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I bet your weekend was better than Emmanuel Macron\u2019s. On Friday, the evening before mass protests that were planned across France, he attended a C\u00e9line Dion concert in Paris with his wife, Brigitte, prompting comparisons to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. On Sunday evening, he was forced to give a televised speech condemning the \u201cunbridled violence\u201d and riots that erupted in French cities over the weekend.The rioters that burned makeshift barricades of bicycles in Paris, destroyed the steeple of Limoges\u2019 town hall and set fire to Lyon\u2019s tourism office were described as \u201cLE CHAOS\u201d on the front page of La Tribune Dimanche, and \u201cSCENES D\u2019INSURRECTION\u201d on Le Parisien Dimanche. By Sunday, protests had also taken place in Spain, Portugal and Italy.Today\u2019s newsletter explains what happened in France over the weekend, and why this crisis threatens to engulf Macron\u2019s government. First, here are the weekend\u2019s headlines.Weekend roundup\n \n The Vatican | Pope Leo told a crowd gathered in St Peter\u2019s Square on Sunday that he would \u201cgradually resume\u201d his activities, at his first appearance before the faithful since undergoing an operation to remove a cancerous tumour from his lung.\n \n \n UK news | A \u201cwell-known individual\u201d is trying to secure a permanent injunction against the Guardian and ITN to prevent them from publishing details of serious allegations made against him.\n \n \n US politics | Donald Trump fired his immediately embattled new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, on Friday evening after just five days in the job. The conservative commentator becomes the shortest serving occupant of the role in US history.\n \n \n Reform | A Reform UK mayor is under police investigation for allegedly showing \u201cnaked and sexualised\u201d images of himself to a female member of staff. Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxing champion, is understood to have been questioned under caution by Humberside police.\n \n \n Energy | The development of a huge AI datacentre hailed by the UK government has received a fresh setback after Microsoft pulled out of the project over concerns about power supplies.\n \nIn depth: \u2018Gen Z is really facing a polycrisis of different issues\u2019Most of the protests were peaceful marches calling for change. Photograph: Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP/Getty ImagesIn the early hours of Sunday, cleaners started to remove the detritus from Parisian streets: shards of glass from broken shop windows, smashed bus shelters, burned out cars. The smell of teargas still lingered in the M\u00e9tro station at Place de la R\u00e9publique. \u201cAreas of Paris looked like a wasteland,\u201d Paolo Stuppia, a sociologist at Sciences Po in Paris, tells me. About 855 people have been arrested in Paris, and a total of 2,400 have been arrested across France. Lamia El Aaraje, the Socialist deputy mayor of Paris, said the capital had experienced a level of violence \u201cwe had never seen before.\u201dThere have been so many incredible images of destruction (see our gallery here) that it\u2019s possible to forget Saturday was, for the most part, defined by peaceful protests. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them schoolchildren and parents, joined marches across the country. A far smaller group of protesters, many wearing face masks, smashed street furniture and torched cars and bus stops. A third group took the opportunity to loot shops. \u201cI saw teenagers running off with shoeboxes, clothes, and perfume,\u201d Angelique Chrisafis, the Guardian\u2019s Paris correspondent, tells me.It\u2019s the second group that has dominated the headlines. On Saturday afternoon, people set the town hall in Limoges alight (its spire collapsed dramatically on Saturday evening), and broke into the city hall in Marseille. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t as if the peaceful protesters suddenly turned violent,\u201d Chrisafis says. \u201cIt was as if the government didn\u2019t have a hold on the situation, and suddenly, the police were really caught off guard.\u201dThe peaceful protesters \u2018Our future is being stolen from us\u2019When a small number of people break the law during otherwise peaceful protests, there\u2019s a tendency to condemn such acts as \u201ccriminality, pure and simple\u201d (to quote David Cameron during the 2011 London riots), and to disqualify the idea they represent a form of antagonism against authority. \u201cIf everything was going well in France, you wouldn\u2019t have young kids ransacking stores,\u201d Stuppia says.Such criminal acts can also become a means of undermining peaceful protesters. \u201cSome of those people are now pretty upset because they believe the government will be talking about burning barricades rather than the fact they turned out in such large numbers,\u201d Chrisafis says. French students have been protesting against the school system since September and calling for repairs to decrepit buildings, smaller class sizes, and reforms to a widely loathed university admissions system. Education is a particularly fraught subject in France, where academic credentials overwhelmingly determine job prospects. But their concerns are also broader; as Greta Thunberg put it recently, \u201cour future is being stolen from us,\u201d a feeling that many young people across the continent share.The student protests have since become the focus in a constellation of different issues, ranging from the cost of living to rising fuel prices and public service cuts. Those on Saturday drew in numerous groups, including unions and supporters of the Gilets Jaunes. \u201cGen-Z is really facing a polycrisis of different issues, from the climate crisis to the rise of the far right and the use of AI\u201d Stuppia tells me. \u201cAnd you can see the same set of issues coming alive in Italy, in Belgium, in Portugal, and with the Cockroach protests in India. Young people want change.