'Block everything' protests grip France in baptism of fire for new PM

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00:01France woke up to riots, fire and road disruption as the Bloc Everything protests began.

00:09It's a baptism of fire for Sébastien Lecornu, the country's freshly appointed prime minister

00:14and close ally of President Emmanuel Macron.

00:18His nomination comes after weeks of brewing tension,

00:21culminating in a no-confidence vote over François Bayrou's proposed budget plan.

00:26Meanwhile, these workers in the north of the country have been blocking an Amazon site since the early morning.

00:34Amazon is the symbol of millions in public aid, so it's symbolic to be here.

00:40The message we want to send is to stop giving public aid, especially to companies that lay off workers.

00:48We did the right thing in sticking to the protests today.

00:51Sébastien Lecornu is close to President Macron, he's just going to pursue the same austerity policy.

00:58In Lyon, protesters blocked the highway running through the city.

01:03That was the plan for September 10th.

01:07I'm pretty much in favour of it, so I took my car, knowing that I might get stuck in traffic.

01:12This anonymous man calls the nomination of the country's ex-defense minister a mockery.

01:19We were already planning to come even before Bayrou was dismissed and Lecornu was appointed.

01:25But I think that made us even more determined, because it's, well, it's him thumbing his nose at us.

01:31The block-everything movement started online in May.

01:39And although analysts say it was first pushed by right-wing groups, it has since been taken over by the left and far left.

01:45Its lack of centralized leadership makes its destructiveness hard to predict.

01:52The French government, however, is planning to deploy some 80,000 police forces across the country.

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