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‘Block Everything’ protests sweep France, intensifying pressure on Macron
PARIS — Protesters set fires as they blocked highways and gas stations across France early Wednesday as part of a new nationwide movement. Authorities deployed 80,000 police, who made hundreds of arrests and fired tear gas to disperse crowds.
The “Block Everything” movement was born online over the summer in far-right circles, but spread on social media and was co-opted by left-wing, antifascist and anarchist groups. It now includes France’s far-left parties and the country’s powerful labor unions.
Their joint day of unrest adds to the country’s political turmoil, after the collapse of centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s government earlier this week in a similar backlash over proposed budget cuts and broader anger at the political class.
Barricades were erected in several major French cities, including Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse. Entry to an Amazon depot in northern France was also blocked as the country’s largest union said some 715 disruptions had been organized nationwide.
In the capital Paris, groups gathered and set up barricades at several entry points to the city. Demonstrations were expected to continue throughout the day, with travel disrupted as some of the main transport unions joined the strike.
Hundreds remained gathered outside Gare du Nord, one of the city’s main train stations, despite earlier attempts from police to disperse the crowds with tear gas.
“We are here, even if Macron doesn’t want us, we are here,” they chanted.
There were dramatic scenes outside a high school in eastern Paris, where police clashed with dozens of students who had blocked entry to the building.
“Police forced the opening of one of the doors to let students in and there was some violence with tear gas,” Ariane Anemoyannis, spokesperson for the youth group ‘Le Poing Leve,’ who was at the scene, told NBC News.
An earlier strike, organized by transport workers near the high school, was also broken up by police, said Anemoyannis.
“There were several hundred people who showed up in support of the workers,” she said, “the police charged against the picketline to break up the strike.”
Public anger in France grew when then-Prime Minister Francois Bayrou announced his plan to cut the budget by over $50 billion. He proposed striking two national holidays from the calendar, freezing pensions for 2026 and cutting billions in health spending.
The two extremes of the political spectrum joined forces in the National Assembly on Monday, causing the collapse of the French government in a no confidence vote fueled by opposition to the budget cuts.
But although Bayrou might be gone, the deep mistrust over his proposed austerity plan and the government as a whole remains.
Some are turning their sights on Macron, calling for his resignation before his tenure is scheduled to end in 2027. He named his fifth prime minister in less than two years on Tuesday, choosing close ally Sébasten Lecornu.
Many taking to the streets say they resent being asked to make sacrifices while those they describe as the ruling elite are increasingly disconnected from their reality and daily struggles.
For police, there’s an element of unpredictability: the demonstrations are decentralized and leaderless, with no specific union, organization or individual leading the charge.
On the eve of the demonstrations, the now-outgoing Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, said no violence would be tolerated and announced the deployment of 80,000 police and gendarmes — the French military police.
It’s a show of force not seen since the height of the Yellow Vests protests in 2018, sparked by Macron’s proposed fuel tax to curb carbon emissions.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed.
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Trump calls on all NATO countries to stop buying Russian oil, threatens 50% to 100% tariffs on China
BASKING RIDGE, N.J. (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday he believes the Russia-Ukraine war would end if all NATO countries stopped buying oil from Russia and placed tariffs on China of 50% to 100% for its purchases of Russian petroleum.
Trump posted on his social media site that NATO’S commitment to winning the war “has been far less than 100%” and the purchase of Russian oil by some members of the alliance is “shocking.” As if speaking with NATO members, he said: “It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia.”
Since 2023, NATO member Turkey has been the third largest buyer of Russian oil, after China and India. according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. Other members of the 32-state alliance involved in purchasing Russian oil include Hungary and Slovakia.
Trump’s post arrives after the recent flight of multiple Russian drones into Poland, an escalatory move by Russia as it was entering the airspace of NATO ally. Poland shot down the drones, yet Trump played down the severity of the incident and Russia’s motives by saying it “could have been a mistake.”
While Trump as a candidate promised to end the war quickly, he has yet to hit the pressure points needed to end the violence and has at times been seen as reluctant to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin. Congress is currently trying to get the U.S. president to back a bill toughening sanctions, after Trump last month hosted Putin in Alaska for talks that failed to deliver on progress toward peace.
