Workers and students pose strike challenge to Belarusian leader

By Tom Balmforth

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Factory workers chanted slogans, students and pensioners took to the streets, and police detained at least 235 people on Monday as the Belarusian opposition sought to intensify pressure on veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko with a nationwide strike.

Lukashenko defied an ultimatum to surrender power by midnight, challenging his opponents to carry out a threat to paralyse the country with strikes, nearly three months after his disputed election victory unleashed mass protests.

If sustained, the strikes could open a new phase in the crisis, testing whether the opposition has the mass support it needs to bring enterprises across the country of 9.5 million people to a halt. The opposition has mounted strikes at state-run factories previously, but they were not sustained.

Belarusian media reported groups of strikers at many major state-controlled enterprises. However, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said all the major industrial companies were working normally.

Many shops, cafes and restaurants were closed in central Minsk. Hundreds of university students took to the streets in the capital, clapping and chanting as passing cars tooted their horns in support.


A crowd of around 2,000-3,000 marched down a main street waving red and white flags and protest signs.

Elsewhere in Minsk, black-clad officers in masks poured out of vans, detaining people and dragging them away, footage from news website Tut.by showed.

By evening, small protests continued in a dozen districts of Minsk as protesters formed roadside human chains and stood in the road to block traffic. Unidentified men shot at human chains in two places with paintball guns, Tut.by reported.

The Vesna-96 rights group said police had detained 235 people across the country on Monday.

The KGB security service warned protesters that extremist actions may be treated as terrorism. The central bank said that a DDoS cyber attack knocked its website offline for two and a half hours.

Exiled opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has urged Belarusians to block roads, shut down workplaces, stop using government shops and services and withdraw all money from their bank accounts.

Lukashenko has scoffed, asking: “Who will feed the kids?”

Official media said Lukashenko was at work as normal on Monday and that he had a busy working week ahead of him.


Tsikhanouskaya praised workers and others for the strike action a day after police fired stun grenades and detained scores of people at nationwide protests by tens of thousands, the 11th straight weekend of rallies.

“The protest will only be over once we have achieved our goal. We stand together, we are many and we are ready to go until victory,” she said in a statement.

If strikes come close to paralysing the country, it could be a further test of Russian support for its ally Lukashenko.

Since the crisis began, Moscow has backed him with a $1.5 billion loan and increased security cooperation.

Official results showed Lukashenko won a landslide election victory on Aug. 9, but the opposition and Western countries say the vote was rigged, which he denies.

More than 15,000 people have since been arrested during a crackdown on mass demonstrations. Nearly all opposition leaders fled or were jailed

PHOTOS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election/workers-and-students-pose-strike-challenge-to-belarusian-leader-idUSKBN27A116

Banners and prayers for Kamala Harris in her ancestral Indian village


A man drives past a banner of U.S. Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the entrance to the village of Thulasendrapuram, where Harris' maternal grandfather was born and grew up, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, India, October 25, 2020. REUTERS/Sudarshan Varadha

By Sudarshan Varadhan


THULASENDRAPURAM, India (Reuters) - A big banner of U.S. vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris welcomes visitors to Thulasendrapuram, a lush, green south Indian village that is praying for her Democratic Party’s victory in the Nov. 3 presidential election.

The village, located about 320 km (200 miles) south of the city of Chennai, is where Harris’s maternal grandfather was born more than a century ago.

Its residents beam with pride at what the first U.S. senator of South Asian descent has already achieved, and many are rooting for an election result that will make her the second-most powerful person in the world’s richest country.

“From Thulasendrapuram to America”, declares one of the nearly dozen banners from where Harris smiles out in the village.

“We, the people of Thulasendrapuram, wish for the electoral success of American vice president nominee Kamala Harris, whose ancestors were a native of Thulasendrapuram.”

Harris’s grandfather P.V. Gopalan and his family migrated to Chennai nearly 90 years ago, where he retired as a high-ranking government official.


Harris, who was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father who both immigrated to the United States to study, visited Thulasendrapuram when she was just five and has repeatedly recalled her formative walks with her grandfather on the beaches of Chennai.

