In the south of the capital, dozens of trouble-makers hurled paving stones and bottles at riot police, who fired tear gas. At least nine police officers were slightly injured.

More serious incidents broke out in Lille, in the north, where hundreds of youths hurled missiles at the riot police, smashed shop windows and vandalised cars, although the situation was calmer by around 8:00 pm (1800 GMT).

A female television reporter was assaulted while filming the violence and a young man suffered burn injuries from the shell of a tear gas grenade.

Police in Rennes, in the northwest, also fired tear gas at protestors after they were targeted with bottles and stones as youths set garbage cans on fire and smashed bus shelters and windows.

Firefighters said they had evacuated at least three people, including one hit with a rubber bullet.

In the northern city of Caen, a photographer was injured in clashes between police and demonstrators who had set up a roadblock on the ring road.

Tuesday's marches, accompanied by strikes, came despite concessions wrung from President Jacques Chirac as well as the prospect of imminent talks to end the two-month crisis over the First Employment Contract (CPE).

The CGT union said three million people took part in nearly 200 rallies -- roughly the same number it claimed had turned out on the last day of action a week ago. The government figure was just over one million.

Tens of thousands of students and workers marched to the Place de l'Italie in the south of Paris.

"We have to keep up the fight. My parents did May 1968, so they're hardly going to stop me!" said 19-year-old student Elodie Desrues, referring to the landmark student revolts.

"It is obvious the government is on the retreat so we have to keep pushing to the end," said Francois Chereque of the CFDT union.

Union leaders vowed they would attend talks Wednesday with ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), but only to push for the CPE's complete abrogation.

"If there is a chance to convince UMP deputies that they are at a dead end, we shall go and once again ask for the withdrawal of the CPE. But we refuse to negotiate mere adjustments," the CGT's Thibault said.

As well as the escalating protests, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's botched attempt to reform labour laws has also caused anguished soul-searching about the survival of France's social model against globalisation.

Conceived as a tool against youth unemployment which runs at 22 percent in France, the CPE is a contract for under 26-year-olds that can be terminated by the employer without explanation during a two-year trial period.

Opponents accuse the premier of trampling on hard-won labour rights and of railroading it through parliament without proper consultation with unions and employers.

Chirac offered an elaborate compromise last Friday -- ratifying the CPE but immediately suspending it pending a new law to amend its most hotly contested provisions.

But leaders of the student-union alliance were confident that more can be won, and want all trace of the hated contract written out of the new law.

In a sign of a shifting balance of power in the government, responsibility for organising the new legislation was taken from Villepin and handed to his powerful rival, Interior Minister and UMP chief Nicolas Sarkozy.

An opinion poll to be published this week in L'Express magazine shows that 45 percent of the public think Villepin should resign.

Tuesday's protests were accompanied by strikes in the transport sector, but disruption was limited, with all Paris metro trains running and 70 percent of TGV fast trains. Scores of domestic and European flights were cancelled because of action by air-traffic controllers.

Trade unionists and student leaders said up to three million people took to the streets across France yesterday - the second time in eight days that the country has seen its biggest street demonstrations in almost 40 years. The protests, including one by hundreds of thousands of students and scholars who marched through central Paris, were mainly peaceful.

They were marked by a carnival atmosphere somewhere between a victory parade for the demonstrators and a funeral march for the "first employment law" as the ruling party prepared to begin negotiating its way out of the crisis.

Police fired teargas in Paris's Place d'Italie last night after groups of students and youths, some from the suburbs, attacked police lines. At Saint-Lazare station, riot police pulled over people disembarking from the suburbs, searching bags and checking identities. At the universities, students vowed to maintain the barricades over the Easter holidays, which begin this weekend.

Demonstrators marched in around 280 French towns and cities. In Rennes, where one university faculty has been blockaded for two months, students blocked railway tracks closing the station for almost an hour and police clashed with demonstrators who had gathered outside the ruling UMP party offices. About 60 students lobbed eggs and other objects at police in the northern city of Lille.

