PARIS (Dispatches) – Tensions run high in Paris as demonstrators once again rallied in protest against the planned pension reform announced by French President Emmanuel Macron. Two days after more than one million people took to the streets, raising their voices against the government’s proposed pension reforms, clashes erupted in the capital between police and demonstrators. Angry protesters started setting trash cans on fire, breaking traffic lights, and blowing up firecrackers. “Macron is stubborn, he is totally in the minority. There are 92 or 93 percent of people in the workforce who are opposed to this reform,” a member of La France Insoumise (LFI) party said in the protests. At the front of the procession, some protesters smashed bank windows and cash machines and some other protesters threw garbage cans, bottles and smoke bombs, while chanting “Down with capitalism” and “Macron, we will fight till the end!” The protesters burned trash cans in the streets, as police forces beat the protesters with riot batons. According to the police headquarters, twenty arrests were also made in Paris.  The protest against the pension reform was organized by 11 youth organizations and the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI) party led by Jean-Luc Melenchon. The LFI, the far-left New Anticapitalist Party, and the alliance of left-leaning political groups known as the New Ecological and Social People’s Union were all represented by participants waving banners.

 

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ATLANTA (Dispatches) – Violent protests have erupted in downtown Atlanta over the U.S. police killing of an environmental activist, with several demonstrators being arrested by the police. Environmental and social justice activists took to the streets on Saturday in the capital of the U.S. state of Georgia to protest the “cold blooded” police killing of 26-year-old Manuel Teran. An eyewitness at the rally reported that the demonstration started peacefully, then briefly turned violent after some protesters set a police car on fire, threw fireworks and rocks, and smashed buildings’ windows. Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum announced at a news conference on Saturday night that six protesters had been arrested at the protest rally. Three businesses were damaged and a police car was set on fire, Schierbaum added. Of those who were arrested, several had explosives on them and do not live in the Atlanta area, or in Georgia, said Andre Dickens, Atlanta’s Mayor. The protests came after Teran was shot and killed by police during a raid on Wednesday against environmental activists, who gathered to protest at the construction site of “Cop City”, a massive law enforcement facility to be built inside Weelaunee People’s Park.

 

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LIMA (Reuters) – Peruvian police arrested over 200 people accused of illegally entering the campus of a major Lima university, while authorities in Cusco shut the Incan citadel of Machu Picchu and the Inca trail as deadly anti-government protests spread nationwide. Dozens of Peruvians were injured after tensions flared again as police clashed with protesters, with security forces in capital city Lima using tear gas to repel demonstrators throwing glass bottles and stones, as fires burned in the streets. Some 46 people have been killed in the weeks-long clashes and another nine in traffic accidents related to the barricades set up amid the protests. Alfonso Barrenechea, with the crime prevention division of the prosecutor’s office, told local radio station RPP that arrested 205 people at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos for illegally trespassing on the university’s premises and for allegedly stealing electronic goods.  A group of masked protesters stormed the campus and removed security personnel from the campus after taking vests and other equipment from them, the university said in a statement. In videos circulating online, an armored vehicle can be seen breaking down a door on the university campus to allow entry for security forces. In the Cusco region, the gateway to Machu Picchu, Glencore’s major Antapaccay copper mine suspended operations on Friday after protesters attacked the premises - one of the largest in the country - for the third time this month.

 

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A new search of President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware by the U.S. Justice Department found six more items, including documents with classification markings, a lawyer for the president said in a statement Saturday night. Some of the classified documents and “surrounding materials” dated from Biden’s tenure in the U.S. Senate, where he represented Delaware from 1973 to 2009, according to his lawyer, Bob Bauer. Other documents were from his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, from 2009 through 2017, Bauer said. The Department of Justice, which conducted a search that lasted over 12 hours, also took some notes that Biden had personally handwritten as vice president, according to the lawyer.  The president offered access “to his home to allow DOJ to conduct a search of the entire premises for potential vice-presidential records and potential classified material,” Bauer said. Other classified government records were discovered this month at Biden’s Wilmington residence, and in November at a private office he maintained at a Washington, D.C., think tank after ending his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration in 2017.

 

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MOGADISHU (Reuters) – At least five people were injured in a blast on Sunday at the gates of the mayor’s office in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu and gunfire continued to sound, a member of the ambulance service and a witness said. Somalia’s militant group Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack. Abdikadir Abdirahman, director of Aamin Ambulance Services, told Reuters that ambulance staff had so far evacuated five injured people from the scene of the blast. Gunfire was still ongoing in the area and it was difficult for ambulances to access the area, he said. “We were in the office and we were deafened by a blast, we ran out, gunfire followed,” Farah Abdullahi, who works in the mayor’s office, told Reuters. The mayor’s office is located in the local government headquarters building in a well guarded area of Mogadishu. Roads in the area have concrete barriers and multiple roadblocks. The building is about one and a half kilometers away from Villa Somalia, the president’s office.