Trump in his post said that a NATO ban on Russian oil plus tariffs on China would “also be of great help in ENDING this deadly, but RIDICULOUS, WAR.”
The president said that NATO members should put the 50% to 100% tariffs on China and withdraw them if the war that launched with Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine ends.
“China has a strong control, and even grip, over Russia,” he posted, and powerful tariffs “will break that grip.”
The U.S. president has already placed a 25% import tax on goods from India for its buying of Russian energy products.
In his post, Trump said responsibility for the war fell on his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He did not include in that list Putin, who launched the invasion.
Trump’s post builds on a call Friday with finance ministers in the Group of Seven, a forum of industrialized democracies. During the call, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called on their counterparts to have a “unified front” to cut off “the revenues funding Putin’s war machine,” according to Greer’s office.
In February, Luna donated blood at her high school in Miami, with the goal of helping save others.
“She was very proud to come home and say, ‘I gave blood today,’” her mother, Valerie, said. (The Guardian is not using the mother or daughter’s full names to protect their privacy.)
It turned out, she was not able to save someone else’s life but potentially prevented herself from having serious health issues.
A couple months later, she received a letter from the blood donation company informing her that she could not give blood. She had tested positive for Chagas disease, which is caused by a parasite spread by triatomine bugs, otherwise known as kissing bugs.
Neither Luna nor Valerie had heard about the disease, which is most common in rural parts of Mexico and Central and South America, where their family had traveled.
“If you get a letter that tells you, you have blood cancer, you know what it is. But when you receive a letter and you hear, ‘Oh, your daughter has Chagas,’ … you’re like, oh, what is this?” said Valerie.
Dr Norman Beatty, who has studied the kissing bugs, said that like Valerie and Luna, most people in the US have not heard of Chagas, even though it is not just present south of the border but within the country.
Beatty, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine, is part of a group of scientists that authored a new report arguing that the United States should treat Chagas as an endemic disease, meaning that there is a constant or usual prevalence of a disease or infectious agent in a population within a geographic area.
They hope to increase public awareness of Chagas, which while rare, can cause serious health problems.
“My hope is that with more awareness of Chagas, we can build a better infrastructure around helping others understand whether or not they are at risk of this disease” and cause people to think about it similarly to other vector-borne illnesses, like from mosquitoes and ticks, said Beatty. “We need to add kissing bugs to this list.”
Bugs spread the parasite through their droppings, which can infect humans if they enter the body through a cut or via the eyes or mouth, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It can cause symptoms such as fever, fatigue and eyelid swelling in the weeks or months after infection.
Some people, like Luna, do not develop any symptoms – at least initially – but about 20 to 30% of people infected can develop chronic issues later in life such as an enlarged heart and heart failure, or an enlarged esophagus or colon, leading to trouble eating or going to the bathroom.
About 8 million people, including 280,000 in the United States, have the disease, according to the CDC.
It is not a recent arrival to the US. The 1,200-year-old remains of a man buried in south Texas revealed that he had Chagas and an abnormally-enlarged colon, according to a report in the Gastroenterology journal.
More recently, human development in new areas has brought us “closer to the kissing bugs’ natural environment”, Beatty said.
People in at least eight states have been infected with Chagas from local bugs, according to the new report, which was published in the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.
But the fact that it has not been declared endemic to the United States has led to “low awareness and underreporting”, the report states.
A 2010 survey conducted of some American Medical Association providers found that 19% of infectious disease doctors had never heard of Chagas and 27% said they were “not at all confident,” in their knowledge of the disease being up to date.
“If you ask physicians about Chagas, they would think that it is either something transmitted by ticks … or they would say that’s something that doesn’t exist in the US,” said Dr Bernardo Moreno Peniche, a physician and anthropologist who was one of the authors of the report with Beatty.
But Beatty sees people with Chagas every week at a clinic in Florida dedicated to travel medicine and tropical diseases. (Those patients were infected with Chagas in Latin America.)
Beatty said there is a misconception that tests for Chagas are not reliable or available in the United States.
“We have the infrastructure to start screening people who have had exposure to these bugs and who may be in a region where we had known transmission, so we should be thinking about this as kind of routine care,” Beatty said.
