president Chirac. The bill also included the possibility of manual labour apprenticeships for 14-year-olds, suspension of family welfare in cases of students skipping school (a measure long in the programme of the far-right National Front party), and night labour being permitted for youths as young as 15 years old (as compared to 16 years old before). The protests February Protests against the bill originally occurred before the bill was approved by Dominique de Villepin. On 7 February, between 200,000 and 400,000 people took part in 187 demonstrations. Some universities, including Rennes, were also occupied during February. Early March Over a million took part in protests on 7 March. On 9 March, around 38 universities were on strike. 16 March Protests across France on 16 March led to widespread disruptions. Approximately one hundred bicyclists barricaded streets around the Louvre in protests unrelated to the labour contract. (The protest around the Louvre concerned the lack of sports teachers in schools.) Another hundred protesters descended on City Hall in Rennes, refusing to leave. Other, mostly peaceful, protests occurred throughout the country, in cities such as Marseille. Many universities, including the University of Toulouse, were forced to close on 16 March as some wanted them to remain open and others wanted them closed during the large protests. 18 March Media attention focused on the violent element of the demonstrations in Paris on 18 March, when as many as 700,000 protesters converged on the city's Place de la Nation. Once the protesters departed from the meeting, a few dozen rioters began to torch cars and vandalize store fronts as police were called in to calm the situation. To suppress the crowd, police officers began to spray tear gas. In the evening, new clashes occurred on the Place de la Sorbonne, between a hundred demonstrators and the police, until 1 am. A protester from that night, Cyril Ferez, a trade unionist from the Sud-PTT union, trampled by riot police, was in a coma for three weeks after skirmishes in the Place de la Nation, Paris. That day saw 156 people being arrested in Paris. Protesters in Marseille were also sprayed with tear gas after some of them climbed Marseille's City Hall and replaced a French flag with a flag that proclaimed "anticapitalism." Throughout the rest of the country, less violent protests occurred. In the estimated 160 protests organized around the country, police estimated that half a