The "easy hire-easy fire" measure at the heart of the protests was pushed through parliament last month, in an attempt by the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, to address France's crippling youth unemployment of 23%. Paradoxically, the law made it easier for businesses to sack workers aged under 26 after two years without explanation. The government believed employers would be quicker to take young workers on if they were spared rigid employment rules that make it difficult to get rid of staff.

After two months of protests in which hundreds of schools and universities have been blockaded, closed or occupied and workers joined in a national strike, Mr Chirac signed the law on Sunday but asked for changes: the probation period for workers would be only one year and employers must give a reason for dismissal. He also ordered talks with unions.

Because the amended law will not come into operation until May, this allows a window in which trade unionists insist the law must be shelved and rewritten.

The measure has become a political battlefield for the potential candidates in next year's presidential election. Mr De Villepin, Mr Chirac's favoured successor, told the national assembly yesterday that he would not "throw in the towel". But a poll to be published in L'Express news weekly tomorrow shows his approval rating has slumped to 28%, one of the steepest monthly falls on record according to the polling company BVA. His approval rating was 48% in January

His rival, the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, has emerged as a possible broker to end the conflict, charged with bringing unions to the negotiating table. His allies have briefed the press this week that the law is dead and buried, or at least suspended, damaging Mr De Villepin.

France's main unions agreed to talks last night but insisted that they wanted the law withdrawn.

"There is new blood in this movement," the CGT union chief, Bernard Thibault, said yesterday. "I hope these rallies will help us deal the fatal blow."

But the discussion was unquestionably discordant. The two politicians traded insults and statistics during the tense 90-minute debate, each blaming the other for Italy's current economic slump and warning that worse was to come should his opponent be elected.

Mr Berlusconi, Italy's longest-standing prime minister, is lagging in the polls and fighting for political survival. He came out swinging, raising the spectre that a centre-left government would work to redistribute wealth, hurting the middle class.

"It's because they hate private property," Mr Berlusconi said, "because they see savings as something that should be taxed." He also warned that the centre-left alliance, which includes communists, would reintroduce inheritance taxes.

Looking irritated, Mr Prodi - a former prime minister and until 2004 the president of the European Commission - said he was tired of having words and programs put in his mouth.

"This is the mystification of truth," he said, adding that he specified that inheritance taxes would be applied only to estates worth "many millions" of euros.

The debate touched on issues including family life, women's role in society and the war in Iraq - but the economy was the topic returned to repeatedly.

Mr Berlusconi checked off his Government's claimed successes: record employment, job flexibility, higher pension payments and lower income taxes.

Mr Prodi, who once taught economics, never lost his professorial cool, accusing the Prime Minister of leaning "on numbers like alcoholics lean on lamp-posts - not to be enlightened but for support".

The crux of Mr Berlusconi's message was that continuity is better than change. "We have the force of a dream, to change Italy," he said.

Mr Berlusconi, 69, a media tycoon who performs well on television when he is allowed to call the shots, is considered to have lost the first televised debate on March 14, frustrated by the strict format that limited answers to 2½ minutes.

He regularly exceeded his time limit again on Monday and sometimes testily interrupted Mr Prodi. But at the end of the 90-minute confrontation, many commentators said it was a draw.

Mr Berlusconi suffered another setback this week after his television group was ordered to pay a €250,000 ($A422,000) fine for repeatedly favouring its proprietor in the election campaign.

It was the fourth time this year that the Prime Minister's television empire, Mediaset, has been penalised for bias. The campaign alone has cost it €500,000. However, an opposition representative on the board of public broadcaster RAI compared the fines to "a packet of cigarettes" for Mr Berlusconi, who was last year ranked by Forbes magazine as the 25th richest person in the world.

Since the last TV match, Mr Berlusconi has regained political initiative by accusing his rival of planning tax hikes that would devastate Italy's middle class.

