Why Student Protests Took Over France

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Even in Lameezer Rob, there wasn't this much tear gas. We start here. Student protests overwhelm French cities. If you believe the government, it was 250,000 people. If you believe the French Union is 400,000. Now seeing violence between demonstrators and police, we will take it up a race. They sank their lives into these homes. No one told them they were built over sinkholes. You had the American dream. I thought I'd get ripped right out from under me and turn into a nightmare. An ABC investigation in a sprawling networks of abandoned minds. And why do these sugar-free drinks have so much sugar in them? It certainly can be confusing. A new lawsuit accuses Starbucks of relying on sweetening its advertising language. From ABC News, this is Start Here. I'm Brad Milky. We have a rich history in this country of student protest. Young people demonstrating whether it's for their own rights on campus or for broader issues affecting the nation. I'm thinking of the massive student protest back in the day over civil rights or the Vietnam war, or more recently the war in Gaza. Green will knock them high, and so be our fireside. In the US, these protesters are often centered around college campuses. High school activism is generally limited to smaller student groups, maybe a school-wide walk-out, but right now in France, a massive protest movement has taken off and it's being led by teenagers. These demonstrations are big, they're passionate. In some cases, they've turned into violent clashes between high schoolers and police. They started days ago, but yesterday, these escalated into something much larger. But dozens of cities across France are being absolutely rocked right now, so let's start the day in Paris, where all of this began, that is where we find ABC's foreign correspondent Tom Sufi Burj. He's actually based in Paris, so Tom, these scenes look really dramatic from afar. Can you just tell us from up close, what is happening there? The protests in central Paris, Brad, were pretty big. If you believe the French Union's 400,000, but this was the biggest day of protests we've seen in what has been a movement, which has been going on now for more than a week. Largely concentrated before today, outside high schools, hundreds of high schools across the country have been partially shut down by these protests because students have been kind of barricading the entrances and they're protesting, they say, over a lack of resources, a lack of teachers, not enough teachers per pupil, too many pupils in each class, not enough materials in their schools. Our classrooms are empty. We have teachers who aren't even there anymore. We have 35 students per class. We can no longer keep up with the lessons, it's become unmanageable. I mean, initially it began in deprived neighborhoods. It was in what's called La Bonille, it's actually where I live, like outside of Paris in the outskirts of the city. That's where it kind of began, but then it sort of moved into Central Paris and then began spreading to other cities right across the country. It has turned violent at times. I mean, the police have been using tear gas to try and clear the protesters in certain places. They've been using stung grenades. Protesters have been setting bins on fire, barricading areas, and sometimes the police have just been charging at the protesters to kind of clear them out to try and move them on. You know, that hundreds of people have been injured, both police and students. We spoke to a guy called Kenny. He said that education is the driving force, and that is why he says they're going to keep on protesting. We lack of resources in this school, it's in the school, in the university, in every one. We want more teachers, more and more, everything more. But he also was keen to talk about what he says is a heavy-handed approach by the police and something he says is part of a wider problem. It's like a civil war with the police, against the people. We have like little kids, 15 years old, 14 years old, with a lot of gas. That's not normal. At the protest we saw over the last 24 hours, it has been backed by the unions and the left-wing parties here in France, and we are kind of moving, we're currently I guess, in a sort of pre-campaign phase, as we head towards a very important presidential election here in the spring. Right. I mean, to your point, though, it does seem like this has become like this larger culture. And we've seen this happen before in France, right? How I always small, limited protests become something like much larger about general discontent towards the government or the social state. Can we also talk about race and class here because President Trump weighed in from across the Atlantic and basically said this is about race and religion. This is about Muslims living in France. Is that a driving force of this at all? No. It's not about immigration as President Trump claimed. It's not about anything to do with Islam or Muslim communities. This is French society across the board. We met white people, black people, I mean, Paris is one of the mixed, most diverse cities in the world, just like New York and other US cities. So, of course, there are people of Muslim background protesting, but there are people of Christian background protesting. It's got nothing to do with race, apart from the fact that, you know, it started in the suburbs of Paris in deprived areas, and yes, those deprived areas have a higher concentration of ethnic minorities and people, particularly from families who have