Gopalan’s childhood home in Thulasendrapuram does not exist anymore, villagers say, and cows and goats were seen grazing on empty plots of land where the house he grew up in once stood.

The banners, with messages written in Tamil, were put up on the directions of M. Gurunathan, the head of Thulasendrapuram’s village committee that oversees its more than 200 mostly farming families.

One banner at the village bus stop has Harris smiling with the White House in the background.

“We are really hoping she wins,” said Gurunathan, who is planning to hold a special prayer at the local temple on election day. “The village has received global fame because of her. She is our pride.”


Locals of neighbouring areas are also in touch with the temple to conduct an “abhishekam” - which sometimes involves pouring milk over the idol of a Hindu god - to pray for Harris’s victory.

Harris’s name is seen sculpted into a stone that lists public donations made to the temple, along with that of her grandfather who had donated decades ago. Her aunt offered 5,000 rupees ($67) in her name after she was appointed the attorney general of California, the temple’s caretaker, S.V. Ramanan, said.

“But I think she is not proud of her Hindu roots, she identifies herself as a Christian,” Ramanan said.

“Though she has reconnected with her Indian connection on the campaign trail, she has mostly played up her image as an American.”

Harris has been widely described as a church-goer and a person of Christian faith, and was raised in a household that was tolerant of both Hindu and Christian religious practices. The democratic vice-president nominee has previously acknowledged her Indian roots.

Over 20,000 Hungarian nurses reject being relocated amid pandemic

By Anita Komuves

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - More than 20,000 nurses had signed a petition by Monday against a law passed by Hungary’s parliament this month that allows public healthcare workers to be relocated to another hospital for up to two years.

Hungary, like other east European countries, is grappling with a shortage of medical workers during the coronavirus pandemic, just as new infections are rising. Many nurses and doctors have left Hungary to work abroad for higher salaries.

The law forces healthcare professionals to choose between working in the state-run or the private health sector. Those in the public system can now be relocated to another institution for up to two years, versus a maximum of 44 days previously.

Gergely Gulyas, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said the law was needed for pandemics and healthcare emergencies, and would not be used regularly “in peacetime”.

The law introduces a substantial wage hike for doctors, but the increase does not apply to nurses whose salaries have gradually been raised since 2019, based on a previous decree.

The petition was started last week by the Chamber of Hungarian Healthcare Professionals. In an online survey among its members in October, more than 31% of respondents said they might not sign their new contracts based on the law.


“More than 95% of nurses are women. They have families, many of them are

Climate activists abseil*** from bridges, halt Frankfurt rush-hour traffic

BERLIN (Reuters) - Climate activists abseiled from bridges near Germany’s financial hub Frankfurt on Monday in protest at the planned expansion of a motorway, causing backed-up traffic on busy roads during the morning rush hour.

The activists called for a stop to the clearing of part of the Dannenroeder forest, which they refer to as “Danni”, to make way for a highway.

The felling of trees in the forest, which lies in a nature protection area north of Frankfurt, started this month and police removed activists from tree houses they had built in protest.

At a bridge crossing the A5 motorway on Monday, masked activists hung from ropes, holding a banner saying: “No planes. No cars”.

Police and rescue teams were working to bring the protesters down from the bridges. The motorways affected were the A3, the A5 and the A661, all busy commuter routes around Frankfurt.

“Since 7 o’clock this morning, traffic on these three motorways in both directions has been partially halted, causing traffic jams as long as 10 kilometres (6.2 miles),” a police spokesman said.

“Cars and motorways are yesterday’s technology, which causes countless casualties through accidents and climate change,” Extinction Rebellion Germany said on Twitter, urging politicians to make transport policies more climate friendly.

VIDEO https://www.reuters.com/video/?videoId=OVD1RSQJV&jwsource=em

*** WORD OF THE DAY

 

Abseiling - Wikipedia

Abseiling also known as rappelling from French rappeler, 'to recall' or 'to pull through'), is a controlled descent off a vertical drop, such as a rock face, using a ...