Mr Prodi, 66, denied such plans, but said that if he won the election his government would inherit a financial mess.

"Public spending is out of control ... this is a real crisis," said Mr Prodi, the only man to have beaten Mr Berlusconi in a general election when he triumphed in 1996.

Common translations of "coglioni" in British and American dictionaries range from "idiot," "cretin," "fool" and "moron" to "prick" and "asshole."

"I have too much esteem for the intelligence of Italians to think that they could be such 'coglioni' to vote against their own interests," Berlusconi told the group. "Excuse my rough but efficient language."

The incident rocketed to the top of the national news and center-left politicians led by former European Commission President Romano Prodi criticized Berlusconi, who is behind in the latest opinion polls.

"With all the respect I have for (Berlusconi's) voters I would never use that anatomical term we heard today used about us," Prodi said.

"Berlusconi is no longer fit to lead our country."



EYE FOR AN EYE?

Berlusconi, who has repeatedly accused his opponents of showering him with insults during the election campaign, later defended himself, saying his comments were intended to be "ironic" and were being "manipulated." His spokesman said an opposition politician had used the same word recently.

The Democrats of the Left (DS), the largest party in the center left, said Berlusconi owed an apology to the more than 16 million Italians who did not vote for him in the 2001 elections.

"We are looking at a desperate man who understands that he is losing power," said DS president Massimo D'Alema.

The last surveys released before a polling ban came into force 10 days ago put Prodi's bloc between 3.5 and 5.0 percentage points ahead.

Even before the "coglioni" episode, the opposition was criticizing Berlusconi for an announcement he made on Monday night in which he vowed to eliminate property taxes.

Speaking during a nationally televised debate against Prodi, he promised that Italians will no longer have to pay a tax on their primary residences.

The tax on primary residences takes in 2.3 billion euros ($2.8 billion), which goes to towns to finance public services.

"He made the tax cut promise in such a demagogic way," said DS secretary Piero Fassino.

"But today, Berlusconi owes an explanation to 8,000 mayors who want to know where money will come from for public services -- day care, the elderly, road works -- everything now financed by the property tax," Fassino said.

Berlusconi, responding to the criticism, told reporters he did not know what all the fuss was about. "It would be 2.3-2.5 billion euros. That's small change. We can easily find other sources of revenue (to fill the gap)," he said.

Antonio Di Pietro, a former graft-busting magistrate who is a center-left politician, said Berlusconi was "desperately trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat."

On March 27, Channel 4 News broadcast a relatively long piece on Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela. On Channel 4's website you get a flavor: "He is in danger of joining a rogue's gallery of dictators and despots -- Washington's latest Latin nightmare."

This was a piece seemingly written by the US State Department, although Channel 4's Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, appeared on screen. It was one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen, qualifying as crude propaganda.

I have been in Venezuela lately and almost nothing in Rugman's rant coincides with reality. Factories are like "Soviet collectives"; a dictatorship is on the rise; Chavez is like Hitler (Rumsfeld); and the media is under government attack. The inversion of the truth throughout this travesty is demonstrated in the "coverage" of a cowed media.

Venezuela is a country in which 95% of the press and TV and radio are owned by the far-right who mount unrelenting daily attacks on the government unhindered. The Latin American Murdoch, Cisneros, unfettered, controls much of it. Indeed, it is probably the most concentrated, reactionary media on earth ... but that was not worthy of a single word from Rugman.

The dishonesty of interviewing Maria Corina Machado and calling her a "human rights activist" was breathtaking. She is a leader of Sumate ('Join up'), an extreme right organization that was deeply involved in the 2002 coup.

She met Bush in the White House shortly before the coup ... there was no mention of this. Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, is dismissed as a Chavez protege," a puppet, a ludicrous description of a man who has been in politics longer than Chavez and has just won a landslide election. No mention of this.

