Armenia and the United States have begun joint military exercises that have angered Moscow and come as tensions rise between Yerevan and neighboring Azerbaijan over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region. A court in Moscow has extended the pretrial detention of Igor Girkin, once a leader of Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine's east, who was arrested in July and charged with public calls for extremism after criticizing President Vladimir Putin for “badly” handling the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Those bodies are allowed to function as usual, while the third association, the Islamic Student Association of Kerman Medical University, has had its operations curtailed