Republican senators ask EPA not to boost refinery biofuel obligations in 2021

By Stephanie Kelly

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A group of U.S. Republican senators asked the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday to consider a general waiver that would prevent an increase in biofuel blending obligations next year for oil refiners hit by a collapse in fuel demand because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Senators including Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Ted Cruz from Texas said the waiver for 2021 would help refiners cope with the pandemic, which has pushed gasoline demand down more than 10% from year-ago levels.

U.S. laws require the refining industry to blend increasing amounts of biofuels into their fuels each year, requirements that have helped farmers by creating a huge market for corn-based ethanol, but which refiners say is costly.


The senators also urged EPA to ensure blending obligations do not exceed the so-called “blend wall” of 10% ethanol in the fuel pool. Most ethanol-blended gasoline sold at retail pumps has a 10% cap on the biofuel because some vehicles cannot use gasoline with higher ethanol blends.

That could mean reducing mandated blending volumes, if overall fuel demand drops enough, the senators argued.

The letter comes after Trump’s EPA handed a major victory to ethanol producers last month, siding with them over oil refiners in an ongoing dispute over the obligations. EPA rejected scores of requests from refiners for waivers that would have retroactively spared them from blending obligations.


“Ethanol producers and refiners should proportionately share the economic hardships associated with the current declines in fuel demand, rather than having government mandates shift the burdens of the former onto the latter,” the letter said.

Since then, the Trump administration has discussed ways to help small refineries handle the cost of complying with blending obligations. However, the administration has not publicly presented a plan.

The American Petroleum Institute welcomed Wednesday’s letter. “EPA should move immediately to employ a general waiver to limit the 2021 obligation,” said Ron Chittim, API’s vice president of downstream pol

The Rust Belt boom that wasn't: Heartland job growth lagged under Trump


By Howard Schneider


(Reuters) - The voters of Monroe County, Michigan, may have expected an economic windfall when they flipped from supporting Democrat Barack Obama to help put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016.

But it went the other way: Through the first three years of the Trump administration the county lost jobs, and brought in slightly less in wages in the first three months of 2020 than in the first three months of 2017 as Trump was taking over.

And that was before the pandemic and the associated recession.

With the U.S. election just a week away, recently released government data and new analysis show just how little progress Trump made in changing the trajectory of the Rust Belt region that propelled his improbable rise to the White House.

While job and wage growth continued nationally under Trump, extending trends that took root under President Obama, the country’s economic weight also continued shifting south and west, according to data from the U.S. Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages that was recently updated to include the first three months of 2020.

A recent study from the Economic Innovation Group pointed to the same conclusion. It found relative stagnation in economic and social conditions in the Midwest compared with states like Texas or Tennessee where “superstar” cities such as Dallas and Nashville enjoyed more of the spoils of a decade-long U.S. expansion.

Graphic: Job growth under Trump


LAGGING THE COUNTRY

Across the industrial belt from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, private job growth from the first three months of 2017 through the first three months of 2020 lagged the rest of the country - with employment in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio growing 2% or less over that time compared to a 4.5% national average, according to QCEW data analyzed by Reuters.

Texas and California saw job growth of more than 6% from 2017 through the start of 2020, by contrast, while Idaho led the nation with employment growing more than 10%.

Perhaps notably for the election, a Reuters analysis of 17 prominent counties in the five battleground states of Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showed the limits of Trump’s controversial tax and trade policies in generating jobs where he promised them. All 17 of the counties had a voting age population greater than 100,000 people as of 2016, supported Obama in the 2012 election, and voted for Trump in 2016.

In 13 of those counties, all in the Rust Belt region, private job growth lagged the rest of the country. Employment actually shrank in five of them. Of the four with faster job growth than the rest of the country, two were in Florida, one was in Pennsylvania and one was in Wisconsin.





Graphic: Rust Belt Blues


The findings show that under the “greatest economy ever” boasts that Trump made before the pandemic, when job and wage growth were indeed strong, the fundamental contours of regional U.S. prosperity seemed largely unchanged.

Some of that may have stemmed from Trump’s own policies. The use of steel tariffs, for example, may have ended up costing Michigan jobs.

“The key battleground areas...have not fared well under President Trump, even prior to the pandemic,” said Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. The swing state counties most supportive of Trump in 2016, he said, were “especially vulnerable” to the president’s trade war tactics because of their ties to global markets.

