Ever since the student demonstrations of May 1968, successive French leaders have “run scared of angry French youth”, said the BBC’s Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield. With the current school protests showing no sign of slowing down, and presidential elections coming up,  there will be shivers running down government spines right now.

What started as a spontaneous blockade of a high school in a Paris suburb in mid-September quickly turned into violent protests across the country. Up to 500 schools have been closed, and more than 5,000 people have been arrested, 85% of them minors.

Why has this happened?
A “main complaint” is a shortage of teachers and support staff, said Time magazine. In the year 2024-25, nearly 10% of teaching hours in public secondary education went untaught, according to data from the education ministry. 

Students have had to put up with “overcrowded classes of up to 40 children in crumbling buildings”, said The Guardian. “Ceilings partially collapsing during class, leaks, cockroaches and buildings in disrepair” are fairly common experiences. Discontent has also been exacerbated by “unbearable temperatures in classrooms during heatwaves in May and June”.

How has the government responded?
On Friday, France’s Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said on X that he would pursue a “firm” criminal response, and hold parents of minors civilly liable “wherever possible”.

But the government has also tried to “placate” the rapidly spreading protests, and has “acknowledged some of the students’ grievances”, said The New York Times. Education Minister Édouard Geffray has said he would introduce a new online platform, where students could voice their thoughts for education reform.

Geffray also told broadcaster France 2 on Thursday evening that the protests, which were “legitimate at the outset”, had been “taken hostage by ultra-left groups”.

What could happen now?
Student representatives who met Geffray said their talks “failed to produce the concrete measures they were seeking”, said The Wall Street Journal. Student unions have called for a third day of nationwide protest tomorrow.

We cannot forget that French presidential elections are “only months away”, said the BBC. These protests, like many youth movements, are “unpredictable and shapeless”, and have “no clear structure” that would allow for negotiation. Because of this, they will have Emmanuel Macron’s team in “cold sweats”.

The opening of the National Gallery’s “Renoir and Love” exhibition has triggered record-breaking ticket sales – and a new outbreak of loathing for one of the world’s most famous Impressionists.

Renoir “gets a hard time from critics – and makers of memes”, said visual-art magazine Apollo. Where others see “joyous, light-flooded paintings”, they see “indifferent compositions, careless brushwork, overly saturated colours and a sentimental gaze”. 

As ‘soft focus’ as Doris Day
I grimaced my way around the “Renoir and Love” exhibition – to a soundtrack of “tweeting birds, splashing oars and crickets clicking in the grass”, said The Times’ chief art critic, Laura Freeman. The nudes are “puddingy”, with “clumsy hands” and “vacant expressions”, and Renoir’s “tendency to potboil” makes everything “formulaic” and “stupefying” – like eating slice after slice of French custard tart. 

Renoir’s paintings can be “bland and mediocre”, often tipping “into the saccharine”, said Artlyst. He was the “chocolate-boxiest” of the Impressionists, with works that seem “painted through a soft-focus lens reminiscent of a Doris Day film”. “I’ve hated his work for decades,” said art critic Eddy Frankel in The Guardian. It’s chintzy and safe, lacking the “hard-edged absolute dedication to angular, prismatic experimentation” of other, better Impressionists.

‘Life-affirming stuff’
Yes, Renoir can look “soft touch”, especially when compared with the “tough, ironic realism of Manet”, said art critic and former Turner Prize judge Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. But he was radical in his “enthusiastic embrace” of people enjoying bourgeois French life. “He doesn’t just paint the changing light of the passing moment; he urges us to live in it.” His “Dance at the Moulin de la Galette” (pictured, above), the centrepiece of this exhibition, captures “flirtations, longings and consolations” in a “dappled, mobile dance of golden light and cool shadow”. It’s “as grand as a history painting and as light as a soufflé”.

His best pictures “are so seductive” that you are “soon swept up and whirling to the artist’s rhythm”, just like the “beaming, waltzing” people he paints, said Alastair Sooke, The Telegraph’s chief art critic. “Happy art doesn’t have to be vapid and dumb”; this is “life-affirming, pulse-quickening, sap-stirring stuff” that challenges the “entrenched notion that art is only great when it deals with darkness and conflict”.

A man carrying a child walks along the Ampera Bridge in Palembang, South Sumatra, as a toxic haze blankets the sky. For weeks, Indonesia has been battling fires that are burning up vast areas of forest and peatland in the region.

Al Zulkifli / AFP / Getty Images

“It is smelly, slimy and contains bacteria,” said Justin McCurry in The Guardian. But, after centuries of being eaten only by Japanese people with “nerves of steel”, natto is popping up in health shops around the world as a superfood to “rival kimchi, kombucha and kefir”.

It’s made of fermented soya beans, sometimes chopped “hikiwari-style”, and looks like it’s “held together by strands of mucus”. The beans – which smell like “particularly ripe Stilton cheese” – are extremely versatile: they can be eaten alone or topped with “mustard, shredded onion, wasabi and a splash of dashi”.

Natto is certainly “polarising”, said Erika Hobart on BBC Travel. Some people think it “tastes revolting” but push through because of the benefits. The Japanese have long believed that consumption of the ancient dish, packed with protein, fibre and vitamin K, is linked to “improved blood flow and reduced risk of stroke”. Men and women who eat fermented foods like natto every day may reduce “their risk of dying from a stroke or heart attack by 10%”, according to a long-term Japanese study published in the British Medical Journal in 2020. 

If the texture puts you off, try whisking it into “submission” by using chopsticks in “repeated circular motions”, said McCurry in The Guardian. “Natto novices” could also try mixing the beans with chilli oil to make them more palatable, or even using them “as a topping for fish and chips”.

Putin’s escalating bombing campaign won’t break Ukrainians’ resolve. History shows that it’s doomed to fail
Rajan Menon in The Guardian
Russia’s “massive increase” in air strikes on Ukrainian cities is intended to “make life so unbearable” that Kyiv caves in to Vladimir Putin’s “unfulfilled annexationist ambitions”, writes international relations professor Rajan Menon. But “the historical record shows that bombing campaigns don’t crush morale; they strengthen it”. And Putin “is under pressure” himself, with a “military manpower shortage” and an economy damaged by war. His “drones and missiles won’t force Ukraine to accept peace on his terms – even under the stress of winter”.

AI is adding yet another layer to call centre hell
Sathnam Sanghera in The Times
It’s “becoming difficult” to email or text without robots “offering to take over”, writes Sathnam Sanghera. A new Meta app can also book travel and even call customer service, “wait on hold and only ring your phone when a real human is finally on the line”. Sadly, it’s “also sending buyers” to “collect items” that “are not available”, making “disembodied calls to small businesses” and “causing other kinds of chaos”. AI is “going to destroy everything”, yet “it still can’t read” a PDF.

The true, decent British Right must be like Jacob Rees-Mogg, not Tucker Carlson
Tim Stanley in The Telegraph
“Please watch” the video debate between former Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and right-wing US commentator Tucker Carlson, writes Tim Stanley. It “crystallises” how, “by emphasising terror and fury”, the US right-wing has “become the temperamental antithesis” of “calm, sentimental, reasonable” conservatism. It’s also clear that “Tucker does not understand” that the Second World War “impoverished us, yes, but it also united and redefined us”. That’s why we favour common security” with Europe – “not out of wokeness but from bitter experience”.