Chavez himself is portrayed by Rugman as a comical dictator, with his folksy Latin way (one reason ordinary people love him) taken out of any context. In fact, this highly intelligent, accessible man has overseen victory in nine democratic elections in less than eight years -- a world record. In crude Soviet-flick style, he is shown with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Khadaffi when these brief encounters only had to do with OPEC and oil. (He met Saddam literally in a day-long stopover).

Chavez is said to have "torn up contracts" with foreign oil companies ... the contracts were barely legal, based on loopholes which Chavez's predecessor Rafael Caldera exploited to give away much of Venezuela's oil, in effect; billions of dollars went into the pockets of Venezuela's wealthy minority. No mention of this.

Utter BS about Venezuela helping Iran develop a nuclear capability is sourced to "press reports" (discredited in the United States) peddled by axe-grinding outsiders, in league with Washington, along with other half-baked hearsay.

There was little, apart from tokens, about the way the Chavez government has changed millions of people's lives for the better. Rugman whined that he was "held for 30 hours" by police in Caracas. Oh, how dramatic for him.

This is a country threatened day and night by the United States; there was nothing from our Channel 4 hero about "Operation Bilbao," to which serious US analysts like William Arkin have given credibility and which is about overthrowing the elected government of Venezuela.

In his brief captivity, Rugman would have learned that this is a country, although under constant military threat, and threats from within, has not a single political prisoner.

While Chavez was offered up as a clown, Condoleezza Rice was given true gravitas. I could go on ... but that's enough.

This was a disgrace from beginning to end ... worse, it joined the kind of hysteria in the US that is following the Bush administration's agenda of "positioning" Venezuela as a "rogue state" and a threat to US interests: in other words, softening it up for attack.

If and when it comes, the Rugmans will share some of the responsibility.

Suspicions that he had been murdered by dissident republicans cast a shadow over the government's hopes of reviving the stalled political process. Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, are due to meet tomorrow in the hope of restoring devolved government to the province. Downing Street insisted Mr Blair's visit would go ahead. Mr Donaldson had been one of the key figures charged in connection with the so-called Stormont spy ring, an affair which brought down the last devolved assembly in 2002.

The case against him and two others eventually collapsed when it emerged last December that he had been spying for British intelligence since the 1980s.

Irish police found his body after a tip-off from a local resident. Shotgun cartridges were found at the scene and Ireland's justice minister, Michael McDowell, said: "He was shot in the head and there was mutilation done to his body. We can conclude it was a murder. The Gardai are searching the area and have sealed off roads."

The killing immediately prompted an official statement from the IRA denying responsibility for the murder. In a brief statement, the IRA insisted that it had "no involvement whatsoever" in the killing. It was signed, as with all statements, from the leadership, P O'Neill.

While suspicion will inevitably fall on former republican colleagues, Mr Donaldson had so many potential enemies it may never be known who carried out his murder. Acting at the heart of the republican movement and working for more than 20 years for British intelligence, he carried a heavy burden of secrets from both. The shock of his recruitment when he revealed it last year stunned his former colleagues. He had spent time in jail for the republican cause, some of that with Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, and the pair had a close working relationship.

His death was condemned last night, with Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland secretary, saying he was "completely appalled by this barbaric act".

Mr Ahern added: "We hope that whoever was responsible for this callous act will be brought to justice as soon as possible."

Mr Adams said he condemned anyone who had killed Mr Donaldson. Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féin's chief negotiator, said last night: "I'm very angry. I see this not just as an attack on Denis Donaldson, but on the peace process. I condemn the murder and I want to give my sympathy to the Donaldson family who are not involved in this. We disassociate ourselves from this brutal murder."

The Democratic Unionist leader, Ian Paisley, told Channel 4 News: "We don't know who has done this but the finger must be pointed towards those who were angry at what this man had done."

The Ulster Unionist leader, Sir Reg Empey, said the authorities might never uncover the perpetrators. "There was an inevitability about this. A lot of people in the republican movement and other organisations will sleep better knowing he is out of the way. Some people will see it as tidying up loose ends."