The US Department of State has demanded that the Nicaraguan government release "all persons arbitrarily detained".

Former Chennai Police Commissioner S. George on Friday said he has not received any money from any gutkha manufacturer.

The US State Department has said special representative for North Korea issue, Stephen Biegun, will travel to the capital cities of South Korea, China and Japan on September 10-15 to discuss the denuclearization of North Korea. Biegun "will meet with his counterparts and continue diplomatic efforts to achieve the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea as agreed to by Chairman Kim in Singapore," the State Department said in a statement on Thursday, Xinhua reported. The current North Korea-US talks have been stuck in an impasse due to their differences in the scale of denuclearization, US sanctions, and whether to issue a war-ending declaration. The State Department said last month that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula shall happen before the US signs a war-ending declaration with North Korea; while North Korea has argued that such a document is the first step towards peace on the peninsula, whereas Washington has said it is too early to discuss the topic. US media reported earlier that the signing of a joint declaration to formally end the Korean War was one of the verbal agreements between US President Donald Trump and North Korea's top leader, Kim Jong-un, when they met on June 12 in Singapore. Kim told South Korea's envoy on Wednesday that he firmly supports and will be devoted to completely removing the danger of armed conflicts and the horrors of war from the Korean Peninsula and turning it into a cradle of peace without nuclear weapons and free from any nuclear threat. Trump tweeted later on Thursday in response, thanking Kim for making such a statement and noting that "we will get it done together," referring to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. At the conclusion of the historic Trump-Kim summit in June, the two sides issued a joint statement, in which they agreed to improve bilateral relations and work together to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the peninsula.

The CBI on Thursday said it has arrested four persons including the promoters and directors of Jayem Industries and officers of the Food Safety and Drug Administration and Excise Department in connection with the multi-crore gutkha scam in Tamil Nadu.

Bharatiya Janata Party MLA and Leader of the Opposition in Delhi, Vijender Gupta, on Wednesday accused the Delhi government of treating sports as a subsidiary of the Education Department and demanded an exclusive directorate for it.

Continuing its probe into the multi-crore gutkha scam, the CBI on Wednesday raided the residences of Tamil Nadu Health Minister C. Vijayabasker and Director General of Police (DGP) T.K. Rajendran and several others here and in some other cities including Mumbai and Bengaluru.

CBI officials from New Delhi on Wednesday searched the residences of several persons including Health and Family Welfare Minister C. Vijayabasker and Director General of Police (DGP) T.K. Rajendran in connection with a multi-crore gutkha scam.

Odisha Finance Minister Sashi Bhusan Behera on Wednesday presented in the state assembly a supplementary budget of Rs 12,790 crore for 2018-19.

China will be Jharkhand's partner country at the Food Processing Summit slated in November, visiting Chief Minister Raghubar Das said on Tuesday.

Russia's flag carrier Aeroflot will re-launch regular non-stop flights to Sri Lanka's capital Colombo from October 28, Sri Lankan government's information department said on Tuesday. The airline, which stopped flights to Colombo a decade ago, will re-introduce five weekly flights between Moscow and Colombo on the state-of-the-art Airbus A330 aircraft, Xinhua news agency reported. The nine-hour flights will boost inbound tourism from Russia to Sri Lanka and will also be a major boost for business travel to the island country, the information department said. It will also promote Colombo as a vital transit destination. In addition to Aeroflot, the information department said several other major foreign airlines have also expressed an interest in flying to Sri Lanka while many existing operators have added extra capacity via bigger aircraft.