North African roots. These are adults in the making, and if the only message we send to young people asking about their future is to use tear gas against them, that's sad. I think just to point out the governments in a bit of a bind on this, the French government, because France has a growing public debt problem, right? It's now paying more to service its debt than the countries we used to think of being the more kind of crisis-ridden debt countries in Europe like Greece and Italy. And there's no way easy way out of this, because as we move towards that election next year, the political class here is hugely divided, and there's no sense that the government can actually find a way of either cutting back public services and getting enough political support to get those changes through, or even raising taxes, even more, and people pay a fair amount of tax here in France already. So that is the sort of background to this, the backdrop to this is that debt in France, public debt in France is growing. It's the school buildings, and winter is cold, and summer is very hot, too hot, and there's no money. There is no planet either the regional or national level to address school building issues. This is a big, big problem, and there is a fear that, you know, the kind of financial crisis-type situation might not be a million miles away from France if there can't be some kind of solution found. Right, if the social safety net is breaking down, then the question becomes where is it breaking down first, and often you see it in these kind of experts with some of the poorest populations in the country. But obviously here, a lot of people around the country feeling a similar discontent. Tom Sufiburge, fascinating story in Paris right now, thank you. Thanks, Brad. Next up on Start here, a home seller has to warn you about certain things, asbestos and flooding, do they have to tell you your home was built over a mine? ABC investigates, after the break. If you're gonna rise up in rule of the world, you better get yourself a damn sense of humor. FX is a HS 13, no streaming on Hulu. The NBA on ESPN is happening now, and we're here from all of it, from the superstar moves to the next gym revolution. Let's get who we are, boys. Another trade. We don't just live it, we love it. The NBA is a world of its own. So from the biggest names to the biggest moments, ESPN's where you call home, open the week begins October 21st. bought a new apartment in Brooklyn. And one of my nightmares before this move and continuing since the move has been this recurring panic. Like, what if I find out, used from now, that this building has some gigantic structural flaw? Apartment home inspectors only check your apartment, they don't check the fuller buildings, someone else to that before I ever moved in. What if the building I just invested so much in, it becomes worthless overnight? These stories do happen. In fact, sometimes you'll see cars or entire homes swallowed up by giant sinkholes. Well recently, our own J.O. Brian, along with our investigative team, became kind of obsessed with these videos. Lives upended. In some cases, even lives ended when the Earth seemed to try to swallow you whole. And what J found out is that a lot of these nightmares are coming true over and over in a particular type of neighborhood, the ones that sit on top of abandoned mines. Let's bring in J now, who just an entire special on ABC News Live overnight is now airing on Hulu and Disney Plus this morning, J. What are you seeing? Yeah, Brad, it's interesting because you hit on the central theme here, which is buying a home is, for most people, the most important financial decision they will ever make. And what we found over this more than a year long investigation is that this decision that people have made, these homes that they have bought this American dream that they have built for themselves in some cases is literally collapsing because of sinkholes or other incidents. Tied to abandoned mines that are found underneath these homes. A really good example of that comes from Jean and Rebecca Newton. Is it always going to be in the back of my mind? Yeah. They live in Pennsylvania, coal country. In fact, Jean Newton's ancestors came out to that part of Pennsylvania to get rich in coal. And one winter night, they're inside their house, they hear a commotion, they come running outside and they see this 35-foot sinkhole that without warning swallowed a Honda Civic that was sitting in their driveway. In the hole. Like fully into the hole. You know, there's like maybe a foot or two of the car sticking out of the hole. Right down right here. Yes, right exactly where you're standing right here. But the thing that unnerved them the most, Brad, is that they had this old abandoned coal mine underneath their house or at least close to it. And they had up until that moment, no idea that mine was there. And then it just would go straight down. They told me about 60 feet. Did you know that was here? No clue. You had no idea no clue. Wow. And by the way, Jay, like how does it, I don't know enough about sinkholes apparently, is the idea that tie into mines is obviously what? When you mine the earth, you're creating a big cavity in there and then what months or years and decades later, it could just unexpectedly cave in. Right. Or in an area, particularly that had high mining activity in the past, even more than a century ago, there is potentially a honeycomb of mines underneath your town or your neighborhood. And some people know this and some people don't. And some of those caverns are hollow. Some have been filled in by