PARIS AUTHORITIES BAN GREENPEACE PROTEST PETITION DEMONSTRATION

Greenpeace planned to deliver a protest petition containing 3,175,000 signatures to the Elysee today, via a 500-person human chain between the Place de la Concorde and the presidential palace, but city officials banned the demonstration. The authorities also halted a protest flotilla of boats on the Seine.

In Papeete, Tahiti, demonstrators stormed government buildings on Wednesday, and organisers of a protest voyage by a traditional Polynesian canoe said the vessel had been buzzed by French military aircraft outside the exclusion zone around Mururoa atoll. Activists aboard a flotilla of ships made final preparations for protests against the French tests.