France hit by train strike after airport action

After two days of air traffic controller strikes, French rail workers are now walking off the job to protest a reorganization of the national rail and train companies.

Up to 70 percent of train journeys in France will be cancelled today. The action began yesterday night, affecting overnight, international travel and ends Friday morning.

Commuter traffic around Paris will be especially hard hit, with only one in three trains guaranteed.

The strike comes as an action by air traffic controllers protesting an EU plan to simplify the continent's patchwork airspace ends. Thousands of flights around France were cancelled over the past two days, but traffic was returning to normal today. But tourists trying to get to or from the Paris airports by train are running into the rail strike.