government officials over the years. Some have not. And even in some cases, the ones that have been filled in depending on how they were filled in, the infrastructure inside them erodes away over time because of water or other things. And then that mine one day just collapses. And they can't tell you there's nothing in my backyard for sure, they could say we don't think so. But what does that feel like? It's disconcerting. Yeah, I have a pool. What if that happened or my pool and my kids were in it? Now it can be slow and gradual. You can see kind of a sink or a dip. We see that sometimes in streets in mine country or it can just be sudden, like what happened with the new ends. And that's a serious concern, Brad, because in these sections of mine country across the US, there's a scramble by local and state officials to try to fill in as many of these mines as they know about, but they're playing this game of whack-a-mole. They acknowledge to us trying to make safe all the mines in their area. They also, Brad, they don't know where all of these mines are because they're so old that they were dug and there's no record of them. But wait, how do you not know where the mines are? I mean, that seems like a central thing to understand in any part of the country, like what has been mined, what ground underneath you might be hollow. There's two big problems here. One, some of these mines were dug in the 1800s or early 1900s by companies that don't exist anymore in some cases. And so there are no federal or state records of these mines. And so there are some people who don't know these exist at all until one day, they just cave in. So we have an estimate. It's about 60,000. We have others that you are out there that you don't know which is? I'm sure there are. We interviewed a guy named Lanny Erdos, who's the top official at the Department of the Interior for the agency they're responsible for filling in just old abandoned coal mines. All his job, and he said that they sometimes don't know where these mines are until they in his words express themselves. Express themselves. That sounds dangerous. When you're talking about a mine, what does that mean? I said directly to him express themselves meaning cave in. The other side of the problem, Brad, is that there's a federal law governing the cleanup of coal mines and there's federal funding available for the cleanup of coal mines. But for any other kind of mine, we found there is no similar federal law requiring that companies create a plan to clean them up. That includes gold mines, that includes silver mines, that includes iron mines. You name it anything that is not coal. They fall through the cracks and in some cases, Brad, they are costing lives. He heard something, but he couldn't see it. So when he stepped on the carpet, that's when he went in the hole. In California, a gold mine caved in under a family living room. It killed a 32-year-old man in his dog. He apparently is faced down in this hole and the earth is moving and they could feel his foot and they couldn't feel a pulse on his foot. His mother spoke with our own television station KGO. They couldn't get him out because the earth just kept moving and he was going deeper and deeper as the earth moved. He went to Colorado. We hiked through this national forest in Colorado. As soon as he got to the parking lot and he saw her car was still there, he knew something was wrong. This woman named Jennifer Nelson was on a hike with her dogs and one day, she never came home. She had fallen down the mine shaft. One of the workers said he turned his lights on in the car and he saw the lights reflecting off the eyes of the dogs and they were with her entire time. She fell into this deep water-filled pit that was created by an old mine. It wasn't an old coal mine but officials don't know exactly what the cause of it was. Officials told us they didn't know that mine was there until the worst had happened. Do the work find these mines because people are dying. But the thing that also scares me about this is I think of sinkholes as isolated and random. What you're describing are networks of mines that go for miles and miles. How could that conceivably affect not just a family but an entire community? There was one sinkhole in particular that really captured our attention. It's this massive sinkhole that six years ago ripped into a suburban street in a community called Hideaway Hills in South Dakota. It's nestled into the picturesque black hills of that area. And then one day, six years ago, this sinkhole opens up. Local officials then had to go door to door and say to people in more than a dozen homes, they had to pack up and move because their homes were no longer safe. They were on top of an old gypsum mine. What they found underneath here was a network of mine shafts, more than a hundred years old, extending from this massive hole in the ground, all the way up the street and into that neighborhood where many people still live. We gathered nine people from Hideaway Hills. Some still live there, others have moved because the state told them that they had to move. And they told us that they feel blindsided by this news. I thought I'd hit, got ripped right out from under me and turned into a nightmare. We then went inside some of those homes that were condemned, essentially. This is your yard? This is my yard? Yeah, obviously it didn't look like this when we were, I imagine. Those homeowners took us inside. It was really emotional. This couple named Allison and Brian Ireland. They took us inside what was once their daughter's room. She said it's really hard for