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The Armenian prime minister has accused the armed forces of an attempted coup against his government after top military officers signed a letter calling on him to resign, in an escalation of the political crisis sparked by Armenia’s defeat in the war in Nagorno-Karabakh last year.

Tensions between Nikol Pashinyan and the military erupted into open conflict on Thursday as the chief of the armed forces general staff, Onik Gasparyan, and other senior commanders accused the prime minister of bringing Armenia to “the brink of collapse”.

In response, Pashinyan dismissed Gasparyan and called his own supporters to rally in Yerevan’s Republic Square, the site of the popular revolution that brought him to power three years ago. A video broadcast showed Pashinyan in a suit arriving at the square on Thursday and addressing his supporters through a bullhorn.

“The army cannot get involved in the political process,” Pashinyan said in a speech. “The army should only obey the people and the political leadership elected by the people.”

There have been no reports of the military being mobilised to seize government buildings or otherwise unseat Pashinyan. However, discontent has grown against the prime minister over Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh last year. As part of a Russian-brokered ceasefire, Armenia was forced to make painful concessions to Azerbaijan, handing over towns and villages it had won in a war after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but populated by ethnic Armenians.

Opponents of the ceasefire called it a capitulation and stormed parliament and Pashinyan’s residence the night it was signed. Protests have simmered since and Armenia has been in deadlock, with the administration paralysed but the prime minister ignoring calls for snap elections.

On Thursday, Pashinyan told Armenians he had “thought about resigning”, but added that “the people will decide whether I resign or not”. Thousands of his supporters marched behind him through the streets from Republic Square. There were scuffles as the march passed by a counter-protest organised by the opposition but no serious clashes took place.

Earlier this week, Pashinyan had dismissed Tiran Khacharyan, Gasparyan’s first deputy, for ridiculing the prime minister’s claims that Russian-supplied Iskander missiles used in the conflict mostly failed to explode on contact.

More than 20.5 million years of life may have been lost to the coronavirus pandemic in 81 countries of the world, according to a new study that exposes the fallacy that those who die would have soon done so even if they had not caught Covid-19.

While Covid deaths are often compared dismissively to those from flu, which kills many elderly and frail individuals every year, the study shows the coronavirus has taken a significantly greater toll. In those countries that are badly affected, the number of years of life lost to Covid is between two and nine times more than from seasonal flu.

Years of life lost is the difference between an individual’s age at death and their life expectancy. Men have fared substantially worse than women – their years of life lost were 44% higher. Even though it is older people who are most at risk of dying in richer countries, the greatest number of years of life lost was among people between the ages of 55 and 75.

The researchers looked at heart disease, which also causes premature death. They found that more years were lost to heart disease than to Covid. However, the toll of excess deaths in countries – the total increase in deaths from year to year – masked an increase in deaths from heart disease also.

Using data on just those deaths confirmed as from Covid-19 underestimated years of life lost by a factor of 3, compared with calculating from excess deaths.

“Variation across countries is large; in Belgium the two approaches deliver comparable results, but for Croatia, Greece and South Korea the excess deaths approach suggests that we may underestimate the YLL [years of life lost] by a factor of more than 12,” they write. “The majority of those years are from individuals with significant remaining life expectancy.”

A Russian state laboratory has announced that it is launching research into prehistoric viruses by analysing the remains of animals recovered from melted permafrost.

The Siberia-based Vektor lab said in a statement on Tuesday that the aim of the project was to identify paleoviruses and conduct advanced research into virus evolution.

The research in collaboration with North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk began with analysis of tissues extracted from a prehistoric horse believed to be at least 4,500 years old.

Vektor said the remains were discovered in 2009 in Yakutia, a vast Siberian region where remains of ancient animals including mammoths are regularly discovered.

Researchers said they would also probe the remains of mammoths, elk, dogs, partridges, rodents, hares and other prehistoric animals.

Maxim Cheprasov, head of the Mammoth Museum laboratory at North-Eastern Federal University, said in a press release that the recovered animals had already been the subject of bacterial studies.

