PARIS (AP) — Protesters took to the streets of more than 200 towns and cities across France on Thursday to denounce spending cuts and demand higher taxes on the rich.

In Paris, thousands of workers, retirees and students started marching on Thursday afternoon from Place d’Italie. The Eiffel Tower informed visitors in a statement it was closed due to the strike.

The nationwide strike, called by France’s major unions, was the latest of a series of protests that started last month amid political turmoil and heated budget talks.

Unions are urging Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to abandon draft budget measures proposed by his predecessor, which include social welfare freezes and austerity measures that many say will further erode the purchasing power of low-paid and middle-class workers. They also call for higher taxes on the wealthy.

Lecornu, appointed last month, has not yet unveiled the details of his budget plans and has yet to appoint his government ministers, which is expected in the coming days. The deeply divided parliament is to debate the budget bill by the end of the year.

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Sophie Binet, head of the CGT union, said Thursday: “It’s true, it’s the first time that there are three days of strikes and protests in a month without a government or budget. It shows the level of social anger.”

Speaking on BFM TV news broadcaster, she was asked about the timing of the latest action: “Why are we protesting now? Because we feel that it’s now that the decisions are being made, and we want to be heard.”

The French Interior Ministry said 85 000 protesters had taken to the street by midday outside Paris.

SNCF, the national rail company, said high-speed train services were running normally Thursday while some regional lines were affected by partial disruptions. In Paris, metro traffic was close to normal but many commuting trains were running at reduced capacity.

Some teachers and health care workers have also joined the strike, but overall, early figures appeared to show less people responded to the unions’ call than last month.

On Sept. 18, more than 500,000 demonstrators marched in France’s small towns and big cities, including Paris, according to figures from police and interior ministry. Unions reported more than 1 millions strikers and protesters nationwide.

The week before, a day of anti-government action across France saw streets choked with smoke, barricades in flames and volleys of tear gas amid the “Block Everything” campaign.

We meet Cillian Murphy’s titular character in “Steve” as he’s about to be interviewed on camera. He asks the crew to stop filming him for a moment as he tries to collect himself, but instead the camera pushes in closer as he becomes overtaken by emotional pain.

The moment is a microcosm of the uneven drama set in the mid-1990s at an English school for young men with serious behavioral issues that’s landing this week on Netflix not long after its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Adapted from Max Porter’s bestselling 2023 novella, “Shy,” by the author himself, the film is a kinetic and, at times, claustrophobic experience in the hands of director Tim Mielants. Despite terrific performances by Academy Award-winning “Oppenheimer” star Murphy and several supporting players, “Steve” somehow manages to keep viewers at arm’s length even while trying to pull them in so closely.

“Steve” takes place over the course of about a day in the life of Steve; his second-in-command, Amanda (Tracey Ullman); other staffers; and the troubled students, including the book’s deeply struggling namesake, Shy (Jay Lycurgo). It is an important day, as a local news crew has come to produce a feature on the Stanton Wood reform school, which Steve believes could be beneficial to its mission. After all, it costs British taxpayers about 30,000 pounds — about $47,000 in 1996 — per student annually, and drumming up more public support for the mission certainly wouldn’t hurt.

As we soon see, though, the students are, to put it politely, a handful. The fights that need to be broken up start first thing in the morning, and the lads are all too happy to put on a show for the camera, although that show may not be suitable for a general audience.

When a reporter asks her about her work, about trying to make a difference in the lives of these youths, Amanda first gives her official answer.

“I am part prison guard; I’m part nurse; I’m part battle axe; I’m part mummy,” she says. “Unofficial answer: I (expletive) adore them.”

So does Steve, who grabs one-on-one time with those who need it and desperately tries to get his positive messages through to them. Jamie (Luke Ayres) is a prime example — he’s constantly giving Shy and others a hard time.

The head teacher at Stanton Wood reform school, Steve, portrayed by Cillian Murphy, right, talks with a student, Luke Ayres’ Jamie, who’s been causing trouble in a scene from “Steve.” (Courtesy of Netflix)

Shy, after getting a call from a family member, is having a particularly challenging day, and he lashes out at Jenny (Emily Watson), the counselor who visits Stanton Wood regularly, stopping just short of being violent with her.