her to be back in that house. She doesn't really like being there. I can see on your face, you don't. Yeah, I know, it's really hard. Some of them Brad are still having to pay for homes that they can no longer live in. It has drained their families. It has cost them. Some of them told us they're financial futures. Living paycheck to paycheck, I shouldn't be at my age. I should be looking towards the end and retirement. It's all gone. One person David Peck told me he's going to be working till the day that he dies. He said because he cannot afford to pay for two homes, which is what he's having to do right now. It was because it felt out of control. It was just being taken away from you and I didn't know what to do with that anger. So I picked up a hammer and just started hitting the wall. Some of the details here are a little unique. The state of South Dakota was the last operator of that gypsum line. It filled in parts of the hole. The homeowners sued the state. argued that the state was still legally responding. for the mine the state encountered that it had filled in the mine sold the land and that its responsibility ended there because the state didn't sell the land to those folks they sold it to a housing developer and then a builder at homes or built on it etc etc. All of that works its way all the way to the South Dakota Supreme Court and the homeowners lose. The court ruled that the state was immune from liability for that century old mine. That's just one case but the point here is Brad this mine underneath their home that they had no idea existed robbed them a lot of these homeowners have told us of their very sense of safety in their own home and the idea that in some of these states there's not even necessarily a rule that says you have to disclose when you're selling the house like by the way there used to be a mine down below us I mean what can be done here Jay what what are people like these homeowners or independent researchers sort of advocating actually happen here because it seems like such a sprawling issue if you're looking at how to protect yourself Brad the thing to do is first look up the laws in your state we found just eight states and part of Virginia and South Dakota by the way is one of these have a law explicitly on the books that require that a mine be disclosed or mining activity be disclosed when a home is sold does it feel like there should be law mandating that that be disclosed something federal law state law some kind of we all thought there was that's why we felt safe now there are parts where the rules there get spotty or like if the mine had already been filled in which was in part the case in hideaway hills or if the seller doesn't know the mine is there or if the construction is new there's a lot of places that the regulations don't cover but first thing to do look up the mine regulations the mine laws in your state you can also see if your state offers something called mine subsidence insurance it ensures you from sinkholes some states with a history of mining do offer that but it's only about a handful of states by our count you can also look up your community in this map that we built so we found in our reporting the federal government does not have a centralized place where all of its mine records are accessible some states have central digitized mine records that you can look through but not every single one does so what we did is we pulled together from a couple of federal agencies all of the mine records we could find we put them in a visualization that is essentially a map of the entire United States with each dot on that map corresponding to a mine record it was a big undertaking for some of our ABC News data reporters we use that in some of our reporting you'll see it on TV but also it is accessible on our website so if you go to any of these mine stories on ABC News dot com you can zoom in to your area to your community and see at least if the government knows about a potential mine near you and what's a tragic to me about all this in so many ways is the mine is a formative thing in in how America became what it is and yet so many of these coal mining towns have people who live there for generations now feeling left behind and now even the people moving into these towns feel attacked by the very ground that created this legacy J. O'Brien along with our investigative team and many of our own and operated stations around the country by the way you're actually watching entire special on this reporting on Lulu and Disney plus starting this morning J. O'Brien thank you thank you Brett okay one more quick break when we come back this next break will be commercial free oh wait that might not mean what you think it means I'll explain after these commercials one last thing is next on October 19th 2025 the Louvre became the backdrop of something straight out of a heist movie now nearly a year out there is still critical questions to be answered we're used to following heist in movies from the perspectives of the ever so glamorous and dangerous perpetrators but when it happens in real life the lines between good and bad guys aren't so clear and even less clear is the fate of those French crown jewels in this series I'll take you inside the events of that day like you've never heard them before through the eyes of the people who lived them I'll follow the investigation into how this could have happened who could have been behind it and then I'll join the international hunt for the Louvre jewels heist at the Louvre a new series from ABC Audio listen on Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music