After Valerie received the letter about Luna’s infection, she contacted her pediatrician who quickly responded and told them to see an infectious disease doctor.
That physician told them it was likely a “false positive” and ordered additional tests before eventually starting treatment, Valerie said.
Frustrated by the medical care, Valerie sought out a new physician and found Beatty, who prescribed a different anti-parasitic therapy.
Even among people like Luna who are not experiencing any symptoms, such treatment is often recommended, Beatty said.
The goal is to “detect early and treat early to avoid the chronic, often permanent damage that can occur”, Beatty explained.
The treatment took two months, during which Luna experienced side effects like hives and severe swelling in her hands and feet, she said.
While she is finished with the treatment, there is no definitive test to determine whether such patients will develop chronic Chagas symptoms, but it’s less likely, Beatty said.
“I hope the CDC takes it seriously,” Valerie said, “and that we can move forward and have good awareness, so that people want to be tested and get tested and get the treatment they need.”
NEW YORK — US President Donald Trump held dinner with the Qatari prime minister in New York on Friday, days after US ally Israel attacked Hamas leaders in Doha.
Israel attempted to kill the leaders of the terror group with an attack in Qatar on Tuesday, a strike that risked derailing US-backed efforts to broker a truce in Gaza and end the nearly two-year-old conflict. The attack was widely condemned in the Middle East and beyond as an act that could escalate tensions in a region already on edge.
Trump reportedly expressed annoyance about the strike in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as in public, and sought to assure the Qataris that such attacks would not happen again.
Trump and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani were joined for the meal by a top Trump adviser, US special envoy Steve Witkoff.
“Great dinner with POTUS. Just ended,” Qatar’s deputy chief of mission, Hamad Al-Muftah, said on X.
The White House confirmed the dinner had taken place but offered no details.
Members of the Secret Service block the street in front of the White House as US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio meet with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in Washington, DC, on September 12, 2025 (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)
The session followed an hour-long meeting that al-Thani had at the White House on Friday with Vice President JD Vance and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
A source briefed on the meeting said they discussed Qatar’s future as a mediator in the region and defense cooperation in the wake of the Israeli strikes against Hamas in Doha.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Vance and Rubio expressed their appreciation for Qatar’s “tireless mediation efforts and its effective role in bringing peace to the region,” and said that Doha is a “reliable strategic ally of the United States of America.”
From L-R: Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, US Vice President JD Vance, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meet in Washington, DC, September 13, 2025. (Qatar’s Foreign Ministry/X)
Thani “affirmed that the State of Qatar will take all measures to protect its security and safeguard its sovereignty in the face of the blatant Israeli attack,” the statement read.
Trump has said he is unhappy with Israel’s strike, which he described as a unilateral action that did not advance US or Israeli interests.
Nevertheless, Rubio is set to leave for a visit to Israel on Saturday, where he will speak to Israeli leaders about “our commitment to fight anti-Israel actions including unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state that rewards Hamas terrorism,” US State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement on Friday.
Damage is seen after an Israeli strike targeted a compound that hosted Hamas’ political leadership in Doha, Qatar on September 10, 2025 (AFP)
Washington counts Qatar as a strong Gulf ally. Doha has been a main mediator in long-running negotiations for a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas in Gaza, for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, and for a post-conflict plan for the territory.
Al-Thani blamed Israel on Tuesday for trying to sabotage chances for peace but said Qatar would not be deterred from its role as mediator.
Israel’s security establishment now increasingly believes it failed to kill any of Hamas’s top brass who were gathered at the site of Tuesday’s strike in Doha.
Hamas identified the dead as Jihad Labad, head of the office of top Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya; al-Hayya’s son Hammam al-Hayya; and three others described as “associates” — either advisers or bodyguards: Abdallah Abd al-Wahid, Muamen Hassouna and Ahmad Abd al-Malek. In addition, a Qatari security officer, Lance Corporal Badr Saad Mohammed al-Humaidi al-Dosari, was killed.
Doha will host an emergency Arab-Islamic summit on Sunday and Monday to discuss the Israeli attack, Qatar’s state news agency reported.
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