German police turned water cannon on leftists in May Day street battles yesterday and clashes erupted in London as thousands of anti-capitalist demonstrators paralyzed one of the city's main shopping districts.
Bottles flew and fireworks exploded in London's Oxford Street, prompting police to use batons against the protesters.
Berlin police arrested 40 people after being pelted by bottles and stones in what has become an annual ritual of May Day street clashes in the city.
Over 6,000 leftists and anarchists set fire to barricades overnight in two eastern Berlin suburbs.
Leftists also barricaded streets in the northern city of Hamburg, damaging cars and setting off fireworks.
In Britain, police had deployed in force across London to face an estimated 10,000 activists, vowing to prevent a re-run of the violence that erupted in the city a year ago.
More than 500 cyclists blocked rush-hour traffic and stopped briefly outside the US embassy to stage a noisy protest. By mid-afternoon, 18 people had been arrested.
Three thousand protesters then gathered in Oxford Street, one of the capital's main shopping districts, where they faced riot police and officers on horseback in the pouring rain.
Unlike many European capitals where May Day is a public holiday, the date is a normal working day in Britain.
In Russia, tens of thousands of people marched to demand better pay and more jobs. Some sought better workers' rights, others a return to the certainties of their communist past.
Russian news agencies quoted police as saying more than 300,000 people had attended some 480 marches without incident.
In Zurich, dozens of protesters threw stones, bottles and paint bombs at police, who responded with water cannon, teargas and rubber shotgun pellets.
In South Korea about 20,000 workers faced 15,000 riot police in Seoul to protest against government economic restructuring and a harsh police crackdown on car workers in April.
In Australia, demonstrators sought to shut down stock exchanges in Sydney and Melbourne and scuffled with police.
Protesters blocked streets in financial districts and, joined by trade unionists, marched on state parliaments in Sydney and Melbourne. Dozens of people were detained.
In Hong Kong, hundreds of workers staged protests against high unemployment, according to Hong Kong radio.
The protests against economic globalization follow violent street action against the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999, and at summits in Prague last year and Quebec City last month.
Protesters complain that multi-national corporations wield too much power over people's lives, even to the point of coercing democratically-elected governments.
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