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Regardless of what some may see as the high cost of trying to make a difference in the lives of these boys, some of whom are likely to land in prison eventually regardless, the staffers are surely underpaid and do not have enough help. It’s wearing on everyone, including Steve, who isn’t using the most ideal ways to cope with the strains of the job and the guilt tied to an event from his past.

Before long, you witness the development that, later in the day, will cause Steve to break down before the aforementioned interview. It’s a gut punch.

Again, this is more powerful work from Murphy, whose relatively recent credits also include “Peaky Blinders” and “A Quiet Place Part II.” As Steve, he constantly strives to put on a brave face and stay positive, but you can see that pain simmering just under the surface and, from time to time, boiling over.

Mostly known for comedic work, Ullman (“The Tracey Ullman Show,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) brings a bit of levity to the proceedings — “Today’s a real cluster-(expletive); there’s no other way around it,” her Amanda declares at the beginning of the morning staff meeting — but delivers a touching performance.

Tracey Ullman and Cillian Murphy portray colleagues working in a difficult situation in “Steve.” (Courtesy of Netflix)

Lastly, all of the young men playing the students at Stanton Wood are so convincing that it’s hard to pick a standout among them. That said, given what is going on with his character, Lycurgo (“The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself”) has to go to a deeper, darker place than the rest, most of whom are asked to do little more than act up and lash out.

Jay Lycurgo, left, portrays troubled student Shy, and Cillian Murphy is the titular teacher Steve in “Steve.” (Courtesy of Netflix)

Even as your heart breaks for Shy, Steve and the rest, you can feel frustrated that you aren’t drawn into this situation more deeply from an emotional standpoint. Mielants — who also directed Murphy in last year’s well-received “Small Things Like These” — is responsible for some nice touches in “Steve,” but, perhaps, he’s a little too worried about the visual style and not enough about character development.

Most impressively, he finds a way to end “Steve” — a bit draining even at only about 90 minutes — on a couple of optimistic notes, if not in an altogether happy place.

That helps nudge the film into the realm of the recommended, but we’ll understand if you choose to keep it a bit beyond arm’s length.

‘Steve’

Where: Netflix.

When: Oct. 3.

Rated: R for pervasive language, substance abuse and some sexual material.

Runtime: 1 hour, 32 minutes.

Stars (of four): 2.5.

By Susanne Rust, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Since the avian flu arrived en force in California’s dairy industry in 2024, not only has it sickened cows, it has killed hundreds of domestic cats. Some pet cats that live on dairy farms were infected with the H5N1 virus by drinking raw milk. Both pets and feral barn cats got sick after eating raw pet food that harbored the virus. Still others got it by eating infected wild birds, rats or mice, or from contact with dairy workers’ contaminated clothes or boots.

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But a new published case suggests that death may be averted if infected cats are treated early with antiviral medications, such as Tamiflu, or oseltamivir. Once treated, these animals may carry antibodies to the virus that makes them resistant to reinfection, at least temporarily.

The discovery was made by Jake Gomez, a veterinarian who treats small animals, such as cats and dogs, as well as large ones, including dairy cows, from his clinic, Cross Street Small Animal Veterinary Hospital, in Tulare.

Last fall, Gomez worked with a team of scientists from the University of Maryland and University of Texas who were in the Central Valley collecting blood samples from outdoor cats at dairy farms, looking to see if they could find antibodies to the H5N1 flu.

Cats are exquisitely sensitive to H5N1; one of the telltale signs that a dairy herd is infected is the presence of dead barn cats.

On Oct. 31, a cat owner brought in an indoor/outdoor cat to Gomez’ clinic that was ADR — a technical veterinarian acronym that stands for “ain’t doing right.”

The cat was up-to-date on all its vaccinations and the owner reported no known exposure to toxic chemicals.

Gomez offered to do blood work and urinalysis to probe more deeply what was going on, but the owner declined. So, Gomez sent them home with an antibiotic and an appetite stimulant. Two days later, the cat died.

It turned out the family had had another cat die just a few days earlier, Gomez said, recalling the visit.

Also during that time, Gomez was treating infected dairy herds around Tulare. Thousands of cows were falling sick from the virus. The family with the sick cats, he learned, lived less than a mile from an infected dairy, and the cat owner worked delivering hay to local dairies, spending time on infected farms.

“Considering how quickly it moved from one cat to the next, it occurred to me it might be H5N1,” he said.

