Germany hosted the eleventh session of the ‘Petersberg Climate Dialogue’ which was the first virtual Climate dialogue to take place. The dialogue has been hosted by Germany since 2010 and provides a platform for informal high-level political dialogues which focus on climate negotiations and advancement of climate action on the international level. The conference saw the participation of around 30 countries. India was represented in the dialogue by the Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar.

Ajay Tirkey has been appointed as Secretary in the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Uma Balasubramaniam has authored a biography on “Sayajirao Gaekwad III” titled ‘Sayajirao Gaekwad III: The Maharaja of Baroda’.

Russia, the current chair of BRICS, chaired the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ video conference on April 28, 2020. Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov hosted the meeting, which was held to discuss the COVID-19 crisis, its impact on international relations and response of the BRICS nations.

India has lost the hosting rights of the men’s World boxing Championship scheduled to be held in 2021.

Technology Development Centre under MSME Ministry of the union government is engaged in preparing PPE kits and Masks for COVID-19 warriors.
The standard quality PPE kits and masks prepared at this centre are made available to the Corona warriors.
As of now more than 80,000 masks and more than 4,000 PPE kits have been prepared here.

Dept of Biotechnology’s Centre of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing at Mohali, has planned a few research projects.
Under the Drug discovery platform, the research will explore the separation of therapeutic and valuable medicinal components from the peel and seeds of fruits and utilization of natural garlic essential oil as an ACE 2 protein inhibitor for preventing SARS-CoV-2 invasion.

Indian middle distance runner Jhuma Khatun was banned for four years for using banned substances(Steroids) by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) of the World governing body for the doping case from 2018 in which the National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) failed to detect and later tested positive for dehydrochloromethyl testosterone in Montreal Laboratory in Canada.

The King George Medical University in Uttar Pradesh has become the first government hospital in the country to successfully launch the plasma therapy treatment for the COVID-19 patients.

The military spending of India grew by 6.8% to $71.1 billion in 2019. This was the highest military spending in South Asia.

With around 45 million likes on his personal page, PM Modi continues to be the most popular world leader on Facebook according to BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe).

The World Day for Safety and Health at Work 2020 was observed on April 28, 2020. The focus of the day this year is to focus on addressing the outbreak of infectious diseases at work amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Australia has informed that they have decided to cancel the three week long multi-national air combat training exercise Pitch Black 2020, to ensure compliance with COVID-19-related Government restrictions and to protect the personnel, their families and the community.
The exercise was scheduled to be held from July 27 to August 14, 2020.
The next edition of Pitch Black will be held in 2022.

A team of engineering students from IIT Bombay, NIT Srinagar and Islamic University of Science & Technology (IUST), Awantipora, Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir has come up with a low-cost ventilator using locally available materials.
It is named ‘Ruhdaar’ ventilator.
Ruhdaar provides necessary functionalities which can provide adequate breathing support.

HDFC (Housing Development Finance Corporation Ltd.)has acquired 6.43% stake in debttrapped Reliance Capital by invoking pledged shares. In this regard HDFC has acquired 25.27 crore shares of Rs 10 each i.e. the total value of these shares are Rs 252 crore.

The theme for 2020 World Veterinary Day is “Environmental protection for improving animal and human health.” The day is initiated by the World Veterinary Association (WVA).

Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), Hyderabad, has collaborated with Hyderabad-based integrated pharmaceutical company, LAXAI Life Sciences, to develop and manufacture Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and drug intermediates. The initiative may help to reduce the dependency of the Indian pharmaceutical sector on Chinese imports of these ingredients

The COVID19 Tools (act) Accelerator has been launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with Global Fund, UNITAID, CEPI, etc. The launch of the tool will help in accelerating the research and development of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccinations for COVID19. The objective is to make the treatment of COVID19 equally accessible for the rich and poor.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, YS Jaganmohan Reddy launched the ‘Jagananna Vidya Deevena’ Scheme on April 28, 2020 at Tedepalli, in Guntur District of the state. Under the scheme, Rs. 4000 crores have been released along with Rs. 1880 crore towards pending amount left by the earlier government

Nokia and Bharti Airtel has signed a deal of about $1 billion in order to enhance the network capacity of Bharti Airtel.

Veteran politician Devanand Konwar, who has served as Governor of several states including Bihar, West Bengal, Tripura, passed away. He was 77 years old.

He joined Indian National Congress in 1955 as a student leader and he had been cabinet minister in Hiteswar.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved USD 1.5 billion (about Rs 11,400 crore) loan to India on April 28, 2020, to help fund its fight against coronavirus pandemic.

Human trials of a vaccine, developed by the Oxford University, against the novel coronavirus began in the UK on 23 April 2020.
Scientists have given the vaccine an 80 per cent chance of success.
The UK government has pledged 20 million pounds to support the coronavirus vaccine trial programme.
The vaccine is made from a harmless chimpanzee virus.

The Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management- Kerala (IIITM-K) has developed an AI (Artificial Intelligence) semantic search engine “Vilokana” to enable researchers to get deeper insights into scientific studies and to find an early solution to the COVID-19 crisis.

The Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), Lucknow, researchers have developed scientifically proven two herbal products namely ‘CIM-Paushak’ and ‘Herbal Cough Syrup’ that can boost the immunity of the persons. The products will help to alleviate the dry cough symptom generally associated with the coronavirus infection.

Former doubles world number 1, Mathias Boe of Denmark, has announced retirement from international badminton at the age of 39, to end his 22 years of his illustrious career.

Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) has developed Chitra Magna, an innovative RNA extraction kit, innovative technology for isolating RNA from swabs for COVID-19 tests.

The Chemicals and Petrochemicals Industry became the top exporting sector of India for the first time as the chemical exports of India increased by 7 per cent to 2.68 lakh crore rupees which comprise 14.35 percent of the total exports during the period of April-January in the last fiscal(April 2019 to January 2020). The chemicals and petrochemicals industry was congratulated by the Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers DV Sadananda Gowda on becoming the top exporting sector of the country for the first time.

The Chief Minister Shri Shivraj Singh launched Jeevan-Shakti Yojana at Mantralaya. Under the scheme, women will prepare masks at homes in the urban areas and earn profit. The Government will give Rs. 11 per mask to them immediately.

Shri Chouhan stated that they will not only earn profit by preparing the masks but will also participate in a pious work. Masks will save people’s life and prevent the infection from spreading.

Shiv Das Meena has been appointed as chairman and MD of Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO).
He has been appointed for a period of 6 months with immediate effect.
He is presently holding the position of Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and simultaneously holding the additional charge of CMD, HUDCO.