France Protests

Roughly 320,000 people marched across France on Saturday. It was a third straight weekend of protests over living costs and crumbling schools, the Interior Ministry said.

Paris drew 70,000 of them. Police rerouted the march to the edge of the city after a last-minute court battle, NPR reported. France deployed 70,000 police and gendarmes nationwide, NBC News said, after rioting and looting marred the previous two weekends.

Numbers fell. That was down from the 550,000 CNN said marched on Oct. 17 and the 410,000 counted after Oct. 24, though NPR put the Oct. 17 figure at more than 500,000.

High school students angry over neglected buildings, teacher shortages and an admissions system they see as unfair to poorer students started the demonstrations last month, according to NPR. Labor unions and the Yellow Vests, a movement born in 2018 over fuel taxes, joined later, along with people angry at President Emmanuel Macron, NPR and NBC News reported. Macron opened budget talks for 2027, and the unrest grew, NBC News said.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez warned reporters this week of a "very high risk" of disorder, NBC News reported. Marches would not be allowed "in city centers, where there is a risk of public disorder," he said. Measures to protect shops, introduced last week, would be reinforced, he told NBC News.

Corentin Cabreux is 21 and a student. He told NPR he lives in a state dormitory with "damp stains all along the bottom of my walls, whole sections peeling off, cockroaches everywhere, rats."

Near Porte de Charenton, clashes broke out. Protesters threw bottles and fireworks there, and police answered with tear gas and stun grenades, NPR reported. Authorities counted roughly 300 arrests nationwide by Saturday night, down from 800 a week earlier, NPR said.

NBC News put the nationwide arrest count at more than 560. CNN reported 296 people detained as of 6 p.m. local time, and said the Interior Ministry accused "radical elements" of trying to breach city centers in Bordeaux, Toulouse and Lille before police intervened.

Not in France alone. Germany's Gen Z regelt campaign organized marches in more than 30 cities Saturday, drawing 120,000 people by organizers' count, CNN reported.

Rioters in Frankfurt threw Molotov cocktails and smashed shop windows. Police in Cologne and Hamburg fired water cannons after fireworks and attacks on emergency crews, CNN and NBC News reported. Protests also hit Spain, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and the United Kingdom, NBC News said.

"Our measures are directed against troublemakers and violent individuals, not against peaceful participants," police in Cologne said in a statement, CNN reported.