France

Thousands took to the streets throughout France on Tuesday evening after the government bypassed a parliamentary vote on a controversial labor reform and approved it with an edict. The French cabinet gave Prime Minister Manuel Valls the green light to use a rarely-invoked article of the constitution to bypass parliament and forcibly implement controversial labour reforms. Protests against the reforms, and the use of Article 49.3, flooded social media, showing mass demonstrations in several cities across France RT reports: Cashes erupted with police who used pepper spray against protesters.

In what has been an approximate repeat of the Monday overnight session, global stocks and US futures rose around the world as oil prices climbed toward $44 a barrel, with risk-sentiment pushed higher by another plunge in the Yen which has now soared 300 pips since the Friday post-payroll kneejerk reaction, and was trading above 109.20 this morning.

At least one person died on Thursday in a car chase and motorway shootout that started in Belgium and ended in France. The Belgian police pursued people smugglers through Belgium and France in a dramatic chase that included three crashes and a pile-up. The Irish Examiner reports: The 140mph pursuit which, left a motorcyclist dead and at least four others seriously injured began on a main road in Belgium and ended in Dunkirk in France.

Submitted by Yves Mamou via The Gatestone Institute,

• "There are today, we know, a hundred neighborhoods in France that present potential similarities with what's happened in Molenbeek." — Patrick Kanner, Minister for Urban Areas.

• The Salafists, in fact, do not want to "take the power in these neighborhoods." In many, they already have it.

Following this weekend's leak by Greenpeace demonstrating not only that the TTIP is driven entirely by narrow corporate interests, but that Obama is openly willing to reneg on his pro-environment agenda just to pass the Transatlantic Treaty at any cost, the blowback arrived earlier today when France became the first major European nation which threatened to reject the huge free trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union, because according to AP "it's too friendly to U.S. business and probably doomed."