By NICOLAS GARRIGA, THOMAS ADAMSON and JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — Protesters hit France with transport strikes, notably hobbling the Paris Metro, demonstrations and traffic slowdowns and blockades Thursday, pitting the power of the streets against President Emmanuel Macron ‘s government and its proposals to cut funding for public services that underpin the French way of life.

The first whiffs of police teargas came before daybreak, with scuffles between riot officers and protesters in Paris. Nationwide demonstrations, from France’s biggest cities to small towns, were expected to mobilize hundreds of thousands of marchers, voicing anger about mounting poverty, sharpening inequality and struggles for low-paid workers and others to make ends meet.

“We say ‘no’ to the government. We’ve had enough. There’s no more money, a high cost of living,” striking transport worker Nadia Belhoum said at a before-dawn protest targeting a Paris bus depot. She described “people agonizing, being squeezed like a lemon even if there’s no more juice.”

Unions targeting budget cuts

Labor unions that called strikes are pushing for the abandonment of proposed budget cuts, social welfare freezes and other belt-tightening that opponents contend will further hit the pockets of low-paid and middle-class workers and which triggered the collapse of successive governments that sought to push through savings.

Opponents of Macron’s business-friendly leadership complain that taxpayer-funded public services — free schools and public hospitals, subsidized health care, unemployment benefits and other safety nets that are cherished in France — are being eroded. Left-wing parties and their supporters want the wealthy and businesses to pay more, rather than see spending cuts to plug holes in France’s finances and to rein in its debts.

“Public service is falling apart,” said teacher Claudia Nunez. “It’s always the same people who pay.”

New PM’s baptism of fire

The day of upheaval — with strikes also impacting schools, industry and other sectors of the European Union’s second-largest economy — aimed to turn up the heat on new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. Macron appointed him last week, tasking Lecornu with building parliamentary support for belt-tightening that brought down his predecessors.

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“Bringing in Lecornu doesn’t change anything — he’s just another man in a suit who will follow Macron’s line,” said 22-year-old student Juliette Martin.

“We want our voices heard. People my age feel like no one in politics is speaking for us,” she said. “It’s always our generation that ends up with the insecurity and the debt.”

Unions have decried budget proposals by Macron’s minority governments, weakened by their lack of a dependable majority in parliament, as brutal and punitive for workers, retirees and others who are vulnerable.

“The bourgeoisie of this country have been gorging themselves, they don’t even know what to do with their money anymore. So if there is indeed a crisis, the question is who should pay for it,” said Fabien Villedieu, a leader of the SUD-Rail train workers union. “We are asking that the government’s austerity plan that consists of making the poorest in this country always pay — whether they are employees, retirees, students — ends and that we make the richest in this country pay.”

Striking rail workers waving flares made a brief foray into the Paris headquarters of the Economics Ministry, leaving trails of smoke in the air before leaving.

Macron’s opponents also continue to denounce unpopular pension reforms that he railroaded through parliament and which raised the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64, triggering a firestorm of anger and rounds of protest earlier in what is his second and last term as president, which ends in 2027.

Massive police operation

The government said it was deploying police in exceptionally large numbers — about 80,000 in all — to keep order. Police were ordered to break up traffic blockades and other efforts to prevent people who weren’t protesting from going about their business. Paris police used tear gas to disperse a before-dawn blockade of a bus depot. French broadcasters also reported sporadic clashes in the cites of Nantes, in the west, and Lyon in the southeast, with volleys of police tear gas and projectiles targeting officers.

The Interior Ministry reported 94 arrests nationwide by midday.

“Every time there’s a protest, it feels like daily life is held hostage,” said office worker Nathalie Laurent, grappling with disruptions on the Paris Metro during her morning commute.

“You can feel the frustration in the air. People are tired,” she said. “It’s not very democratic when ordinary people can’t even do their jobs. And Lecornu — he’s only just started, but if this is his idea of stability, then he has a long way to go. We don’t need big speeches, we need to feel that someone in government understands what this chaos means for us.”

Few Metros outside rush-hours

The Paris Metro operator said rush-hour services suffered fewer disruptions than anticipated but that traffic largely stopped outside those hours except on three driverless automated lines.

French national rail company SNCF said “a few disruptions” were expected on high-speed trains to France and Europe, but most will run.