Graphic: Manufacturing jobs under Trump


DRAMATIC SHIFT

But Trump was also swimming against a very strong tide, driven by forces bigger than a Tweet or a tariff can likely counter. For decades people, capital and economic output have been shifting from a mid-20th century concentration in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest to the open land, cheaper wages and more temperate climate of the Sun Belt, and the innovation corridor from Silicon Valley to Washington state.

Trump, in his 2016 campaign, put a premium on manufacturing jobs - last century’s path to the middle class - and as president used a combination of trade policy, tariffs, and blunt force arm-twisting on companies to try to shore up the prospects of the industrial heartland that formed his electoral base.

It didn’t happen. Texas, according to QCEW data, gained more manufacturing jobs from 2017 to the start of 2020 than Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania combined; the smaller but increasingly competitive manufacturing cluster in Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama gained as many factory positions as those legacy manufacturing states.

While Trump may have failed in his efforts to reinvigorate the Rust Belt, the forces acting against the region pre-date his administration.


A longer-term analysis by the EIG, looking at outcomes across an index of social and economic measures, showed little progress from the start of the century through 2018.

According to a Reuters analysis of EIG data, two to three times as many counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin slipped further down the think tank’s Distressed Communities Index as climbed to a more prosperous bracket over those nearly two decades.

In Florida and Washington state, by contrast, five times as many counties moved into a more well-off bracket, and in California three times as many counties prospered.

Graphic: Change in "distress" level, 2000 to 2018

Brazil to extend military deployment in Amazon rainforest by five months

By Reuters Staff

FILE PHOTO: Hundreds of hectares of former Amazon jungle destroyed by loggers and farmers lie next to virgin rainforest in Mato Grosso State, one of the Brazilian states of greatest deforestation, May 18, 2005. REUTERS/Rickey Rogers








BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil’s right-wing government will extend the military’s deployment to fight destruction of the Amazon rainforest by five months through April 2021 from its previous November end date, Vice President Hamilton Mourao said on Monday.

Mourao told reporters that President Jair Bolsonaro would sign a decree by next week to extend the deployment to protect the world’s largest rainforest, which acts as a curb on climate change by absorbing vast amounts of greenhouse gas.

Bolsonaro deployed the military to the Amazon in May this year, repeating a similar deployment made in 2019 when fires spiked in the region and provoked international criticism that Brazil needed to do more to protect the world’s largest rainforest.


But this year’s deployment began earlier and will last far longer as international pressure on Brazil continues over heightened levels of deforestation and forest fires since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019.

Global investment funds have threatened to divest from the country and Amazon deforestation endangers a trade deal between the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc that still must be ratified.

“We must continue because we want to enter a virtuous cycle of falling deforestation. We are committed to bringing it down and to bring it down we need people out in the field enforcing the law,” Mourao said.


The vice president said 180 million reais ($31.97 million)remains of the 400 million reais set aside for the military’s Amazon deployment, enough to fund continuing operations.

After 14 months of rising deforestation, government data shows forest clearances have fallen from July to September, compared to the same months a year ago.

But deforestation remains at higher levels than in the two years prior to Bolsonaro assuming office, and the number of forest fires is at their highest levels in 10 years.

Japan Ink: Growing tribe proudly defies tattoo taboo, hopes for Olympian boost

By Kim Kyung Hoon, Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) - Shodai Horiren got her first tattoo as a lark on a trip to Australia nearly three decades ago. Now, tattooed head to foot, even on her shaven scalp, she is one of Japan’s most renowned traditional tattoo artists.

“Your house gets old, your parents die, you break up with a lover, kids grow and go,” said Horiren, 52, at her studio just north of Tokyo.

“But a tattoo is with you until you’re cremated and in your grave. That’s the appeal.”

Horiren belongs to a proud, growing tribe of Japanese ink aficionados who defy deeply-rooted taboos associating tattoos with crime, turning their skin into vivid palettes of colour with elaborate full-body designs, often featuring characters from traditional legends.

(Click reut.rs/2HtXVfI to view a picture package of Japan's tattoo aficionados.)