\u201d (You can read more about how these protests have spread to other European countries in this story by Sam Jones).The police \u2018Entire cities \u2026 left to the mercy of rioters\u2019The police response has been at once strikingly brutal and remarkably inept. As Guardian columnist Rokhaya Diallo pointed out in this recent opinion piece, French schoolchildren have been \u201ctreated like enemies to be crushed\u201d over the last few weeks. French lawyers have said that several teenagers have suffered \u201cwar-like\u201d injuries from police, including a 14-year-old boy who suffered a fractured jaw and a 15-year-old whose hand was blown off in an explosion involving a police stun grenade. The number of arrests has also been disproportionate: according to this graph by Pierre Bataille, a sociologist at Grenoble Alpes university, more people were arrested during two weeks of the student protests than members of the Gilets Jaunes were in an entire year.The shortcomings of this zealous focus on student protesters became clear on Saturday afternoon. Crowd psychologists have demonstrated that rather than instilling order, heavy-handed policing can actually trigger violence. While the police blocked a demonstration route between Place de la R\u00e9publique and Place de la Concorde on Saturday citing \u201cserious risks of public disorder,\u201d large sections of Paris were left without enough officers to prevent looting. According to the French Green leader Marine Tondelier, \u201centire cities were left to the mercy of rioters, while peaceful protesters were subjected to violence.\u201d She has since been calling for the resignation of Laurent Nu\u00f1ez, France\u2019s minister of the interior, calling his performance over the weekend \u201can absolute disaster\u201d.The politicians \u2018Social unrest is shaking our country\u2019In his statement last night, Macron drew a distinction between protesters with \u201clegitimate demands\u201d and \u201cthose who destroyed, smashed, and looted\u201d, and criticised \u201cfactious groups from the ultra-left, joined by numerous delinquents\u201d (pending an investigation, though, it\u2019s impossible to say what the rioters\u2019 motivations were). There are tricky and enduring questions that his government now faces. It failed to anticipate both the student protests that have engulfed France since September, and the violence that broke out over the weekend. As this interesting New Yorker piece (\u00a3) points out Macron\u2019s experience of the public education system is limited, and even his education minister has admitted that at least some of his five children attend private schools.The protests and the police response have underscored how out of touch Macron\u2019s government appears to be with French people, many of whom are angry about the price of fuel and the cost of living. This sense of disaster \u2013 described by the mayor of Limoges, Guillaume Gu\u00e9rin, a member of the conservative Les R\u00e9publicains party, as a \u201ccolossal failure of the state\u201d \u2013 has overshadowed the thousands of people who turned out for peaceful protests, and plays into the hands of the far right (Marine Le Pen, who gave her own address on X before Macron\u2019s, has described the riots as a \u201cthreat to democracy\u201d). In a recent interview with Le Monde, the mayor of Lyon, Gr\u00e9gory Doucet, struck a more dispassionate tone, and said there need to be \u201cconcrete, political answers\u201d to \u201cthe social unrest shaking our country.\u201dThe week to come\n \n Monday | The two-week biodiversity summit, Cop17, begins in Yerevan, Armenia, as countries come together to seek to protect nature.\n \n \n Tuesday | The Covid-19 inquiry publishes its report on the adult social care sector.\n \n \n Sunday | Incumbent Lula da Silva takes on Flavio Bolsonaro in the run-off of the Brazil general election.\n \nWhat else we\u2019ve been enjoyingLa Belle Dame sans Merci by Frank Dicksee. Photograph: Artepics/Alamy\n \n I enjoyed this piece from Sarah Clegg on the long history of romantasy fiction, with its origins in medieval romances which were apparently just as raunchy as today\u2019s sexy page turners. Katy Vans, newsletters team\n \n \n Fascinating piece here from Anita Chaudhri on the rise of \u201ccompetitive yoga\u201d: new way to make the practice accessible, or a fundamental misunderstanding of its spirit? Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team\n \n \n This was an eye-opening piece; one of our reporters went undercover at a wellness conference in the UK to expose the dangerous health advice of Barbara O\u2019Neill, who is seen as a risk to public safety in Australia. Katy\n \nSportNoni Madueke scored the only goal of the game. