By JOHN LEICESTER, JEFFREY SCHAEFFER and SAMUEL PETREQUIN

PARIS (AP) — Protesters blocked roads, lit blazes and were met with volleys of tear gas on Wednesday in Paris and elsewhere in France, heaping pressure on President Emmanuel Macron and making new Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu ‘s first day in office a baptism of fire.

The government announced hundreds of arrests, as demonstrations against Macron, budget cuts and other complaints spread to big cities and small towns.

Although falling short of its self-declared intention to “Block Everything,” the protest movement that started online over the summer caused widespread hot spots of disruption, defying an exceptional deployment of 80,000 police who broke up barricades and swiftly took people into custody.

Interior Minister Brun

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