Suspected rebels kill 3 civilians in Kashmir

Assailants have separately shot and killed three men in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said, blaming the rebels fighting against the Indian rule in the disputed region for the string of attacks. In the first incident, police said rebels fired at a prominent chemist, Makhan Lal Bindroo, at his pharmacy in the region's main city of Srinagar late on Tuesday. Within an hour, a street food vendor, identified as Virendar Paswan from Bhagalpur district in India's eastern state of Bihar, was shot point-blank in another neighbourhood in Srinagar, killing him on the spot, police said. In the third incident on Tuesday night, gunmen fatally shot a taxi driver Muhammad Shafi in Bandipora district.

US has 3,750 nuke warheads

The US State Department published on Tuesday the number of nuclear warheads the country stockpiles for the first time in four years, after former president Donald Trump placed a blackout on the data. As of September 30, 2020, the US military maintained 3,750 active and inactive nuclear warheads, down by 55 from a year earlier and by 72 from the same date in 2017. According to a January 2021 tally by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,  the United States had 5,550 warheads, compared to 6,255 in Russia, 350 in China, 225 in Britain, and 290 in France. India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea have together around 460 nuclear warheads, according to the institute.

Australia, PNG to end asylum seeker offshore processing

A longstanding deal that saw Australia detain asylum seekers in an offshore camp in Papua New Guinea will be scrapped, the two countries announced yesterday. Under Australia's hardline immigration policies, migrants attempting to reach the country by boat have for years been sent to detention centres on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and the Pacific nation of Nauru. Yesterday, Australia and PNG announced their so-called "regional resettlement arrangement" would officially end on December 31. But it does not spell an end to Canberra's much-criticised approach to migrants who arrive by sea, after Nauru last month committed to continuing to accept Australia's asylum seekers.

Russia sees record Covid deaths

Russia reported a record high number of daily coronavirus deaths yesterday as the country struggles with stubbornly high infection rates and regions beyond Moscow cautiously bring back pandemic restrictions. A government tally recorded 929 Covid-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, Russia's highest daily virus death toll since the outbreak of the pandemic. As of Wednesday, just under 30 percent of Russia's 146 million population had been fully vaccinated. Authorities said earlier this week that death rates were high among unvaccinated Russians.