HONG KONG (AP) — Protesters and authorities clashed in Hong Kong again on Saturday, as demonstrators removed a Chinese national flag from its pole and flung it into the city’s iconic Victoria Harbor and police fired tear gas after some protesters vandalized a police station.

The scene was all too familiar in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, which has been wracked by pro-democracy protests for nearly two months. Since the rallies began, protesters have vandalized buildings and thrown bricks, while police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets.

On Saturday afternoon, tens of thousands of black-clad protesters filled a major road in a usually bustling market district where shop owners had shuttered their storefronts in anticipation of a prolonged demonstration. They also blocked a tunnel and surrounded police stations where non-emergency services were suspended.

Police had warned earlier in the day that those who continued past the pre-approved protest route would be breaking the..

(MOSCOW) — Police in Moscow cracked down hard on unsanctioned election protests for the second weekend in a row Saturday, detaining more than 800 people at a rally against the exclusion from city council contests of some independent and opposition candidates, an arrest monitoring group said.

Election officials rejected signatures several candidates needed to qualify for next month’s local ballot. The decision tapped dissatisfaction with a political environment dominated by the Kremlin-aligned United Russia party, in which dissenting voices are marginalized, ignored or repressed. The OVD-Info organization, which tracks arrests in Russia, said 828 people were detained Saturday.

The Russian Interior Ministry said the number was about 600 in a crowd of about 1,500 protesters, although police are widely believed to understate crowd estimates for opposition events. The detentions came a week after authorities arrested nearly 1,400 people at a similar protest.

Lyubov Sobol, one of the excl..