Regional rail lines, as well as the Paris Metro and commuter trains, will be more severely impacted.

In airports, only few disruptions are anticipated as the main air traffic controllers union decided to postponed its call for a strike pending the appointment of a new Cabinet.

Last week, a day of anti-government action across France saw streets choked with smoke, barricades in flames and volleys of tear gas as protesters denounced budget cuts and political turmoil.

Although falling short of its self-declared intention of total disruption, the “Block Everything” campaign still managed to paralyze parts of daily life and ignite hundreds of hot spots across the country.

Associated Press journalists Sylvie Corbet, Michael Euler, Oleg Cetinic and Yesica Brumec in Paris contributed.

By KEN SWEET, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The Platinum Card is getting shinier and pricier.

American Express’ latest update to its high-end Platinum Card, unveiled Thursday, comes with a lot more perks, including a $400 credit for dining out, and a lofty annual fee of $895.

The Platinum Card refresh is just the latest from the major credit card issuers, and the higher fees may put pressure on some cardholders to choose between the Platinum Card or another high-fee card like Chase’s Sapphire Reserve Card. Or pay close to $2,000 in annual fees for the privilege of carrying two or more of these premium cards.

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As part of the revamp, the Platinum Card customers will get a $600 annual hotel credit — up from $300 — to use with AmEx’s travel portal; a new $400 credit for using AmEx’s restaurant reservation platform Resy; $300 to use at athletic apparel chain Lululemon; and an increased “digital entertainment credit” of $300 that AmEx cardmembers can put toward several streaming services or news outlets.

All the new perks are available for AmEx customers to start using immediately. In all, AmEx says the value of the perks on the new Platinum Card total roughly $3,500. These perks are enough to justify the $200 increase in the annual fee, said Howard Grosfield, group president of U.S. Consumer Services at AmEx. The annual fee on the Platinum Card was $550 just five years ago.

“What we are trying to do is two things: We want to make sure we are delivering $3,500 in benefits that is far, far in excess of the $895 fee and make it easy to find multiple ways for card members to find benefits that exceed that fee,” Grosfield said in an interview.

None of the Platinum Card’s previous perks, such as a $200 airline fee credit or the credit to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue, are going away, the company said.

People who watch the credit card rewards space closely felt the upgrades were worth it.

“If nothing else, going to lounges and using the $600 hotel credit will essentially justify the cost each year, and the other items are a bonus,” said Ryan Smith, news managing editor of UpgradedPoints. Smith was briefed on the changes to AmEx’s card before the launch.

Also, as part of refresh, AmEx is issuing the stainless steel card with a high-gloss, mirrored finish, a version that may end up pulling double duty as a portable mirror.

Once a niche product whose goal was to “sell snobbery” to the high-flying business executive of the 1980s, as one magazine wrote 40 years ago, the Platinum Card is now one of American Express’ most popular products, as millions of Americans have been willing to pay handsomely to play in the game of chasing airline and hotel status and perks. It is estimated that 70% to 80% of all credit cards are now tied to a loyalty programs like hotel, airline or credit card points, according to industry research and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Those programs used to be a rarity a few decades ago.

American Express pretty much had the premium credit card customer to itself for decades. But the Platinum Card now faces an increasingly competitive market, where the major card companies each have their own high fee, high rewards credit card products with similar perks.

JPMorgan Chase updated its Chase Sapphire Reserve Card in June, with its own $300 dining credit as well as a new $300 credit to use toward concert and event tickets through StubHub, among other perks. Citigroup released the Strata Elite Card in August. Capital One has a high-end card known as Venture X and fintech company Bilt, the company that cultivated a brand by letting renters pay their rent via credit card, is expected to have a high-end card next year.

When Chase increased the rewards on its Sapphire Reserve Card in June, American Express tried to one-up its rival with a press release letting people know that upgrades to the Platinum Card were coming. The company has been teasing its Platinum Card changes on social media for several weeks.

Not to be outdone by AmEx, Chase said Wednesday it was tweaking some of the rewards on Sapphire Reserve to make them more flexible for its customers, 24 hours before AmEx’s announcement.

