Radical preacher Amritpal Singh's aide and kidnapping accused Lovepreet Singh 'Toofan' walked out of jail , a day after hundreds of protesters stormed a police station demanding his release.

Lovepreet Singh was released from the Amritsar Central Jail, hours after a court in Ajnala issued orders to discharge him from custody based on an application by the police.

Dubai-returned Amritpal Singh, who heads an organisation called 'Waris Punjab De', had talked to reporters at the police station, issuing an "ultimatum" for the release of Lovepreet Singh.

Amritpal Singh was recently anointed head of 'Waris Punjab De' organisation founded by actor and activist Deep Sidhu who died in a road accident in February last year.

Former President Pratibha Patil's husband Devisingh Shekhawat passed away at the age of 89  following a heart attack.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in India on Feb 25 on a two-day visit that is expected to further expand the overall bilateral relations in a number of key areas, including new technologies, clean energy and trade and investment.

Scholz will hold wide-ranging talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, covering the Ukraine conflict, the situation in the Indo-Pacific region and ways to boost bilateral ties.

It is Scholz's first visit to India after he became the German chancellor in December 2021 following Angela Merkel's historic 16-year tenure at the top post.

The two leaders are also expected to delve into the overall situation in the Indo-Pacific, a region that has witnessed growing Chinese assertiveness in the last few years.

Modi and Scholz held bilateral talks in the Indonesian resort city of Bali on November 16 last year on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

The first meeting between the two leaders took place during Modi's visit to Berlin on May 2 last year for the sixth India-Germany Inter-Governmental Consultations (IGC).

It was followed by Modi's visit to the Alpine castle of Schloss Elmau in southern Germany on June 26 and 27 to attend the annual summit of the G7 grouping.

Scholz invited Modi for the G7 summit under the German presidency.

The ties between India and Germany have been on an upswing in a range of key areas in the last few years.

CR Kesavan, the great grandson of India's first Governor General C Rajagopalachari has  resigned from the Congress party.

 In a letter to AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, he said that he has not seen any "vestiges of the values" that made him work for the party for the last two decades.

In the letter to the party's national president, he said that he had declined a national-level organisational responsibility and did not participate in the Bharat Jodo Yatra as he cannot stand with what the party presently symbolises.

C R Kesavan also said that he has resigned as a trustee from the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee Charitable Trust.

The Supreme Court on  Feb 23  directed a Delhi court to grant interim bail to senior Congress leader Pawan Khera, who was arrested by the Assam Police from the Delhi airport.

He was arrested over alleged remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the action coming soon after he was deplaned from a flight to Raipur where he was going to attend the party's plenary session.

Khera who apparently fumbled on the prime minister's father's name during a press conference moved the top court to seek relief in multiple FIRs against him in Assam as well as in the Uttar Pradesh towns of Varanasi and Lucknow.

The apex court issued notices to the states of Assam and Uttar Pradesh seeking their responses to Khera's plea.

The EU agreed to a new round of sanctions over Russia's war in Ukraine on Feb 24 , the one-year anniversary of Moscow's invasion, the bloc's Swedish presidency announced.

The package -- the 10th the EU has imposed since Russia's February 24, 2022 invasion -- contains, it said, "targeted restricted measures against individuals and entities supporting the war, spreading propaganda or delivering drones used by Russia in the war".

Final approval of the sanctions was expected  on Feb 26 if no EU country raises a last-ditch objection.

The details on the listed individuals and entities will then be published in the European Union's official gazette.

120 individuals and entities, and three more Russian banks, were listed.

The EU's measures echoed sanctions announced earlier on Feb 24  by the United States and by Britain, and came in the wake of a G7 statement that warned of penalties for any country abetting Russia in its war.

That proposed package promised to cut off industrial goods worth 11 billion euros ($12 billion) to Russia and target drone producers in Iran whose unmanned aircraft containing warheads Moscow has been using to attack Ukrainian targets.

Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen had said the goods put under sanctions for Russia would include electronics and machine parts that can be used in Russian drones, missiles, helicopters and other weapons systems.

She had said that seven Iranian entities providing dual-use products to Russia were also included in the commission sanctions proposal.

The EU has already imposed nine waves of unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, hitting key Russian exports like oil in a bid to cut Russian President Vladimir Putin's war chest.

The EU also agreed to a fresh round of sanctions, and along with contributions from Sweden and Portugal, Germany said it had managed to assemble a battalion of modern Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine.

The World Bank separately announced an extra $2.5 billion for Ukraine to support essential services and core government functions.

A Los Angeles judge on  Feb 22 sentenced the man convicted of gunning down Nipsey Hussle to 60 years to life in prison after hearing testaments to the immense cost of the killing of the hip-hop star and neighborhood leader, and of the lifetime of mental illness, abuse and struggle of the man who shot him.

Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jacke II handed down the sentence to Eric R. Holder Jr., 33, who was found guilty of the 2019 first-degree murder of the 33-year-old Grammy-nominated hip-hop artist outside the clothing store Hussle founded, the Marathon, in the South Los Angeles neighborhood where both men grew up in very similar circumstances.

Global anti-money laundering watchdog the Financial Action Task Force said  that it has suspended Russia's membership over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The FATF sets standards for more than 200 countries and jurisdictions and seeks to help authorities tackle serious crime including drug smuggling, human trafficking and terrorism.

It added that Russia was still accountable for implementing FATF's standards.

Following a five-day meeting in Paris, FATF added Nigeria and South Africa to its list of countries subject to increased monitoring, and removed Cambodia and Morocco from the category.

Russia has been expelled from the Council of Europe and suspended from the UN Human Rights Council, but is still a member of many international organisations.