Banned from spas, hot spring resorts, some beaches and many gyms and pools, the enthusiasts hope the presence of tattooed foreign athletes at last year’s Rugby World Cup and next year’s Tokyo Olympic Games - postponed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic - will help sweep away suspicion.

“If you watch the All Blacks do the haka with all their tattoos, it makes your heart beat faster,” said Horiren, referring to New Zealand’s national rugby team and their pre-game ceremony.

“Basketball players are really stylish, too. But here, even boxers cover up with foundation.”

Tattoos have been linked to criminals for as long as 400 years, most recently to yakuza gang members, whose full-body ink-work stops short of hands and neck, allowing concealment under regular clothes.

Slideshow ( 22 images ) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-tattoos-widerimage/japan-ink-growing-tribe-proudly-defies-tattoo-taboo-hopes-for-olympian-boost-idUSKBN27B2QW

The popularity of Western rock music, though, with musicians increasingly sporting tattoos, has eaten away at this bias.

A court decision last year that tattoos were for decoration, and were not medical procedures, helped clarify their murky legal status and may signal a shift in attitude - perhaps leading the industry to regulate itself, giving it a more mainstream image.

Referring to them as tattoos rather than “irezumi” - literally meaning “inserting ink” - as is becoming more common, may also help give them a stylish, fashionable veneer.

“Some people get tattoos for deep reasons, but I do it because they’re cute, the same way I might buy a nice blouse,” said Mari Okasaka, 48, a part-time worker who got her first tattoo at 28. Her 24-year-old son, Tenji, is working towards having his whole body covered in ink and colour.


Tattoo devotees are edging into the open as well, meeting at large parties to bare and share their designs.

“We may have tattoos but we are happy and bright people,” said party organizer and scrapyard worker Hiroyuki Nemoto.

Surfer and TV set-maker Takashi Mikajiri, though, is still stopped on some beaches and ordered to cover up.

Rie Yoshihara, who works in a shop dressing tourists in kimonos, said her shocked father has still not seen her full back tattoo, while Okasaka wears long sleeves to take out the garbage so her neighbours won’t talk.

“In America, if you have a tattoo, people don’t really care. There’s not really any reaction,” said Mikajiri.

“That’s the ideal. It’d be really good to just be taken for granted.”

Reporting by Kim Kyung Hoon and Elaine Lies; Additional reporting by Jack Tarrant; Editing by Tom Hogue

Justice Thomas' wife boosts unsupported claims against Biden

WASHINGTON — The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is using her Facebook page to amplify unsubstantiated claims of corruption by Joe Biden.  

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Ginni Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, asked her more than 10,000 followers Monday to consider sharing a link focused on alleged corruption by the Democratic nominee for president and his son, Hunter, as well as claims that social media companies are censoring reports about the Bidens.

Other spouses of justices also have their own professional identities, but Thomas is the only one whose work involves partisan politics that sometimes butts up against her husband’s job. Clarence Thomas is the longest-serving current justice, having joined the court in 1991, and he administered the oath at the swearing in of new Justice Amy Coney Barrett on Monday evening. Barrett's confirmation following a rushed process to install her on the court before the election gives conservatives a 6-3 court majority.

Justice Thomas has never considered his wife’s political activism disqualifying. He has not stepped aside from any case involving Trump or current disputes over absentee-ballot extensions and other voting issues. A court spokeswoman did not respond to requests for Thomas to comment on this story.

Both Thomases were at the White House Monday for the ceremony. During the ceremony, Ginni Thomas sat, unmasked, next to Jesse Barrett, the new justice’s husband.

She wrote on Facebook Tuesday that she was “so excited” to be at Barrett's swearing in. “Clarence said as we left, I wish your Mom was still alive, which drew my tears, as she would be living each minute and emotion of this historic day...a day President Trump made possible!” Thomas wrote.

The couple also attended a private ceremony at the court Tuesday, where all the attendees wore masks, according to court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg.

Ginni Thomas is an avid backer of President Donald Trump and an influential conservative activist who posts pictures of Trump supporters campaigning in Virginia. She also was a delegate to the Republican convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, this summer.

