Activists say struggle must go on until their ‘maximum’ demands are met over teacher shortages and building repairs

French children should continue to barricade their schools and take part in street protests, a student union said on Monday after the government announced a package of education measures to try to stem the crisis.

“Today we’re at the negotiating table, we’re able to negotiate with the government,” Pierre Sourzat of Les Lycéens told France Info television. “We’re in a power struggle and we still need to call for continued mobilisation to meet a maximum of our demands.”

Making innocent protesters liable for damage would be bad for rule of law and play into far-right hands, say opponents

Emmanuel Macron has been accused by trade unions of trying to curb the fundamental French right to protest as the government fast-tracks a bill to make protesters pay for damage caused by vandalism at street demonstrations even if they did not directly cause it themselves.

The French president, who leaves office next spring, has faced more than a month of protests in which high-school students have blockaded schools demanding a response to teacher absences, repairs to decrepit buildings and changes to the university applications platform.

Almost 1,000 arrested as police charge crowd in Paris and teargas used to stop protesters reaching other city centres

Hundreds of thousands marched in cities across France on Saturday in largely peaceful protests to support schoolchildren’s demands for more teachers and repairs to dilapidated buildings, as Emmanuel Macron faces a social and political crisis in his final months as president.

The prosecutor’s office in the southern city of Nice said on Sunday that 59 people had been taken into police custody, including 11 suspected of belonging to extreme-right groups. They were alleged to have gathered with the intent of committing violence. Some were arrested in two vehicles with masks, gloves, gas sprays and truncheons, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement to public broadcaster FranceInfo.

Gunman opens fire from car in Trappes and Verrière, killing one and injuring five others, including a 12-year-old girl

Emmanuel Macron has condemned racism in French society after a gunman opened fire from a car west of Paris on Friday, killing one person, wounding a 12-year-old girl and injuring four others in what the president called a “racist terrorist attack”.

Macron arrived at the scene of the drive-by shooting in Trappes on Friday night, saying he was deeply saddened by what he called the “premeditated” attack. The 12-year-old girl, who was shot eight times, is being treated in hospital.

Police appear to have been taken by surprise by scale of looting that began after protests turned violent in Paris and other cities

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Just before 1am on Monday morning, two motorbikes carrying one passenger each stopped at a traffic light on a backstreet near rue de Rivoli, one of central Paris’s busiest shopping streets.

“You’ve got to go where there are a lot of people, where they’ve done the shop windows,” said one motorbike rider to another. Minutes later 10 other men, their faces covered with ski balaclavas, came down the street on foot pursued by a police van.