Chile: Teachers, students clash with police

Protesters clashed violently with police in Chiles capital to decry President Sebastian Pineras policies, as a poll showed him the least popular leader in two decades since the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.University students and professors blocked roads and lit fires as police used water cannons and tear gas to quell the latest outcry against the conservative billionaire.In central Santiago, protesters demanding cheaper and better state education threw objects at riot police who tried to clear barricaded streets of the unauthorized protest.Hundreds of thousands of people have protested in Chiles main cities in recent weeks, rallying against Pinera in some of the biggest demonstrations since the dying stages of Pinochets iron-fisted rule.A survey by pollster Adimark GfK published this week put Pineras approval rating at 30 percent, long seen as the floor of his support from the right.In an effort to defuse protests, he proposed a $4 billion fund for higher education -- which students said did not go far enough.Pinera took power last year, ending 20 years of center-left rule in Chile, pushing a raft of labor, health, energy, electoral and environmental reforms, but had to reboot his agenda to focus on reconstruction after a massive earthquake.