A former centre for the development of biological weapons in Soviet times, the Vektor laboratory in Siberia’s Novosibirsk region is one of only two facilities in the world to store the smallpox virus.

Vektor has developed a vaccine against coronavirus, EpiVacCorona, which was licensed in October in Russia and is scheduled to begin mass production later this month.

New visa rules for British artists, actors and theatre workers who want to work in Europe after Brexit are a “towering hurdle” that must be urgently addressed, according to an open letter signed by stars including Sir Ian McKellen, Julie Walters and Patrick Stewart.

In the letter from the performing arts union Equity, some of the biggest names in British theatre have implored the prime minister to go back to the negotiating table to ensure visa-free work in the EU.

“Before, we were able to travel to Europe visa-free. Now we have to pay hundreds of pounds, fill in form after form, and spend weeks waiting for approval – just so we can do our jobs,” it says.

Creative workers have already lost work because of “the cost and bureaucracy that now comes with hiring British talent”, the letter states, with 31% of Equity members saying they have seen adverts asking for EU passport holders only to apply for jobs.

“For a sector that is deeply embedded in the international community – from touring theatre and dance to film, television and commercials – which must work fast, flexibly and to demand, this is a disastrous blow and will hit those already struggling and marginalised groups the hardest,” they say.

Brexit means that before travelling to work in a number of EU countries many working in the arts now need to apply for short-term work permits.

Pianist Joseph Middleton wrote in the Guardian that a recital in Spain would now cost him £600 in visa-related bills, as well as extra bureaucracy in the form of providing recent certified bank statements and proof of income.

The letter, which is also signed by Miriam Margolyes, Ricky Tomlinson and Anne-Marie Duff, says the timing could not be worse because the industry is “reeling from the closure of venues and the banning of live events as a result of the pandemic”.

They write that many creative workers have fallen through the gaps of financial support offered by the government with 40% of Equity members not fitting the eligibility criteria for the self-employment income support Scheme or the coronavirus job retention scheme.

“Prime minister, we urge you to negotiate new terms with the EU, allowing creative practitioners to travel to the EU visa-free for work, and for our European counterparts to be able to do the same in the UK,” they state.

“Not acting now will do further and irreparable harm to the UK’s creative workforce, our industries and to our standing on the international cultural stage.”

Equity’s general secretary, Paul Fleming, said art and entertainment are worth more to our economy than banking but “government intransigence” threatens a “cornerstone of our international soft power” and a key export.

“More than that, the language of art and entertainment knows no boundaries; freedom of movement for our members as artists and working people is achievable, desirable and essential,” he added.

Italian authorities are scouting an area in Puglia where locals have reported seeing a black panther on the loose.

In the last two weeks, several witnesses have spotted and filmed a large, black feline prowling around the province of Bari, near the towns of Castellana Grotte and Acquaviva delle Fonti.

On Saturday, the mayor of Acquaviva delle Fonti, Davide Carlucci, immediately issued an emergency order urging residents to avoid local fields and the areas of the countryside where the animal was spotted.

“I signed an ordinance with which I have prohibited sporting and agricultural activities on the country roads in our territory,” Carlucci wrote in a post on Facebook. “The forest carabinieri and police are patrolling the area. In order to avoid frightening the feline, which causes aggressive behaviour, owners of domestic and breeding animals must keep them safe, to protect them from any attacks.”

Several hundred women formed human chains in Moscow and St Petersburg on Sunday, using Valentine’s Day to express support for the wife of the jailed opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, and other political prisoners.

About 300 women gathered on Arbat Street in Moscow’s city centre holding a long white ribbon in temperatures of -13C (8F).

The gathering came after authorities last week sentenced Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, to nearly three years in prison and unleashed a crackdown on his supporters.

Female activists said they wanted to express solidarity with Navalny’s wife, Yulia, and other women who have become victims of the crackdown.

Small British businesses are being offered access to a £20m Brexit support fund from the government to help them with new trade rules following border disruption in the first few weeks since the UK left the EU.