In a photo she posted in February, Thomas is seated next to Trump at a White House meeting in 2019. Other conservative leaders have called her “crucially important” and "an indispensable leader of the conservative movement. More than a dozen photos she posted online show her husband with Trump or Vice-President Mike Pence.

Ginni Thomas regularly shares conspiracy-minded memes.

Last week, she reposted a video that features Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the headline, “The Biden Crime Family: How They Made Millions.”

Again asking people to share the link, Thomas wrote, “The mainstream media does not want people to know the facts of what this video reveal.”

On Oct. 14, she pointed followers to an attack on philanthropist George Soros. “Who is really running the Democrat Party? The Soros family,” the shared link says, featuring photos of Soros relations with Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.

On Oct. 12, she linked to a video by conservative commentator Dan Bongino asserting that Biden is suffering from dementia.

Three times in October, she wrote about what Trump and his supporters call Obamagate, an unsupported claim that former President Barack Obama broke the law by spying on Trump and his associates during the transition between their administrations.

On Oct. 10, she wrote, “More citizens should KNOW about the biggest scandal and the evidence now piling up! #ObamaGate.”

Two of her favourites targets are “the left” and “the media.” On Oct. 17, she posted a photo of a Black man identified as a conservative who was protesting outside Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. The photo shows the man with a bloodied mouth and teeth missing. She wrote, “Why is the left violent and why don’t Democrat’s condemn this?"

A few hours earlier, Thomas complained about apparent collusion between the media and the Biden campaign to shield the candidate from tough questions. “Media + Biden/Harris team = PROPAGANDA and Corruption. #WalkAwayFromDemocrats and the Mainstream Media! Find new news sources!" she wrote.

Mark Sherman, The Associated Press

Bolivia's Morales calls for calm after REACTIONARY protesters demand junta

Exiled former Bolivian president Evo Morales called for calm on Tuesday after several hundred right-wing protesters demanded that a "military junta" replace socialist president-elect Luis Arce.

© JUAN MABROMATA Bolivia has been in political crisis for a year after Evo Morales ignored the constitution and stood for and won a fourth successive term as president

On Monday, hundreds of demonstrators marched to military barracks in the eastern city of Santa Cruz -- a right-wing stronghold -- and called for "military help" to prevent the Movement for Socialism (MAS) party from regaining power following a year under conservative Jeanine Anez's interim government. TRAITORS

Morales wrote on Twitter, however, that "the constitution is very clear on the role of the armed forces and the Bolivian police: We, as we always have done, will respect them as institutions."

"We must all act calmly in a constitutional way."

Bolivia has been in political crisis for a year after Morales ignored the constitution and stood for and won a fourth successive term as president, even though leaders are limited to two terms.

Following weeks of protest and an Organization of American States (OAS) audit that found clear evidence of fraud, Morales resigned and fled the country and Anez assumed the presidency. THE OAS REPORT HAS BEEN DISCREDITED AS HAS THE ANEZ REGIME

New elections were held on October 18 with Arce -- from Morales' MAS party -- romping to victory.

The electoral tribunal, Anez and four observer missions, including the OAS, have all confirmed the election was clean and transparent.

Arce claimed more than 55 percent of the vote with centrist former president Carlos Mesa a distant second on just under 29 percent.

But Monday's protesters don't trust the result.

"I don't want a communist country," said one banner, according to the El Deber de Santa Cruz newspaper.

"I support a constitutional transition of power to a military junta to avoid a second fraud," said another.

One protester told the newspaper that he wanted "a transitional military government until it's possible to hold elections without fraud."

Santa Cruz is the stronghold of right-wing civic leader Luis Fernando Camacho, who led protests against Morales last year and finished third in the recent election with 14 percent.

Morales was barred from standing in the election.

Bolivia is waiting to see when Morales will return from exile in Argentina after a judge on Monday lifted a preventative detention order against him over alleged "terrorism." On Tuesday he said he will "possibly" return by November 9.

Neither the armed forces nor the government has commented on the demonstration.

The topic is sensitive in Bolivia, which was mostly ruled by military dictatorships from 1964-82.

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