French unions vow to continue protests

The government is ordering senators to vote on a package under which they can still present the remaining 250 amendments - of some 1,000 - but they cannot vote on each one.

Labour Minister Eric Woerth said today the debate was in the third week, and "it's time for the Senate to act".

A Senate vote is expected by the end of the week. Each chamber gets a final vote next week.

Protesters blockaded Marseille's airport, Lady Gaga cancelled concerts in Paris and rioting youths attacked police in Lyon.

A quarter of the nation's petrol stations were out of fuel, despite President Nicolas Sarkozy's orders to force open depots barricaded by striking workers.

Petrol shortages and violence on the margins of student protests have heightened the standoff between the government and labour unions that see retirement at 60 as a hard-earned right.

New violence broke out in Lyon, as police chased rampaging youths who overturned a car and hurled bottles. Riot officers tried to subdue the violence with tear gas. A gendarme helicopter circled overhead.

"It is not troublemakers who will have the last word in a democracy," Sarkozy told local officials in central France, promising to find and punish rioters. He accused strikers of "taking the economy, businesses, daily life hostage".

Students barricaded high schools and took to the streets nationwide.

Hundreds filled the port of Marseille - where dozens of ships waited in the Mediterranean after days of strikes have blocked their access to a key oil terminal.

The French government says raising the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 and overhauling the money-losing pension system are vital to ensuring that future generations receive any pensions at all.

French unions say the working class is unfairly punished by the pension reform and that the government should find money for the pension system elsewhere. They fear this reform will herald the end of an entire network of welfare benefits that make France an enviable place to work and live.

"We cannot stop now," Jean-Claude Mailly, head of the Workers' Force union, said today of the protest movement.

In Marseille, hundreds of workers blocked all access to the main airport for about three hours early today. Passengers tugged suitcases along blocked roads as they hiked to the terminal, before police came in and the protesters dispersed.

Wildcat protests blocked train lines around Paris. Protesters in cars and trucks blocked several roads around the country, from near Calais in the north to the Pyrenees in the south, according to the national road traffic centre.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux lashed out at "certain people who take parts of our territory for battlefields". He said 1,901 people have been detained since early last week.

Hortefeux insisted that the country has several weeks of petrol reserves and that "the trend is toward improvement" in supplies. But he said a quarter of France's petrol stations lack fuel.

Kamal Guerfa works - or at least shows up for work - at a gas station in Lyon. But on Thursday, there was nothing to pump.

Families around the country are on edge over the petrol shortages because school half-term holidays start tomorrow.

Today, students shut down the Turgot High School near the Place de la Republique in eastern Paris after a student union vote. Teens sat in the middle of the street, barring vehicle traffic. Some sang songs and chanted labour slogans while police guarded the area.

Workers for Airbus and Hewlett Packard marched through the streets of the southern city of Toulouse, where the city university is closed because of student protests. Ten other universities were also blocked.

The strikes are hitting the entertainment industry, too. Lady Gaga's website says the singer postponed two Paris concerts scheduled for Friday and Saturday "as there is no certainty the trucks can make it" to the show.