- Hefty Australian penguin chick 'Pesto' becomes star
- Fashion's fun 'Frankenstein' flies after Olympic triumph
- Volkswagen crisis pits homegrown leaders against each other
- Princess Zelda takes the lead in 'Echoes of Wisdom'
- Astros clinch division title, Yankees kept waiting
- Asian markets boosted again after another Chinese rate cut
- The struggle to keep track of Gaza war deaths
- China cuts another key interest rate to boost economy
- Restarting nuclear power plants: the unprecedented gamble in the US
- US state executes man despite conviction doubts
- Asylum seeker lifts South Korea hopes at Homeless World Cup
- Hostages freed in Gaza truce pine for those left behind
- Pope offers refuge to Myanmar's jailed Suu Kyi: report
- Tragic tale of two West Bank teenagers freed in Gaza truce
- US intel warns of Iran threats to assassinate Trump: campaign
- In election, Hollywood is about cash not endorsements
- UK foreign minister Lammy seeks 'strongest position' for Ukraine
- Macron presses Iran president for Lebanon de-escalation
- UNRWA fears new 'tragedy' as Lebanon violence adds strain: chief to AFP
- Russia mulls ban on 'childless propaganda'
- Blackwater founder probed by Venezuela over anti-Maduro campaign
- Crypto CEO and Bankman-Fried ex Caroline Ellison gets two-year sentence
- Hezbollah announces death of commander after strike on south Beirut
- Tatum hungry for more after breakthrough Celtics success
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs sued for alleged 2001 rape
- Biden pleads for democracy in emotional UN farewell
- New York area port prepares for possible US strike disruption
- Rodri 'irreplaceable' but Guardiola confident Man City will still compete
- Brook 'relieved' as maiden ODI hundred sets up first win as England captain
- Dior's arrows and Amazons as Saint Laurent revives its master
- Mbappe strikes again as Madrid hold off Alaves
- Nkunku hits Chelsea hat-trick, Man City edge into League Cup last 16
- Amnesty calls for commission to probe Kenya protest deaths
- Bolivian government rejects Morales ultimatum for cabinet reshuffle
- US Congress calls on Novo Nordisk to lower drug prices
- Stock markets advance on China stimulus
- Russia 'can only be forced into peace," Zelensky tells UN
- Hundred hero Brook keeps England alive in Australia ODI series
- Biden pleads for democracy in final UN address
- Brook's hundred sees England beat Australia in 3rd ODI
- Alarm grows as Israel and Hezbollah exchange intense fire
- NFL legend Favre reveals Parkinson's diagnosis
- Biden urges world to 'stop arming generals' in Sudan
- Defying experts, Trump vows tariff-driven US economic boom
- Stokes open to England white-ball return
- No peak oil demand 'on the horizon', phaseout a 'fantasy': OPEC
- Sri Lanka's new leftist leader dissolves parliament, calls snap polls
- England scrum-half Mitchell to see specialist on neck injury
- Under-pressure Masood to lead Pakistan in England Tests
- Storm Helene on track to hit Florida as major hurricane
Armenia detains 200 protesters as pressure on PM grows
Police in Armenia on Tuesday detained more than 200 anti-government protesters as opposition parties upped pressure on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over his handling of a territorial dispute with Azerbaijan.
Protests erupted in Yerevan on Sunday with the opposition demanding Pashinyan's resignation accusing him of plotting to cede to Baku all the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region over which the two countries went to war in 2020.
Fresh demonstrations took place on Monday and on Tuesday morning police cracked down on protesters who blocked traffic in central Yerevan, provoking chaotic scenes and the largest protests in the country since elections last September.
The interior ministry said "237 demonstrators were detained" in Yerevan and several provincial cities.
Later in the evening, several thousand opposition supporters marched in downtown Yerevan, waving Armenian and Karabakh flags and shouting "Nikol, resign!"
The protests highlight bitterness over Pashinyan's leadership since the six-week war in 2020 that claimed more than 6,500 lives before ending with a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-long dispute over Karabakh, Azerbaijan's Armenian-populated region.
Armenia's security service warned Saturday of "a real threat of turmoil in the country," but Pashinyan's ally and parliament speaker Alen Simonyan downplayed the risk of instability, insisting "there is no political crisis in Armenia."
"Political forces, which lost parliamentary elections in 2021, are aggressively trying to mount a wave of protests, but our citizens have already made their choice and will stay away from their attempts," he told a news conference Tuesday.
- 'Symbol of defeat' -
Opposition leader and parliament vice speaker Ishkhan Saghatelyan said: "Pashinyan is a traitor and permanent street protests, which are mounting, will force him to resign."
He called for a protest rally later Tuesday in Yerevan's central Square of France where thousands rallied against Pashinyan on Sunday and Monday.
"Nikol must go, he will go, because he is a symbol of defeat and Armenia has no future with such a leader," said 57-year-old blacksmith Sergei Hovhannisyan, one of the protesters.
"He is ready to give away Karabakh for which we have shed our blood," he told AFP.
Opposition parties accuse Pashinyan of plans to give away all of Karabakh to Azerbaijan after he told lawmakers last month that the "international community calls on Armenia to scale down demands on Karabakh".
Under the Moscow-brokered deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades, and Russia deployed some 2,000 peacekeepers to oversee the truce.
The pact was seen in Armenia as a national humiliation and sparked weeks of anti-government protests, leading Pashinyan to call snap parliamentary polls which his party, Civil Contract, won last September.
Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflicts claimed around 30,000 lives.
C.Kovalenko--BTB