all your favorite podcast app or subscribe to 2020 true crime plus on Apple podcasts to listen ad free it was one thing for there to be a single clown sighting and then there was a second one hundreds of students launched a late-night man hunt how many more of these are we going to have on October 12th the rumors started to spread around town that there were killer clowns the clowns are coming they were clowns seen in different rural areas we even tried to form a killer clown process what's the new Hulu original documentary clown tannic on October 12th streaming with Hulu and Hulu and Disney plus for bundle subscribers to imply one last thing if you're advertising a product you can say lots of stuff about it you can go all Tony the tiger and declare something right you can say something is the best even one no one else seems to like it because it's your opinion right if you think it's the best you can say that in advertisements buddy the elf found this out the hard way you did it congratulations world's best cup of coffee great job everybody in the world of food advertising though some words do matter coffee is at the very core of what we do about a year ago Starbucks unveiled a new line of protein drinks the protein latte the protein cold foam they're generally geared toward the customer who works out and they are made with protein boosted milk the thing is if you've ever consumed a protein shake you know what I'm about to say they're not so big on the taste thing well these drinks came in several new flavors some even had sugar free options their tagline and ads was protein never tasted so good but a new lawsuit says hold on the so called sugar free drinks actually have a lot of sugar in them this lawsuit was brought last Friday on behalf of three plaintiffs by a law firm that specializes in class action suits they claim that in a venti sugar free caramel protein matcha there are 21 grams of sugar it's almost a pair of Reese's peanut butter cups the thing is is not like they uncovered some big secret here Starbucks puts these numbers up on its own website here I'm looking at it now sugar free protein vanilla latte 19 grams of sugar an iced sugar free vanilla protein matcha 17 grams so what's going on well it speaks to the very specific placement of words in food advertising so you can have completely sugar free you can have no added sugars you can have you know some type of reduced sugar content this is dr. Jade Coburn from ABC's medical unit who says there are FDA guidelines for what nutrition labels should say but the question becomes what about the name of the product itself it certainly can be confusing if you're not looking closer at the fine print Starbucks for its part says this suit has absolutely no merit quote Starbucks has consistently and clearly provided information about its protein beverages sugar free options customization choices and nutritional content and quote see their stance is that these flavors they're promoting those are flavored by syrup and that syrup is sugar free plus they say they don't add any sugar to these drinks what sugar is there comes naturally in the form of that protein boosted milk the plaintiffs are saying come on and when someone's buying a quote sugar free drink they should reasonably expect there is zero or close to zero sugar total not just in the flavoring that you add later sometimes you will see products advertised as no sugar added that they say would have been fine sugar free though these drinks are just not and the plaintiffs lawyers say this could be really bad for someone with diabetes or watching their glucose earlier this year a panel of federal judges ruled that a lawsuit may proceed against the yogurt maker Chobani which advertises so-called zero sugar yogurt despite having four grams per serving the judges said here it didn't matter if it comes in the form of a naturally occurring sweetener called alulose under the FDA's rules sugar is sugar and if that logic is applied here we'll see how sweet Starbucks is feeling them and yes by the way if you're wondering sugar free sugar less and zero sugar they do all mean the same thing according to FDA rules like I was starting to doubt myself there hey we asked you delivered we are now number one in three of these four signal awards voting categories that I told you about yesterday this is why I tell people to start here listener is the best listener in the game like we immediately saw an uptick now if that does not include you if you've not voted for us yet please help us hold on to these spots now because the others they don't get to vote again like they're done so it falls on everyone else now there is a link in our show notes to make that super simple for you I'm Brad milky I'll see you tomorrow yo what up is Jamie Foxx check this out I got a brand new hilarious stand-up comedy special coming to Hulu this one is personal I got some stories to tell some digs to celebrate and of course plenty of laughs along the way we're talking life family music unexpected moments and a whole lot of comedy so come spend an hour with me and let's have some fun Jamie Foxx take care yourself now streaming on Hulu from the studio that brought you one to vision I was an Avenger But I'm not a hero anymore. On October 14th, the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real. You sure about that? I had a father called Vision. How is this possible? Why am I losing? Don't miss the two episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest. Nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy. Streaming on October 14th, only on Disney+.