This is the Guardian.

Today, making sense of weeks of riots and rage across France.

If we know anything about the French, it's that there are no strangers to protest.

But the scenes on the streets of Paris and other cities over the past weeks are,

even by French standards, pretty unusual.

In fact, they're the biggest demonstrations in the country for decades,

and they come in response to what sounds like a pretty modest proposal.

Hordeaux's town hall set a light by protesters overnight.

More than a million had taken to the streets across the country through the day,

angry at President Macron's raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64.

But increasing the pension age by two years has touched on something much bigger.

A question of what it means to be French, what the state owes its citizens.

With a president at the centre of it all who's refusing to back down

and a far-right opposition, sensing its opportunity to strike.

From the Guardian, I'm Michael Serfi, today in focus, how raising the retirement age set France on fire.

On July, Chris Arfuss, the other Guardians' Paris correspondent.

And the chaos we've been seeing across France over the past few weeks actually starts

last year with the presidential elections, which were one pretty handily by the incumbent

Emmanuel Macron. But those results don't tell the full story.

Well, Emmanuel Macron was re-elected for a second term in office less than a year ago,

and it was a very strange campaign because it came down to a runoff between him and the far-right

Marine Le Pen, which meant that a large part of people who voted for him voted foremost to keep

...