France Still on Strike

PARIS (AP) — "French union activists cut electricity to nearly 100,000 homes or offices. Eiffel Tower staff walked off the job. Even Paris opera workers joined in Tuesday's nationwide protests across France, singing an aria of anger as workers rallied against the government's plan to raise the retirement age to 64.

"Despite 13 days of crippling train and subway strikes, French President Emmanuel Macron and his government stayed firm. The prime minister declared his “total" determination to reshape a pension system that unions celebrate as a model for the rest of the world but that he calls unfair and destined to collapse into debt.

"Lighting red flares and marching beneath a blanket of multi-colored union flags, thousands of workers snaked through French cities from Brittany on the Atlantic to the Pyrenees in the south..." (France on Strike: Power Cuts, Schools Shut, No Eiffel Tower).