Notes:
The State of Global Air 2020 (SOGA 2020) report was released by US-based Health Effects Institute and Global Burden of Disease (GBD).
As per the report, India recorded the highest annual average PM 2.5 concentration exposure in the world last year. People in India are exposed to the highest PM 2.5 concentrations globally and the country has been recording an increase in PM 2.5 pollution since 2010.

Notes:
The United States government has recently announced that it would sell USD 1 billion worth of advanced air-to-ground missiles to Taiwan.
This move has occurred at the time when Taiwan is strengthening its Defence force against the threat from China. US had agreed to sell 135 of the AGM-84H SLAM-ER missiles, air-launched cruise missiles and related equipment.

Notes:
Chief of Army Staff General M M Naravane has commissioned the Anti-Submarine Warfare stealth corvette INS Kavaratti into the Indian Navy.
INS Kavaratti is the last of the four indigenously- built ASW stealth corvettes under Project 28. It has been designed by the Directorate of Naval Design, the in-house wing of Indian Navy. The ship has completed sea trials of all the systems fitted onboard.

Notes:
Tamil Nadu state government has started implementing the Smart Black Board scheme in 80,000 government schools.
Under the Smart Black Board scheme, audio visual teaching material is used that can be fed into the computer screens using pen drives. This project is expected to ensure better teaching environment.

Notes:
A team of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur has developed a low-cost Covid-19 test unit named ‘COVIRAP’.
It is a portable unit for rapid diagnostics of coronavirus and produces results in less than an hour. It involves accurate molecular diagnostic procedure and costs only around Rs 500 per test. The team also developed a mobile application for finding the results.