France was on Friday preparing for a second day of travel cancellations and school closures as unions warned there would be no let-up in the strike called to protest planned pension reforms.

France's vaunted high-speed trains stood still Thursday, schools across the country shut down and the Eiffel Tower warned visitors to stay away as unions held nationwide strikes and protests over the government's plan to overhaul the retirement system.

Paris deployed 6,000 police for what's expected to be a major demonstration through the capital, an outpouring of anger at President Emmanuel Macron for a reform seen as threatening the hard-fought French way of life.

France was Wednesday preparing for one of its biggest nationwide strikes in years with stoppages by transport workers and teachers expected to paralyse the country in an intensifying showdown between President Emmanuel Macron and unions.

Some 90 percent of high-speed trains have been axed, most of the Paris metro will be shut, hundreds of flights cancelled and the majority of schools closed in Thursday's strike over Macron's planned pension reforms.

France Tuesday warned the United States of strong EU retaliation if it imposed tariffs on key French products ranging from sparkling wine to cheese to handbags, in an intensifying row over taxing digital giants that risks spiralling into a new trade war.

The French parliament earlier this year infuriated the administration of President Donald Trump by passing a law taxing digital giants like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon for revenues earned inside the country.

Paris police fired tear gas on Saturday to push back yellow vest protesters trying to revive their movement on the first anniversary of the sometimes-violent uprising against President Emmanuel Macron and policies seen as favoring the rich.

Police deployed in force around Paris and detained 24 people around the capital by mid-morning. Officers dislodged protesters trying to block the bypass around Paris and sprayed repeated volleys of tear gas at groups gathered near Porte de Champerret, in the northwest, and Place d’Italie in the southeast of the city.

Heavy snowfall  across a large swath of southeast France has left one person dead and cut power to some 300,000 homes, with icy conditions snarling train and road traffic Friday.

France's top diplomat held talks in Baghdad on Thursday about transferring foreign jihadists including French nationals from northern Syria, where a Turkish offensive is under way, to be tried in Iraq.

French police on Monday detained five people linked to a radicalised employee at the Paris police headquarters who killed four colleagues in a knife attack earlier this month, sources said.

The French authorities said Saturday they were checking the identity of a man arrested in Scotland and believed to have vanished eight years ago following the murder of his wife and four children.

French judicial sources had said Friday that police at Glasgow airport had arrested Xavier Dupont de Ligonnes, who was subject to an international arrest warrant for the 2011 killings which transfixed France.

France's Pacific island territory of New Caledonia will hold a second referendum on independence next year, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Friday.