Belgium have been crowned FIFA 'Team of the Year' for the second successive time after a record-breaking year for the global ladder.

The team, known as the Red Devils, had held on to top spot in a December table barely impacted by just 19 friendlies toward the end of a year in which 1,082 international "A" matches have been played - an all-time high since the ranking''s 1993 inception.

World champions France remains in the second place ahead of Brazil in third, the positions they held in December 2018, but the make-up of the year-end top five has changed, said FIFA in a statement.

England climbed one place in 2019 to end the year in fourth, and Uruguay moved up to fifth on the back of a two-spot rise.

Argentina (9th) and Colombia (10th) are also in the top 10 at the expense of Switzerland (12th) and Denmark (16th), who have slipped four and six places respectively over the year. China dropped one place to 76th.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Indian government on Friday signed a $490 million loan for public-private partnership (PPP) project to upgrade about 1,600 km of state highways and major district roads (MDRs) from single-lane to two-lane widths in Madhya Pradesh. An additional $286 million investment will be mobilised through private sector participation under the PPP modality.

The signatories to the loan agreement were Sameer Kumar Khare, Additional Secretary (Fund Bank and ADB), Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, and Kenichi Yokoyama, Country Director of ADB’s India Resident Mission. After signing the loan agreement, Khare said that state highways and major district roads provide a crucial link between rural roads and national highways. The upgradation of these roads under the project will improve rural and peri-urban connectivity in the state and improve access to markets and better services.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced the names of the newly discovered stars and planets, where the name "Sharjah" was chosen for a star with "Barjeel" being the name of one of its planets.

The announcement was made yesterday during a press conference of the IAU in the French capital, Paris, celebrating the centennial of the union. During the announcement, the organisers lauded the efforts and contributions of the Emirate of Sharjah to the global scientific community.

Retired high court judge CV Ramulu will be Telangana Lokayukta and V Niranjan Rao will be the Upa-Lokayukta. Retired HC judge G Chandraiah will be the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) chairman.

The State government issued orders appointing them on Thursday. Earlier in the day, the selection committees of the Lokayukta and SHRC met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. The selection committees headed by the CM held a brief meeting and finalised the names. Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan gave her assent to the appointments.

Selection committee members, including Telangana State Legislative Council chairman Gutta Sukhender Reddy, Legislative Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, and Opposition leaders in the Assembly and Council Pasha Quadri and Jaffrey attended the meeting.

Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Costa has announced that in order to help perpetuate Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals, Portugal will be launching a Gandhi Citizenship Education Prize, each year inspired by his different thoughts and quotes.

 He said, the first edition of this prize will be dedicated to animal welfare as Mahatma Gandhi said that the greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Mr. Antonio Costa was addressing the second meeting of the National Committee for Commemoration of the 150th Birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi at Rashtrapati Bhavan yesterday. He said, Mahatma Gandhi’s message of tolerance and love was revolutionary in his time, and in many parts of the world it is still revolutionary today.

An upgraded version of India's indigenously developed Pinaka guided rocket system was successfully test-fired from a base on Odisha coast today in a boost to the Army's artillery power, defence sources said.

The multi-barrel rocket launch system, developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation or DRDO, was fired from the Proof and Experimental Establishment firing test range at Chandipur near Balasore at around noon, they said.

The weapon system, mounted on a Tatra truck, is equipped with state-of-the-art guidance kit comprising an advanced navigation and control system, DRDO sources told news agency Press Trust of India.

The presiding officers of all state legislatures are participating in the two-day conference. Among the items on the agenda is the 'Tenth Schedule to the Constitution and the role of the Speaker'.

Addressing the conference Birla said people of India are very democratic in nature, it was evident as 2019 elections were held with total transparency.

He also shared his experience as a Lok Sabha Speaker and said that effort are put up to follow the parliamentary norms at all costs.

He further said that despite consent or disagreement in Parliament, the aim is to run democracy properly under parliamentary rules.

Speaker also said that zero hour is an important aspect in functioning of parliament. 

India opener Smriti Mandhana was on Tuesday named in both the International Cricket Council’s ODI and T20 teams of year. Mandhana has Jhulan Goswami, Poonam Yadav and Shikha Pandey for company in the ODI team of the year and all-rounder Deepti Sharma in the T20 side. The 23-year-old Mandhana hasd played 51 ODIs and 66 T20Is for India, besides a couple of Test matches.

She has combined tally of 3476 runs in T20Is and ODIs.

Australia’s Alyssa Healy was chosen as the T20 cricketer of the year following her record-breaking 148 against Sri Lanka earlier this year.

The ODI cricketer of the year honour went to Australia’s Ellyse Perry, who scored 441 runs at an average of 73.50 and took 21 wickets at 13.52.

Infosys on Wednesday announced the launch of three blockchain-powered distributed applications for government services, insurance, and supply chain management domains.

“These comprehensive applications designed as ready-to-subscribe business networks ensure quick deployment, interoperability across disparate systems of value chain stakeholders and a wide variety of use cases involving other digital technologies like IoT, Analytics as well,” it said.

They are equipped with predictive return on investment (ROI) analytics for business investments that can be tailored to meet numerous industry-specific needs, the Bengaluru-headquartered IT services major said in a statement.

Bank Ltd on Thursday crossed the $100 billion market capitalisation, becoming only the third firm in the country to achieve this milestone.

The lender is now in the league of Reliance Industries Ltd, which has a market cap of $140.74 billion, and Tata Consultancy Services that has a market cap of $114.60 billion.

With this, HDFC Bank now ranks 110th in the world’s most valued companies. According to Bloomberg data, currently, there are 109 companies in the list which have market cap of over $100 billion.