In response to mounting criticism from business leaders over the impact of the new arrangements, the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove, said the funding would help businesses adapt to the changes.

Traders will be able to apply for a grant of up to £2,000 each to pay for practical support for importing and exporting. The grants will also help companies prepare for additional import controls that are due to come into force from April and July.

A new transcript has surfaced of the former Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to open an investigation into the Biden family.

The transcript of a 40-minute call between Giuliani and two Ukrainian officials, was obtained by Time magazine, and served as a reminder of Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, even as his second is under way in the Senate.

The trigger for the first impeachment was a call Trump made to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which he hinted US military aid might depend on Zelenskiy’s willingness to “do us a favour” and launch an investigation that might cloud the image of Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who was on the board of an Ukrainian energy company.

In both impeachment trials, Trump is accused of using the power of the presidency in an attempt to secure a second term. The charge against him has escalated from improper pressure on a foreign government to inciting an insurrection, but Republican senators are expected to save him from conviction this time as they did in the first trial a year ago.

Giuliani’s call to the Ukrainian officials came three days before Trump’s, on 22 July 2019, to two Zelenskiy aides. One of them, Igor Novikov, sent the transcript to Time earlier this month.

A French woman is being threatened with multi-million-dollar fines by a US court if she continues a legal battle to retrieve a Pissarro painting the Nazis stole from her adoptive father.

The legal tussle over La Bergère Rentrant des Moutons (Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep), completed by Camille Pissarro in 1886 and worth an estimated €1.5m (£1.3m), is between Léone-Noëlle Meyer, 81, a former president of the Galeries Lafayette department store, and Oklahoma University’s Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art, which was gifted the painting by a local family.

It is currently hanging in Paris’s Musée d’Orsay but is due to return to Oklahoma later this year under an agreement to share the work, which Meyer is contesting.

The plaintiffs are demanding Meyer be fined $3.5m in the US and face penalties of up to $100,000 a day for contempt of court if she does not halt proceedings in France in which she is seeking full ownership of the impressionist work.

Meyer, a retired paediatrician, says she is fighting a “quest” on behalf of the family she lost in the Holocaust and her late adoptive parents. “Mrs Meyer is not doing this for money. She is doing this in memory of her father who owned the painting. She does not want to hang it in her living room, she wants to give it to the Musée d’Orsay,” Ron Soffer, her lawyer, told the Guardian.

The case hinges on whether an agreement Meyer signed in 2016 for the Oklahoma museum to share the painting with the Musée d’Orsay on a three-year rotation overrides a 1945 French law requiring the restitution of works looted by the Nazis to their rightful owners.

Meyer, listed as the ninth-richest woman in France worth an estimated €600m, claims she signed it under duress. “I was called at 2am and my American lawyer put me under strong pressure to accept this deal. I didn’t have the choice,” she told Le Monde.

“Faced with the prospect of losing the painting forever, Madame Meyer had no other choice but to sign an agreement granting Oklahoma half the ownership rights over a painting that, according to French law, Oklahoma had no rights to,” Soffer added.

La Bergère was acquired by Meyer’s adoptive father, Raoul, in the 1930s. During the Nazi occupation, he and his wife, Yvonne, fled Paris, placing their art collection, which also included a Picasso, a Renoir and a Bonnard, in a bank vault where it was discovered by the Germans.

Raoul Meyer went to court in Basel in 1953 in an unsuccessful attempt retrieve the work from a Swiss dealer, and it then arrived in the US.

Soffer argues the 2016 agreement cannot take precedence over a 1945 French law establishing that “no possessor can prevail against the legitimate owner of a work stolen by the Nazis”. “Under this law, the American museum is presumed to have been a possessor in bad faith,” he added.

Meyer lost her mother, grandmother and older brother at Auschwitz. She was adopted as a seven-year-old by the Meyers from a Paris orphanage.

In an open letter to the “People of Oklahoma” in 2014, she wrote: “Please understand that my quest carries with it a tremendous emotional burden. My entire biological family was murdered at Auschwitz between 1942 (the Vel d’Hiv pogrom) and 1944: first my mother in 1942, then the rest of my family in 1944, while I, somehow, miraculously, survived this slaughter.