Gomez said he reached out to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture to see if they would test the dead animals for the virus. The agencies, he said, gave him the runaround and he couldn’t get anyone to answer his calls — which he said was perplexing, considering the rapid response when he alerted them to infected cattle.

“If I called to tell them a dairy herd had it, within 24 hours a SWAT team from the USDA and state would be swarming the farm,” he said. But for a cat? Crickets.

On Nov. 6 and 7, the family returned with two more sick cats.

Gomez said he still didn’t know what they had, but had a suspicion they could be infected with H5N1. So, he treated them with the antiviral oseltamivir, known also as Tamiflu, and they recovered.

In March this year, blood samples collected from the two cats showed high levels of antibodies to H5N1 — suggesting the cats had been exposed.

The case was published in the journal One Health.

Kristen Coleman, an airborne infectious disease researcher at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, and an author on the paper, said the findings suggest that cats may be effectively treated and that antiviral medications could help prevent further spread of the virus among cats living in the same home and the humans who care for them.

She said there have been no known transmissions from cats to humans in this outbreak, but there have in the past — in 2005, Thai zookeepers were infected by tigers that had the virus, and in 2016, New York veterinarians at an animal shelter got it from tending to sick cats.

But Jane Sykes, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said she’s not convinced the cats in this case actually had H5N1 — and urged people to read the study with care and caution.

“It’s possible that the positive antibody test results were unrelated to the reasons why those two cats died,” she said. “The virus wasn’t detected in any of the four cats, so infection was not proven.”

And whether the cats recovered because they were treated with Tamiflu, or whether the medication was incidental and they’d have recovered on their own — from another virus, infection or ailment — isn’t clear.

In addition, she said, no one has researched the effects of Tamiflu on cats. And while these two cats appeared to tolerate the drug, that doesn’t mean other cats will.

“Cats metabolize some of the anti-infective compounds very differently than other animals, including people, and they’re quite susceptible to bad side effects of many of these drugs,” she said. “We have to be really careful when we start just using random antiviral drugs that haven’t been studied for safety in cats, because they are so likely to get bad side effects.”

Having said that, she said if she were faced with a similar situation, a high certainty that a cat had been exposed, whether from drinking raw milk or eating raw food that had been infected, she would consider prescribing the medication. But she’d caution her client that it was experimental, and the animal could die from the drug.

She said there are numerous labs across the country that will test blood and urine for the virus.

Sykes urged people not to feed raw food or milk to their pets.

She said she’s seeing more raw food products for pets “and people want them, and they don’t understand the harms and the fact that some of these are contaminated for a long period of time with influenza viruses, like H5N1.”

Neither freezing nor smoking meat kills the virus.

“It’s astonishing how big this industry is getting,” Sykes said. “It’s crazy.”

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By DEE-ANN DURBIN and TED SHAFFREY, Associated Press

VALHALLA, New York (AP) — Pepsi has a new challenge: keeping products like Gatorade and Cheetos vivid and colorful without the artificial dyes that U.S. consumers are increasingly rejecting.

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PepsiCo, which also makes Doritos, Cap’n Crunch cereal, Funyuns and Mountain Dew, announced in April that it would accelerate a planned shift to using natural colors in its foods and beverages. Around 40% of its U.S. products now contain synthetic dyes, according to the company.

But just as it took decades for artificial colors to seep into PepsiCo’s products, removing them is likely to be a multi-year process. The company said it’s still finding new ingredients, testing consumers’ responses and waiting for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve natural alternatives. PepsiCo hasn’t committed to meeting the Trump administration’s goal of phasing out petroleum-based synthetic dyes by the end of 2026.

“We’re not going to launch a product that the consumer’s not going to enjoy,” said Chris Coleman, PepsiCo’s senior director for food research and development in North America. “We need to make sure the product is right.”

Coleman said it can take two or three years to shift a product from an artificial color to a natural one. PepsiCo has to identify a natural ingredient that will have a stable shelf life and not change a product’s flavor. Then it must ensure the availability of a safe and adequate supply. The company tests prototypes with trained experts and panels of consumers, then makes sure the new formula won’t snag its manufacturing process. It also has to design new packaging.

Experimenting with spices to color Cheetos

Tostitos and Lay’s will be the first PepsiCo brands to make the shift, with naturally dyed tortilla and potato chips expected on store shelves later this year and naturally dyed dips due to be on sale early next year. Most of the chips, dips and salsas in the two lines already are naturally colored, but there were some exceptions.

