if exercise is the right thing about d.w. dot com slash don't plan on facebook in the uk still. to learn german feel free w. . this is d.w. news live from the snap elections after armenia's velvet revolution counting gets underway in the country's parliamentary vote acting prime minister nicole passion and is hoping for a majority in parliament to push through his reform agenda also coming up assessing the damage in paris up to more violent protests yellow best demonstrators demanding

further reforms as french president emanuel my valves to address the nation and meet with union groups in the coming day. i'm rebecca riches it's good to have you with us lord helping has begun after armenia snap parliamentary elections today preliminary results are expected in several hours time the reformist prime minister nicola passion pushed for the early ballots after the peaceful anti corruption uprising swept into power earlier this year it was the most sweeping transformation in the landlocked caucasus country since its independence from the soviet union nearly thirty years ago international election observers were monitoring today's vote which was called as passion seeks a stronger mandate in parliament his planned reform drive. to his

supporters he's a true man of the people a former journalist a turned politician nicole passion has a way with words and an unassuming style that has won the hearts and minds of many armenians. question young was elected prime minister by parliament in may after galvanizing the civil disobedience movement to protest a power grab by the country's prime minister sergey sarkozy on donning his trademark backpack and baseball cap pushing and led weeks of mass protests that ultimately forced sarkozy answer resignation. but the longer willing republican party retained its majority in parliament in october pushing on step down as prime minister to trigger early elections during his campaign he blasted the old elite as corrupt and pledged to revive the economy in a country where a third of the population lives in poverty principally. the economic agenda is our priority you were a very important and ambitious transform i mean your grammarian into an industrial

country. into a technological and duster all states is. a strongly. passion young remains popular few doubt that his my stuff alliance will come out on top of the race among eleven parties and political blocs. is a room you will pile both for nicole passion and his virtue as an honest during his seven months in office his hands were tied because the former ruling party still dominated parliament. until he gets rid of all the corrupt thieving politicians from the previous government he won't be able to do any good news. the capitol yerevan may look gloomy shrouded in december fog but on the streets there is real hope among armenians that this election could mark the advent of real democratic change. for more i'm joined by journalist joshua can chair who's in the capital gang or of on my joshua now as we just heard counting is underway what is the expected outcome. well the pashtuns my step alliance is

expected to win a huge victory i mean opinion polls had him at around seventy percent of the vote the polls aren't necessarily super reliable here but analysts that i've talked to said they expect anywhere between sixty to eighty percent of the vote to go to him so the drama has kind of will be the other parties in the parliament. this is especially interesting because a lot of the parties really are actually also quite loyal to partially on and some voters that i talked to and planted to vote for other parties said they wanted to do so because they actually supported us and you know according to the constitution here. at least three parties have to make it into the parliament. even if the they don't make the threshold of five percent so a lot of people are voting for other parties that they like just so they can block some of the parties that they don't like for making it in right and what are the

real challenges for passion if he doesn't day gang that take. well there considerable as your report said i mean the economy is really the big issue here and that's what he's been campaigning on and and poverty is. a big problem and has been a problem since armenia gained independence from the soviet union and actually ninety one. it's not going to be easy to solve has talked a lot about bringing in foreign investment that's sort of in the strategy in the seven months that he's been prime minister it really picked up there hasn't been any noticeable increase in foreign investments and now when we're going as the parliamentary majority in the he will really have no more excuses he said so if they don't start to pick up it's going to be difficult for him to explain and does he have the necessary political experience to be able to follow through on this

reform agenda that he wants to push through. yeah i think he's you know he's not an absolute newcomer he has been in parliament for several years he's been the head as the party albeit a minor party for several years a lot of people have complained that a lot of the the people who surround him are fairly new i mean it's a very young teen a lot of inexperienced people from sort of the n g o world rather than leave free to the political worlds or a government world and. so it's a reasonable question the pashtun himself is a pretty cagey operator so i don't think that will be the problem i think the bigger problem is just that our media has problems are quite large and it's going to take more than one now and more than a few months to turn them around. joshua and yet and thank you very much. now to some of the other stories making news around the world representatives from yemen's government and rebels have met to discuss an exchange of prisoners the

ongoing u.n. sponsored talks in the swedish town of rimbaud just north of stockholm and easing tensions in a four year civil war that pushed the country to the brink of famine. belgian prime minister charles michel has reshuffled his cabinet after the country's with flemish nationalist party quit the ruling coalition the new flemish alliance opposed his backing of the un migration pact the decision men's michele is sent to set to lead a minority government until parliamentary election jeweled for late may. thousands of people have marched through london in a counter protest to a probe rexx at rally prime minister to raise in may is pushing ahead with a crucial vote on her a new exit deal which would see close economic ties with the parliament is expected to reject the divorce deal on tuesday. when france is reeling after another

saturday of violent protests by the so-called yellow vests movement police detained almost two thousand demonstrators with dozens reported injured in clashes french president emanuel my call is under pressure to address the anti government on rest he's now going to speak to the nation early in the coming week and also plans to meet with union and employers groups on monday. another night of unrest on the streets of paris. shops. banks nothing new does and does fled across the city sounds of extra police were out here is practically on lockdown it wasn't quite the chaos of last weekend still officials are dismayed at what played out this stuff today. and we called upon once again every citizen to come back to dialogue and peace because i want to be a nice long term solution for but why she says without peace and stability.

