hISTORY eNDS EVERYWHERE:

In a historic election upset in a country that has been governed by just one coalition for decades, a Malaysian opposition bloc led by the 92-year-old former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad swept to a majority in national parliamentary elections.

Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in government funds, gave an emotional national address on Thursday, saying that he would "accept the verdict of the people."

But the election's result has not yet been settled. The country's king must now rule on who will be the next prime minister, as the loose coalition of opposition parties led by Mr. Mahathir is not officially recognized as a single political entity.

If whirlwind events of the past month are any guide, Armenia might never get back to its old ways, civilized or not. On Tuesday, Mr. Pashinyan became Armenia's interim prime minister, when a Parliament dominated by his political foes elected him by a 59-to-42 vote.

After vowing to remake the country's political and economic systems, Mr. Pashinyan told a cheering throng in the central Republic Square in Yerevan, the capital, that, "Your victory is not that I was elected as prime minister of Armenia; your victory is that you decided who should be prime minister of Armenia."

Tens of thousands had gathered in the square, cheering wildly and waving the country's red, blue and orange flag as the vote was broadcast live on giant monitors.

On March 31, Mr. Pashinyan, 42, a balding man with a salt-and-pepper beard and slight paunch, began a quixotic walk across central Armenia to protest an effort by the president to skirt term limits.

Few paid much attention at first. Yet within three weeks, Mr. Pashinyan, a former newspaper editor and political prisoner, had galvanized a civil disobedience movement that transformed the country's political landscape. It forced the retirement of Serzh Sargsyan, the president for the past decade, and shoved aside the long-dominant Republican Party.

It was the most sweeping change in this small, landlocked country of about 2.8 million people in the southern Caucasus since it declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

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