A security department statement said that another 18 people suspected of planning illegal demonstrations and possible acts of violence on Monday were detained in separate police operations. The dpa news agency reported Monday that an estimated 10,000 people gathered in Berlin's Kreuzberg district for a street festival, and police reported no significant incidents. South African President Jacob Zuma was jeered by labor unionists and his May Day speech was cancelled after scuffles broke out between his supporters and workers chanting for him to step down. A few hundred protesters started throwing gasoline bombs and other objects at police at the front end of what started as a peaceful union march in the French capital on Monday. [...] a crowd that police estimated at about 130,000 people paraded across the cobblestones of Red Square, the site of Soviet-era May Day celebrations. The tradition was revived in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea and is seen as part of President Vladimir Putin's efforts to stoke patriotic feelings. Scores of hooded youth threw Molotov cocktails at security forces who fired back with tear gas during the march on Monday. The annual march to celebrate workers' rights this year included calls to block far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen from winning the presidency during a runoff election on Sunday. Video showed riot police surrounding the protesters disrupting the march after isolating most of them from the rest of the crowd near the Place de la Bastille. Businesses in Puerto Rico have been boarded up as the U.S. territory braces for a May Day strike organized by opponents of austerity measures amid a deep economic crisis. A measure that has protected the territory from creditor lawsuits expires at midnight, and the government has struggled to reach a deal with bondholders to restructure part of its $70 billion debt. UGT and CC.OO unions on Monday demanded that Spain's conservative government roll back its labor reforms that made it cheaper to fire workers and increase wages and pensions. Under conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Spain's economy has rebounded and unemployment has dropped from 27 percent in 2013 to 19 percent, but that is still the second-highest unemployment rate in the 28-nation European Union behind Greece. The rally and a march Monday was by the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions and by the Democratic Left Alliance, which lost all parliament seats in the 2015 election that brought the conservative populist Law and Justice party to power. Cambodian riot police watched carefully as more than 1,000 garment workers defied a government ban on marching to deliver a petition to the National Assembly in Phnom Penh, demanding a higher minimum wage and more freedom of assembly. The marchers, holding a forest of banners, filled a street a short distance from the parliament complex and advanced noisily until they were stopped by a barricade and lines of police, holding batons, shields and guns capable of firing gas canisters. The major Cambodian labor unions traditionally have been loosely allied with opposition parties, posing a potential political threat to longtime authoritarian leader Hun Sen. The square was declared off limits to demonstrations for a third year running and police blocked points of entry, allowing only small groups of labor union representatives to lay wreaths at a monument there. A few thousand left-wing activists and laborers marched and held noisy rallies to press for higher wages and an end to temporary contractual jobs that deprive workers in the Philippines of many benefits. In sweltering summer heat, the crowds in Manila also protested alleged extrajudicial killings under President Rodrigo Duterte's drug crackdown.
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