Extracts from the private appointment diaries of the artist known as Christo, who wrapped the Pont Neuf in Paris and the Berlin Reichstag in fabric, have been published to promote a sale of his personal art collection.

The notes of appointments and meetings – often accompanied with doodles – give a tantalising glimpse of what the auctioneers call the artist, who died last year, and his wife and collaborator Jeanne-Claude’s “hidden world” as they struggled to establish themselves in New York in the 1960s.

The four books from 1964-1968, which are not being sold, also illustrate the pair’s illustrious circle of friends in New York, including Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp. Entries range from the banal – a shopping list to make bolognese sauce for a dinner party with the Italian artist Mimmo Rotella; to the more beguiling – CALL ANDY WARHOL.

On Monday 18 March 1968, the entry reads: “Andy Warhol Movies – 33 Union Square”. Another note in 1967 reads: “Dinner avec M Duchamp. A Warhol.” Duchamp and Christo first met in Milan in 1963, but became close friends in New York.

“Christo used to say Marcel was quiet and didn’t like to talk about art but Jeanne-Claude had a very playful relationship with him. Christo said the only time Marcel was chatty was when Jeanne-Claude was sharing jokes and stories,” said Lorenza Giovanelli, Christo’s studio manager, friend and confidante.

She added: “When Marcel came to dine at their house he was already quite old so they would put a stool on the landing on each floor so he could catch his breath coming upstairs.

“Christo and Jeanne-Claude also spent quite a bit of time with Andy Warhol. They had lots of friends in common and would lunch or dine together or go to the movies. Christo said he was a very sweet, almost shy in person.”

An eclectic mix of objects from Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s personal art collection are being auctioned by Sothebys. These include Warhol’s painting of the former first lady Jackie Kennedy –Jackie, 1964 – valued at up to €1m; a Warhol lithograph print, Liz, of Elizabeth Taylor signed with a ballpoint pen by the artist; and two Warhol lithograph prints entitled Flowers and Cow.

There is also a bronze statue, Personnage by Joan Miró; drawings of the project to wrap the Pont Neuf and other Christo installations; and a miniature by Marcel Duchamp from the late 1930s. The sale includes Bacon and Egg, Ice Cream and Beef Steak from the early 1960s, which the Swedish sculptor Claes Oldenburg dedicated to Christo.

The Bulgarian-born Christo, born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, studied in Sofia before defecting to the west in 1957, travelling via Prague, Vienna and Geneva to Paris where he settled. It was in the French capital he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, the daughter of an aristocratic French general, who became his artistic partner and wife until her death in 2009 aged 74, and began experimenting with wrapping objects and monuments.

The couple moved to New York in 1964 spending their first three years as illegal immigrants. When they disembarked from the SS France at the Port of New York, their onlypossessions were two mattresses and a Rietveld chair that Christo, a respectful admirer of the designer, had exchanged for one of his works.

They rented two floors of an abandoned 19th-century factory building at 48 Howard Street where they lived for 56 years, eventually buying the entire building that served as residence and workshop.

As well as surrounding 11 islands in Biscayne Bay in Miami with bright pink fabric and wrapping the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, the couple’s most spectacular achievement is considered to be covering the Reichstag in Berlin in aluminium fabric. They always refused sponsorship funding the giant installations by selling preparatory drawings.

In 1962, the pair set out plans to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which was due to happen last year but was postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped is set to be in situ for 16 days from 18 September 2021.

Matthias Koddenberg, who wrote two books on Christo and Jeanne-Claude, suggests most of the works in the couple’s private collection had more sentimental than monetary value.

“A large portion of the works stood as testaments to various friendships and encounters; each work was associated with an anecdote that was more precious to them than the work itself. Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring (himself a great admirer of Christo and Jeanne-Claude)… In their eyes, the prestigious names weren’t important, but the stories that tied the pair to each of them certainly were,” Koddenberg writes in the auction catalogue.