with a clean up operation in full swing on sunday parisians pool's to take stock. it's very hard but it's normal reaction of the people there were the french people writing for. president. it is difficult for many people in the country but if you don't say it's not the government says it's listening to demonstrate his scrapping its plan to hike fuel taxes but president emanuel mccrone has not yet met with them that has ignited death fury. the yellow vests movement is less than a month old but it has already brought hundreds of thousands to demonstrations across the country like here in the same western city of bull do clashes between rioters and police and then barricades set on fire outside an apple store.

to sports now and then germany's one display goes second bottom side however were denied their first away victory of the season against lines by a late penalty equaliser and let's take a look at the rest of the weekend results dortmund secured a diving victory over local rivals a shocker by a new nick cruz past nuremberg to berlin defeated frankfurt and freiburg banished their poor form in the bundesliga shocking lives with a three no victory striker newspapers and opened the scoring after just twelve minutes the thirty year old method his third goal of the campaign tribal then doubled their lead on the stroke of half time loop abolishment. loving home from the penalty spot and mike from put the game out of con tension with a header after fifty two minutes the three nil victory was five of the first win in

five matches. also on saturday evolves managed a draw with hoffenheim and leverkusen snuck past old bog on friday bremen down dusseldorf and there's another match underway now with blood bath taking on stuttgart. well in just a few hours the boca juniors will take on river plate in the second leg of the final of south america's top club competition the copa libertadores but it will not kick off in one of the ira's as originally planned instead thousands of fans have arrived in the spanish capital madrid the venue was changed in order to avoid a repetition of scenes like this from two weeks ago both contain bass came under attack from river fans leaving some players injured. and joining us now in madrid near the stadium where the game will take place is max merrill from our sports department max thanks for joining me tell us what's the atmosphere there and what sort of security measures have been put in place. well the atmosphere is pretty

relaxed so far in the city center the two groups of fans are actually mixing and there are according to reports around four thousand to seven thousand police here in the capital i've spoken to a few of them they've been very happy with how smooth everything has gone so far most of the major roads in the city center have been blocked off i'm standing just by one of them that's just still open but most of the city center is pedestrian ised and there are fans owns either side of me to the left of me the book is union fans gathering to the right of me is the river plate fans further up hill and indeed later on when the celebrations kick off for one of the teams they'll be separated in the stadium they're also meant to be separated by been speight speaking to a few fans who were in such a rush to get tickets that they just bought any sort of ticket they can so there will be a lot of fans mixing inside the stadium which is very spectacular considering that in argentina for the lot for the last last five years away fans have been banned so no away fans have been able to travel to home games away games sorry and today will

have very mixed stadium but the fans i've been speaking to have been very excited by that prospect well what stories have you heard from. well they're arriving from all over the world i bumped into a father son gio traveling from barcelona this morning and the young boy is actually carrying his school uniform with him because he'll be there tomorrow at school tomorrow morning he's a boca found his father is a river found they'll be celebrating one of them will be celebrating today fans arriving from new york australia i just bumped into fans from germany that have come over and madrid is a great venue because it's the biggest city biggest population of argentinians outside of argentina three hundred fifty thousand argentinians live here and a lot of mutual funds also who are just here for the occasion sounds like a lot of fun to be had but give us a sense of the importance and history behind this huge match.

well it's the biggest rivalry in south american football and you could argue it's the biggest rivalry and weld football they've been facing each other for one hundred ten years over three hundred match ups so far and it's also a social divide between the two clubs because you in years are considered the working man's club while river plate traditionally have more affluent founds and all the more affluent club indeed the nickname is last week you'll notice the millionaires so there's a social divide in in this footballing rivalry and both teams will be very eager to win tonight matches nicely poised to choose the aggregate score there are no away goal bonuses in couple of out of doors finals so it's all to play for first square and the very evenly matched teams should be a very exciting match well max merril in madrid thank you and enjoy the game. well as well as playing host to that exciting match christmas also came early in madrid as thousands of men and women took to the streets dressed as santa claus and

it was all for a good cause the five kilometer charity race turned trade into a sea of red and white with a few elves joining in along the way it's the largest race of that kind in the world money right raise from the event will be donated to a local cancer charity. well i have more news at the top of the hour don't forget you can get all the latest headlines on our web site that stated when you dot com i'll be seeing you next hour i'm rebecca written thanks for watching. the. continent is reinventing itself. as africa's tech scene discovers its true.