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The GuardianFootball | \u200bArsenal left it late to snatch a 1-0 victory against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground, while Brighton had a resounding victory at home against Crystal Palace, winning 5-0 to put them 2nd in the Premier League. Elsewhere Man Utd could only manage a 1-1 draw away against Leeds.Cricket | The second test between South Africa and Australia was abandoned due to poor weather with only 12.2 overs being bowled.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFootball | In the WSL Chelsea beat Spurs 6-2, putting pressure on league leaders Man City by moving up to 2nd place in the table.The front pages Photograph: The Guardian\u201cMacron condemns \u2018unbridled violence\u2019 of huge French riots\u201d, is the Guardian\u2019s front page today.The Times says \u201cPM: Neets crisis is moral failure\u201d, the Telegraph writes \u201cHealey plans raid on family businesses\u201d, the Express has \u201c\u2018Axe the family farm tax now, prime minister,\u2019\u201d and the Mail leads with \u201cTrue cost of Labour migration dithering\u201d.The FT has \u201cInvestor anxiety and public backlash threaten to scupper $10tn AI boom\u201d, Metro splashes \u201cBritish kids in CRISIS\u201d and the Sun says \u201cCredit crunch\u201d.Today in FocusEvan Gershkovich was working for the Wall Street Journal was detained, beaten and charged with espionage. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty ImagesA spy charge, a Russian jail and a swap for an assassin: the story of Evan GershkovichUS journalist Evan Gershkovich talks to Annie Kelly about his arrest by the Russian intelligence services in 2023, his 16-month detention, and the swap deal that eventually took him home.Cartoon of the day | Tom Gauld Illustration: Tom GauldThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world\u2019s not all badThreats to the puffin population can be mitigated. Photograph: Tim Graham/AlamyIn this extract from his book The Puffin, Stephen Moss explains how for centuries, humans exploited puffins for food and \u200bfeathers, but they have since become beloved symbols of wildlife.Sadly just as our national affection for them has grown, \u200bw\u200be are now endangering their future. Pollution and climate change are disrupting marine ecosystems, reducing key prey and making it harder for puffins to raise chicks.But there are reasons to be hopeful that we can turn the tide. Restricting industrial fishing, removing invasive predators and using advanced tracking technology can help us understand and therefore protect the humble puffin.As Moss says: \u201cperhaps we can maintain at least a small fragment of hope for the future not just of the puffin, but of all the world\u2019s seabirds.\u200b\u201dSign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian\u2019s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.\n \n Quick crossword\n \n \n Cryptic crossword\n \n \n Wordiply" ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792404388.613966", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-19T13:28:44.052863+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/19/monday-briefing-what-you-need-to-know-about-a-weekend-of-chaos-in-france" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-19T13:28:44.044785+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Monday briefing: What you need to know about a weekend of chaos in France | France | The Guardian", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792404388.613966", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-19T13:28:43.981118+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "--timestamping", "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/19/monday-briefing-what-you-need-to-know-about-a-weekend-of-chaos-in-france" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-10-19T13:28:43.972211+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/19/monday-briefing-what-you-need-to-know-about-a-weekend-of-chaos-in-france.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792404388.613966", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-19T13:28:40.596180+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Monday briefing: What you need to know about a weekend of chaos in France | France | The Guardian", "warc": null, "wget": "www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/19/monday-briefing-what-you-need-to-know-about-a-weekend-of-chaos-in-france.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1792404388.613966", "newest_archive_date": "2026-10-19T13:28:46.373824+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-10-19T13:28:39.394078+00:00", "path": "/world/2026/oct/19/monday-briefing-what-you-need-to-know-about-a-weekend-of-chaos-in-france", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "a1b89052-a907-46e5-9752-6c9472d8ebd4", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1792404388-import.txt" ], "tags": ",world_news,war-wiki,pool", "tags_str": "world_news,war-wiki,pool", "timestamp": "1792404388.613966", "title": "Monday briefing: What you need to know about a weekend of chaos in France | France | The Guardian", "updated": "2026-10-19T13:28:39.393893+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-10-19 13:28", "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/19/monday-briefing-what-you-need-to-know-about-a-weekend-of-chaos-in-france" }