The reddish-brown tint of Tostitos Salsa Verde, for example, came from four synthetic colors: Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Red 40 and Blue 1. Coleman said the company is switching to carob powder, which gives the chips a similar color, but needed to tweak the recipe to ensure the addition of the cocoa alternative wouldn’t affect the taste.

Damien Browne, vice president of research and development for PepsiCo’s beverages, is interviewed at the company’s R&D Campus, in Valhalla, NY, Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In its Frito-Lay food labs and test kitchens in Plano, Texas, PepsiCo is experimenting with ingredients like paprika and turmeric to mimic the bright reds and oranges in products like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Coleman said.

The company is looking at purple sweet potatoes and various types of carrots to color drinks like Mountain Dew and Cherry 7Up, according to Damien Browne, the vice president of research and development for PepsiCo’s beverage division based in Valhalla, New York.

Getting the hue right is critical, since many consumers know products like Gatorade by their color and not necessarily their name, Browne said.

“We eat with our eyes,” he said. “If you look at a plate of food, it’s generally the different kinds of colors that will tell you what you would like or not.”

Consumer demand goes from a whisper to a roar

When the Pepsi-Cola Company was founded in 1902, the absence of artificial dyes was a point of pride. The company marketed Pepsi as “The Original Pure Food Drink” to differentiate the cola from rivals that used lead, arsenic and other toxins as food colorants before the U.S. banned them in 1906.

But synthetic dyes eventually won over food companies. They were vibrant, consistent and cheaper than natural colors. They are also rigorously tested by the FDA.

Still, PepsiCo said it started seeing a small segment of shoppers asking for products without artificial colors or flavors more than two decades ago. In 2002, it launched its Simply line of chips, which offer natural versions of products like Doritos. A dye-free organic Gatorade came out in 2016.

“We’re looking for those little signals that will become humongous in the future,” Amanda Grzeda, PepsiCo’s senior director of global sensory and consumer experience, said of the company’s close attention to consumer preferences.

Grzeda said the whisper PepsiCo detected in the early 2000s has become a roar, fueled by social media and growing consumer interest in ingredients. More than half of the consumers PepsiCo spoke to for a recent internal study said they were trying to reduce their consumption of artificial dyes, Grzeda said.

Synthetic and natural colors are in FDA’s hands

Some states, including West Virginia and Arizona, have banned artificial dyes in school lunches. But Browne said he thinks consumers are driving the push to overhaul processed foods.

“Consumers are definitely leading, and I think what we need to do is have the regulators catching up, allowing us to approve new natural ingredients to be able to meet their demand,” he said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said it’s expediting approval of natural additives after calling on companies to halt their use of synthetic dyes. In May, the FDA approved three new natural color additives, including a blue color derived from algae. In July, the agency approved gardenia blue, which is derived from a flowering evergreen.

The FDA banned one petroleum-based dye, Red 3, in January because it was shown to cause cancer in lab rats. And in September, the agency proposed a ban on Orange B, a synthetic color that hasn’t been used in decades.

Six synthetic dyes remain FDA-approved and widely used, despite mixed studies that show they may cause neurobehavioral problems in some children. Red 40, for example, is used in 25,965 food and beverage items on U.S. store shelves, according to the market research firm NIQ.

But even if decades of research has shown that synthetic colors are safe, PepsiCo has to weigh public perceptions, Grzeda said.

“We could just blindly follow the science, but it probably would put us at odds with what our consumers believe and perceive in the world,” she said.

Passing taste and texture tests

PepsiCo also has to balance the needs of consumers who don’t want their favorite snacks and drinks to change or get more expensive because of the costs of natural dyes. NIQ data shows that unit sales of products advertised as free of artificial colors fell sharply in 2023 as prices rose.

Susan Mazur-Stommen, a small business owner in Hinton, West Virginia, picked up some Simply brand Cheetos Puffs recently at a convenience store because they were the only variety available. She found the texture to be much different from regular Cheetos Puffs, she said, and their pallid color made them less appetizing.

Mazur-Stommen said she agrees with the move away from petroleum-based dyes, but it’s not a critical issue for her.

“What I am looking for is the original formulation,” she said.

Ultimately, PepsiCo does not want customers to have to choose between natural colors and familiar flavors and textures, Grzeda said.

“That’s where it requires the deep science and ingredients and magic,” she said.

Durbin reported from Detroit.