As dusk fell on Shanghai on Sunday evening, some of those who gathered at a vigil to remember the victims of a fire that catalysed the demonstrations came clutching sheets of paper.

Similarly, in the capital Beijing, protesters came armed with scraps of paper to a demonstration at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University, once attended by President Xi Jinping.

And in another striking video a young woman could be seen walking through the streets of Wuzhen - a town in the eastern province of Zhejiang - with chains around her wrists and duct tape over her mouth. In her hands was a sheet of unspoiled blank paper.

The trend has its roots in the 2020 Hong Kong demonstrations, where locals held blank pieces of paper to protest against the city's draconian new national security laws.

Activists held the paper aloft after authorities banned slogans and phrases associated with the mass protest movement of 2019 that saw the city grind to a halt and officials violently clamp down on demonstrators.

Some have argued that the gesture is not only a statement about the silencing of dissent, but also a challenge to authorities, as if to say 'are you going to arrest me for holding a sign saying nothing?'"

"There was definitely nothing on the paper, but we know what's on there," a woman who joined protests in Shanghai told the BBC.

As the Covid-19 pandemic sunk coal prices internationally, the multinational giant Glencore, through its local affiliate Prodeco, closed the two coal mines in the area.

Since the closure, the sky has cleared up and the air is fresher, says Álvaro Castro, a social leader and local researcher for Universidad del Magdalena, who lives in the town. Birds now chirp in the newly green treetops, and the blanket of coal ash covering the rooftops is gone, he says.

But at street level, the situation is dire.

As 7,000 workers – from a workforce of 7,300 – lost their jobs and contractors left town, nearly 100 restaurants, cafes, hotels and other businesses closed, the local branch of the country’s largest coal workers union says. As a result, according to the town's mayor, the municipality lost 85% of its income.

Faith Rogers, an environmental-science intern and volunteer at the Heavener Runestone Park, led me down a cobblestone path toward one of the 55-acre woodland's biggest attractions – which is also one of the US' biggest historical mysteries. We were deep in the rolling, scrub-forest foothills of the Ouachita Mountains in far eastern Oklahoma, and we were on our way to view a slab of ancient sandstone that still has experts scratching their heads and debating about the eight symbols engraved on its face. 

Some believe that these cryptic inscriptions are runes (ancient alphabetical characters) carved into the towering stone circa 1000 CE by Norse explorers who travelled up the Arkansas River to this remote part of landlocked America.

"Do I think the Vikings carved this? I do," said Rogers, as we stood in the protective wood-and-glass "house" built around the 3m-by-3.6m slab. "[Local historian] Gloria Farley spent her whole life researching this, and she has a lot of evidence to back it up."

Farley – who grew up in the town of Heavener where the runestone was found and who passed away in 2006 – is a legend in these parts. She first saw the relic while hiking as a young girl in 1928 and was fascinated by it. Two decades later, she returned to study it, as an amateur runologist and self-taught epigraphist. 

The first modern knowledge of the runestone dates to the 1830s, when it was found by a Choctaw hunting party. For years, white Oklahomans called it Indian Rock, mistakenly thinking that the carvings were Native American.

"[Farley] spent the majority of her adult life researching the stone," said Amanda Garcia, Heavener Runestone Park manager. "She travelled all around the US, went to Egypt and went to different places looking at different markings."

Supporters of the far-right president have erected hundreds of roadblocks across Brazil since it was announced that Mr Bolsonaro's left-wing rival Lula won the election.

Mr Bolsonaro said blocking roads was not a part of "legitimate" protests.

He encouraged people to choose other ways of demonstrating.

Many hardcore Bolsonaro supporters have refused to accept the result of Sunday's presidential run-off, which saw former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly win with 50.9% of valid votes.

Angry with the result, lorry drivers set up blockades across the country. They have so far lasted three days and have caused considerable disruption to the transport of goods, including food and fuel.

Police have struggled to contain all of the blockades, although the federal highway police said more than 700 had now been dismantled.

Addressing the blockades in a video posted on his Twitter account on Wednesday, Mr Bolsonaro said: "I know you are upset... Me too. But we have to keep our heads straight.

"I want to make an appeal: clear the roads," he said, adding that blocking roads "obstructs our right to come and go, which is in our constitution".

However, he encouraged protesters to find other means of demonstrating and welcomed the various rallies that have been held in his support, in which people have displayed Brazilian flags and chanted anti-Lula slogans.

Some have also called for military intervention to keep Mr Bolsonaro in power.

"This is very welcome and is part of democracy," he said.

Although Mr Bolsonaro has still not publicly conceded defeat, in a speech on Tuesday, he did not contest the election result either.

He also agreed to the transition of power in the speech, which Brazil's Supreme Court said shortly afterwards showed that he had recognised the result of the election.

Mr Bolsonaro's term as president will end when Lula is inaugurated as his successor on 1 January.

Lula, who previously served as president from 2003 to 2010, is now 77 and will become the oldest person to assume the post.