AmEx continues to lean heavily on what’s been joked about in the industry as the “coupon book,” where customers are given major discounts for select merchants and partners, while Chase has leaned heavily on giving people bonus points for certain spending. But as part of their broad marketing campaign for the updated card, AmEx leaned heavily on its reach and useability of the benefits. For example, AmEx executives pointed out that its $400 credit on Resy is good at 10,000 restaurants, while Chase’s own dining credit is good at only “hundreds” of restaurants. AmEx also has a large airport lounge network, either through their own Centurion lounges, or its partnership with Delta Air Lines.

“We’ve been at this premium game for a long time. I think our cardmembers see the Platinum Card as in a league of its own,” Grosfield said.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

AYLESBURY, England (AP) — After the pomp, it’s time for the politics.

President Donald Trump met Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, the final day of the U.S. leader’s state visit to Britain, with tech investment, steel tariffs and potentially tricky talks over Ukraine and Gaza on the agenda.

The president and first lady Melania Trump were feted by King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Wednesday at Windsor Castle with all the pageantry the monarchy can muster: gold-trimmed carriages, scarlet-clad soldiers, artillery salutes and a glittering banquet in a grand ceremonial hall.

British officials have festooned the trip with the kind of superlatives Trump revels in: It’s an “unprecedented” second state visit for the U.S. leader, featuring the biggest military honor guard ever assembled for such an occasion.

On Thursday it was Starmer’s turn to welcome the president to Chequers, a 16th-century manor house northwest of London that serves as a rural retreat for British leaders.

After bidding goodbye to the king and queen at Windsor — Trump called the monarch “a great gentleman, and a great king” — Trump flew by helicopter some 20 miles to Chequers. He was welcomed by the prime minister and his wife, Victoria Starmer, before the two men sat down for a formal meeting.

Trump’s British hosts want to celebrate the strength of the U.S-U.K. relationship, almost 250 years after its rocky start in 1776. Trump was welcomed by ceremonial honor guard complete with bagpipers — a nod to the president’s Scottish heritage — and shown items from the archive of wartime leader Winston Churchill, who coined the term “special relationship” for the bond between the United States and Britain.

There’s also a lunch of Dover sole followed by key lime pie, and a display by the Red Devils army parachute team.

The first lady, meanwhile, spent the morning in Windsor. She was shown treasures from the Royal Library by the queen before meeting young scouts with Kate, the Princess of Wales.

Trans-Atlantic tech partnership

To coincide with the visit, Britain said U.S. companies had pledged $204 billion in investment in the United Kingdom, including $122 billion from investment firm Blackstone in the next decade. Investment will also flow the other way, including almost $30 billion by pharmaceutical firm GSK in the U.S.

The two leaders will sign a “tech prosperity deal” that U.K. officials say will bring thousands of jobs and billions in investment in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear energy.

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It includes a U.K. arm of Stargate, a Trump-backed AI infrastructure project led by OpenAI, and a host of AI data centers around the U.K. American firms are announcing $42 billion investment in the U.K.’s AI sector, including $30 billion from Microsoft for protects including Britain’s largest supercomputer.

British officials say they have not agreed to scrap a digital services tax or water down internet regulation to get the deal, some details of which have yet to be announced.

The British government is learning that when it comes to deals with the U.S. administration, the devil is in the detail. In May, Starmer and Trump struck a trade agreement that reduced U.S. tariffs on Britain’s key auto and aerospace industries.

But talks on slashing duties on steel and aluminum to zero from their current level of 25% have stalled, despite a promise in May that the issue would be settled within weeks.

The British Chambers of Commerce said failure to cut the tariffs would “greeted with dismay” by the British steel industry.

Potentially awkward conversations

Starmer wants a successful state visit to balance weeks of bad news that saw him lose not just an ambassador but Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner — who quit over a tax error on a home purchase — and a senior aide. Fourteen months after winning a landslide election victory, Starmer’s government is struggling to kickstart Britain’s sluggish economy and his Labour Party is lagging in the polls.

Leslie Vinjamuri, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said the trip is likely to be “a difficult visit for the prime minister, much more so than for the U.S. president.”

For Trump, “this plays well at home, it plays well abroad. It’s almost entirely to President Trump’s advantage to turn up to Britain and be celebrated by the British establishment,” she said.

