News in Short

• India claimed the top spot in the ICC men’s T20 International Team Rankings, riding on their 3-0 series sweep over the West Indies at home.
• India eased to a 17-run victory over the West Indies in the third and final T20 of the series in Kolkata and in the process, clinched an emphatic 3-0 clean sweep.
• While England and India both have the same rating across 39 international matches in the rankings period (269), India has a total of 10,484 points, 10 more than England’s 10,474.

• The Bundesbank said the latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic risked pushing the German economy into a technical recession before staging a recovery from the second quarter.
• After gross domestic product shrank by 0.7 percent in the last quarter of 2021, overall economic output could again sink noticeably in the first quarter of 2022, before picking up speed again in the spring.
• Pandemic restrictions were mostly to blame for the drop. A recession is technically defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

• The government of the Dominican Republic has begun building a wall along its border with Haiti in an effort to stop irregular migration as well as the smuggling of weapons, drugs and goods.
• The wall will eventually cover almost half of the 392-kilometre (244-mile) border with Haiti, its only land neighbour.
• Amid a rise in gang violence and political deadlock over the holding of elections, many Haitians have been crossing the border into the Dominican Republic without documentation in search of work in agriculture or in the construction industry.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as independent and ordered the Russian army to enter.
• Putinsigned a decree recognising the independence of the two Ukrainian breakaway regions – the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic.
• The US says that Russia has massed over 1,50,000 troops in the region, including the separatists in the breakaway regions, and could invade within days.

• JalanKalrock consortium, the promoters of Jet Airways, have appointed VipulaGunatilleka as the chief financial officer (CFO) of the airline.
• Prior to joining SriLankan Airlines, Mr Gunatilleka was the CFO and board member of TAAG Angola Airlines from November 2015 to July 2018 under Emirates Management.
• Mr Gunatilleka is known for his astute knowledge in aircraft financing, strategic planning, cost-efficient business modelling and openness to adopt hybrid models to keep business costs low and efficiency high.