the head…It’s always for the same people that being in the wrong leads to death.”

Maignan’s France teammate Jules Koundé criticized the media coverage.

“As if this latest police blunder wasn’t enough, the 24-hour news channels are taking advantage of it by making a big fuss,” he wrote.

“The ‘journalists’ ask ‘questions’ with the sole aim of distorting the truth, criminalizing the victim and finding extenuating circumstances where none exist. An age-old method for masking the real problem.”

“Why don’t we turn off the TV and find out what’s going on?’ he added.

Analysts believe that nobody in France will be taking this lightly. Almost 20 years ago, Paris was rocked by three months of unrest along with a state of emergency over a similar deadly incident. The government remembers those events very well, and they are in fear of repetition.

The post French implosion appeared first on Iran News Daily.

TEHRAN (Iran News) –Union activists barged into the Paris headquarters of luxury goods company LVMH (LVMH.PA) on Thursday, saying the French government should shelve plans to make people work longer for their pension and tax the rich more instead.

In a 12th day of nationwide protests since mid-January, striking workers also disrupted garbage collections in Paris and blocked river traffic on part of the Rhine in eastern France.

“You’re looking for money to finance pensions? Take it from the pockets of billionaires,” said Sud Rail union leader Fabien Villedieu, as the LVMH headquarters filled with red smoke from flares. The protesters then left peacefully.
Trade unions urged a show of force on the streets a day before the Constitutional Council’s ruling on the legality of the bill that will raise the state pension age by two years to 64.

cross France, 380,000 demonstrators took part in Thursday’s protest, according to figures from the government. That number included 42,000 at the Paris demonstration.

Those figures were down from April 6, when 570,000 demonstrated across France, with 57,000 at last week’s Paris protest.

There were some clashes during Thursday’s rallies, including skirmishes in central Paris, with black-clad protesters throwing projectiles at police who responded with teargas, but this was nowhere near the level of violence seen at some protests last month.

Ten members of the police force were injured on Thursday, said the police department.

If the Council gives its approval, possibly with some caveats, the government will be entitled to promulgate the law, and will hope this will eventually put an end to protests, which have coalesced widespread anger against President Emmanuel Macron.

But protesters said they would keep up the fight if the Council gave a green light.

“We don’t want to work until 64,” 50-year-old teacher Kathy Brochard said at the Paris rally.

Protesters want the bill withdrawn – or put to a referendum.

“We still hope that, at some point, someone in high places will decide to abandon this law, sit around a table and look at pension funding differently,” 52-year-old postal service worker Francis Bourget said at the Paris rally.

The industrial action has lost some steam and the protests have rallied smaller crowds in recent weeks compared with turnouts of more than a million seen earlier in the movement.
But unions remained defiant.

“This is certainly not the last day of the strike,” Sophie Binet, the new leader of the hard-left CGT union, said at the blockade of an incinerator outside Paris.

Macron and his government argue the new law is needed to ensure that France’s generous pension system does not go bust.
Unions say this can be done by other means.

Macron has said he will organise a meeting with unions after the Council’s decision to work on other proposals – an initiative union leaders say will be short-lived if he is not ready to discuss withdrawing the pension legislation.

“After three months of mobilisation, I would lie if I told you that there is no fatigue. We are tired, but a mobilisation is like a marathon,” Sud Rail’s Villedieu said. “We won’t give up.”
Political observers say the widespread discontent over the government’s reform could have longer-term repercussions, including a possible boost for the far right.

“I’m not that optimistic about the Constitutional Council’s decision,” far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who opposes the pension legislation, told BFM TV. “But what do you want me to do? Burn cars? We’ll just tell the French: Vote for the National Rally.”

On the Rhine river, cargo traffic was disrupted after workers cut power at a waterway lock near the border with Germany and Switzerland, a union official told Reuters.

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In a statement issued by the embassy on Wednesday, the embassy insisted on the need to call on French authorities to stop publishing anti-Iran contents, bar the spread of campaign of insults and hatred.

“The embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while strongly condemning this move by Charlie Hebdo, greatly expects the concerned French officials to take necessary and immediate measures against this publication,” the embassy demanded, warning that if the magazine goes on with its obscene caricatures it will “surely leave a destructive effect on relations between the two countries and nations.”

The embassy said the move by the magazine goes sharpy against freedom of expression.

“The move followed by Charlie Hebdo magazine is in no way vindicated by fundamentals of freedom of expression, but instead it is considered as a measure made to insult personalities of nations, roll out a campaign of defamation, spread lies and hatred which are not pursuant to norms and standards of international law,” the statement read.

“Charlie Hebdo’s action represents instrumental use and hypocritical exploitation of the principle of freedom of speech which considers its hostility to religion and religious values as its pride,” the embassy added.

“Charlie Hebdo, which falsely raised the claim of defending women’s rights, depicts its true nature by publishing very disgusting and obscene caricatures in a special edition,” stated the embassy.

Iranian FM: We won’t allow France to overstep the mark 

The foreign minister of Iran also denounced Charlie Hebdo for its insulting and obscene caricature.

The French magazine will face a “decisive and effective” retaliation for its blatant and disrespectful action against the highly esteemed “religious and political authorities,” Hossein Amir Abdollahian tweeted.

“We won’t allow the government of France to overstep the mark. They have definitely taken a wrong path. We have already included that magazine in the list of sanctions,” Amir Abdollahian underlined.

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Speaking to IRNA, Omid Qalibaf said that departure of French companies from Iran’s auto industry after the reimposition of the U.S. sanctions against Tehran cost dear for Iran’s automakers and auto part makers, and heavy investment in those sectors remained useless.

He went on to say that the process for imports of cars is underway and the applicant companies have submitted their requests and one of them is on the verge of signing contract and it is expected soon the first batch of cars would enter the country in compliance with the approved conditions.

Qalibaf went on to say that one thing which is definite is that French cars currently are not allowed to enter Iran’s market because French companies like Renault and Peugeot have no good records during the sanctions era and despite defining some joint projects, they left Iran very easily.

He added that before the imposition of the cruel U.S. sanctions, French companies had defined a joint project with Iran’s SAIPA Company via Pars Khodro Company and a project with IRAN KHODRO Company via IKAP Company but they left Iranian carmakers in the middle of the road and they inflicted heavy damages on Iran’s car industry.

Qalibaf reiterated that as long as the French companies do not compensate the losses, they will have no major share of Iran’s market and import of any car from France is forbidden. He added that this ban does not include countries like South Korea and Japan because they had not defined any joint projects with Iranian industrialists.

He concluded that the ministry has done its job on imports of cars and it will resolve any problems ahead of the importers.

Meanwhile a member of board of directors of Iran-France Joint Chamber Commerce told ILNA that French carmakers are waiting for the outcome of the JCPOA and FATF and if these issues are resolved, they will definitely return to Iran market and if Iran remains on the FATF blacklist, they will not come because there will be no chance for banking transactions with the French as they do not work with forex shops and they are waiting for what will happen in the international scenes.

Mohammad Reza Najafi Manesh also reacted to the ban slapped by the ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade on imports of French cars and said that during the sanctions era, there was no possibility for import of final car product to Iran but the French can return to Iran and produce their cars in Iran like what they used to do for production of Thunder 90 car in the past.

He reiterated that the ministry has said that if the French are eager to return to Iran market, they should produce their cars in Iran.

He added that if foreign carmakers are encouraged to invest in Iran market and they produce their cars in Iran, then it will undoubtedly help Iran’s economy.

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