Starmer will be bracing for awkward questions about Jeffrey Epstein when he and Trump hold a news conference at Chequers. Days before the state visit, Starmer fired Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Peter Mandelson, over the envoy’s past friendship with the convicted sex offender.

Questions about Epstein overshadowed Trump’s last visit to the U.K. in July, when he sat with Starmer at his golf club in Scotland. As they took questions from journalists, Trump was repeatedly peppered with queries about Epstein as his government faced pressure to release government records into the criminal case of the now-disgraced financier, who authorities say killed himself in 2019.

Difficult discussions on Ukraine, Middle East

There are also potentially difficult conversations to be had over Ukraine and the Middle East.

Starmer has played a major part in European efforts to shore up U.S. support for Ukraine. Trump has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin but has not made good on threats to impose new sanctions on Russia for shunning peace negotiations. On Tuesday, Trump appeared to put the onus on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying, “He’s going to have to make a deal.”

Last week’s Russian drone incursion into NATO member Poland drew strong condemnation from European NATO allies, and pledges of more planes and troops for the bloc’s eastern flank. Trump played down the incident’s severity, musing that it “ could have been a mistake. ”

The king gave Trump a gentle nudge in his state banquet speech on the strength of the trans-Atlantic relationship. Charles noted that “as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace.”

Starmer also departs from Trump on Israel’s war in Gaza, and has said the U.K. will formally recognize a Palestinian state later this month.

Trump has threatened to penalize Canada during trade negotiations for making a similar move.

AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this story.

By MIKE STOBBE and LAURA UNGAR, Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new vaccine advisory committee meets Thursday to begin a two-day session focused on shots against COVID-19, hepatitis B and chickenpox.

Votes are expected Thursday afternoon on hepatitis B and on a combined shot against measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox, but Department of Health and Human Services officials have not said exactly what proposals would be considered.

Information on the meeting agenda suggests the committee may be poised to roll back — at least partly — a longstanding recommendation that all U.S. children get an initial dose of hepatitis B vaccine right after birth.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics and many public health officials support that decades-old practice.

Dr. Mysheika Roberts, health department director in Columbus, Ohio, said rates of the liver disease among children have dropped tremendously since it was put into place.

“I don’t understand the rationale of why we would stop providing that vaccine and that guidance to babies when we’ve seen such great progress in that area,” said Roberts, who was scheduled to join the vaccine panel but was dismissed by Kennedy. “If it’s not broken, why change it?”

The committee’s chair, Martin Kulldorff, also has raised the idea of recommending the MMRV combination shot not be given to children younger than 4. In a June presentation to the committee, he discussed rare instances of feverish seizures that have been associated with the first dose, given to kids between ages 1 and 2.

The ACIP last dealt with the issue in 2009, when it said either the combination shot or separate MMR and varicella shots were acceptable for the first dose. Today, most pediatricians suggest separate doses for the first round and give the combined shot for the second dose, pediatrics experts say.

Some doctors and public health experts say they are not aware of any new safety data that would explain the revisiting of those vaccination recommendations. They worry that the panel is raising unwarranted new questions about vaccines in the minds of parents, and that it may limit the ability of families to get their children protected.

The panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, makes recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how already-approved vaccines should be used. CDC directors have almost always accepted those recommendations, which are widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs.

Kennedy, a leading antivaccine activist before becoming the nation’s top health official, fired the entire 17-member panel earlier this year and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices. On Monday, HHS announced the addition of five more people, some of them noted skeptics of COVID-19 vaccinations or pandemic prevention measures.

Doctors’ groups and public health organizations have voiced alarm about Kennedy and his new panel. Concern intensified in May, when Kennedy announced he was removing COVID-19 shots from the CDC’s recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women. The move was heavily criticized by doctors’ groups and public health organizations, and prompted a lawsuit by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups.

The committee is scheduled to make COVID-19 vaccine recommendations on Friday.

The AAP and some others groups have issued their own vaccination recommendations, which disagree with recommendations put out by federal officials this year.

In recent weeks, several states have announced policies to help residents maintain access to vaccines, in some cases signing orders that ensure COVID-19 vaccinations at pharmacies without individual prescriptions. Wisconsin this week joined a list of more than a dozen to take steps, when Gov. Tony Evers signed an executive order for state health officials to follow the guidance of national physician organizations.

Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.