(PARIS) — Thousands of French yellow vest protesters marched through Paris on Saturday for a ninth straight weekend as others took to the streets in the central city of Bourges to denounce President Emmanuel Macron’s economic policies amid high security measures as authorities feared more violence.

Protesters walked through central Paris from the Finance Ministry in the east to the surroundings of the Arc de Triomphe in the west.

Some scuffles broke out between police and protesters near the monument. Security forces used tear gas to push back some protesters who were throwing rocks and other objects at them.

Police established a car ban on the nearby Champs-Elysees avenue.

Paris police say 40 people were arrested Saturday before and during the protests, primarily for carrying potential weapons.

Meanwhile, more than 1,000 yellow vest protesters, according to local authorities were marching in Bourges, a provincial capital with a renowned Gothic cathedral and picturesque wood-frame..

(LAGOS, Nigeria) — An overturned oil tanker exploded in Nigeria while dozens of people were scooping up the leaking fuel and many were killed, police and witnesses said Saturday.

Hundreds of people have died in similar accidents in recent years in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, as impoverished people risk their lives to collect fuel leaking from pipelines or trucks.

“We have recovered 12 corpses and taken 22 persons with serious burns to hospital,” police spokeswoman Irene Ugbo told The Associated Press. She said the blast occurred Friday evening in Odukpani in Cross River state in the southeast.

But some residents put the death toll closer to 60.

“The police only recovered a few corpses, many of the other dead were burnt to ashes,” witness Richard Johnson told the AP.

He said about 60 people were inside a pit scooping fuel when the explosion occurred. “It is not likely that anyone inside the pit survived as there was a lot of fuel in the pit,” Johnson said.

He suggested..

(ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates) — American diplomats are upbeat despite the government shutdown that has left many of them working without pay, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday.

“Morale is good,” Pompeo told reporters in Abu Dhabi, one of the stops on his nine-nation tour of Middle East, as the shutdown was set to enter its fourth week. “They understand that there are squabbles in Washington, but their mission remains, their duties continue and they’re executing them.”

“We’re doing our best to make sure it doesn’t impact our diplomacy,” he said of the longest federal shutdown in U.S. history.

Almost half of the State Department employees in the United States and about one-quarter abroad have been furloughed during the shutdown. With the exception of certain local employees overseas, the rest are working without pay, including those tasked with supporting Pompeo’s trip, which has thus far taken him to Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Bahrain.

Pompeo’s travels were to conti..