France's Cost-of-Living Protests Draw More Than Half a Million as Disorder Spreads

Demonstrators across France came out alongside students on Saturday to protest rising living costs, a day NPR describes as one in which the country's fiscal crisis deepens. The BBC puts the turnout at more than half a million people joining cost-of-living protests, with disorder breaking out in cities across the country. Cars and buildings were set alight and shops ransacked, according to the BBC's account. What began as a nationwide show of numbers ended in scattered destruction — a pattern that says less about the protesters' demands than about how quickly a crowd's edges can turn into someone else's burned-out shopfront.