India has handed over to Kenya 100 nautical charts covering the general coastal area around the Lamu Archipelago, following a joint survey of the area by the Navies of the two countries.

About:

• A joint survey of the coastal area around the Lamu Archipelago near Northern Kenya.
• The survey was carried out under the aegis of the National Hydrography Office that functions under the Indian Navy at a total cost of about US$ 1.8 Million.
• India has also been providing capacity building assistance to the hydrographers from Kenya.

What are nautical charts?

• A nautical chart is a map that depicts the configuration of the shoreline and seafloor.
• It provides water depths, locations of dangers to navigation, locations and characteristics of aids to navigation, anchorages, and other features.

Recently, Myanmar’s junta announced the extension of the country’s state of emergency by another six months.

• ‘Coup’ is generally described as a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.
• In the November 2020 parliamentary election, Suu Kyi’s party National League for Democracy (NLD) secured the majority of the seats.
• In Myanmar’s Parliament, the military holds 25% of the total seats according to the 2008 military-drafted constitution and several key ministerial positions are also reserved for military appointees. When the newly elected Myanmar lawmakers were to hold the first session of Parliament in 2021, the military imposed a state of emergency for one year citing massive voting fraud in the parliamentary elections.

Why in News ?

• Armenia appealed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to order Azerbaijan to dissolve the road blockade isolating Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh is within Azerbaijan but had been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces since 1994 when a separatist war ended.
• The conflict can be traced back to the pre-Soviet era when the region was at the meeting point of Ottoman, Russian and the Persian empires.
• The self-declaration of independence by Nagorno-Karabakh in September 1991 in the backdrop of an imminent collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) resulted in a war between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh — supported by Armenia.

National Security Advisor of India and his American counterpart to launch the US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET).

• The US-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) is a platform to accelerate strategic convergence and policy alignment.
• iCET aims to elevate and expand the strategic technology partnership and defence industrial cooperation between the 2 countries.
• This initiative was unveiled by President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the 2022 Quad Leaders’ Summit in Tokyo.
• The iCET will be spearheaded by the National Security Council of both the United States and India.
• The iCET is expected to remove barriers in technology transfers and co-production in the areas of critical and emerging technologies

The next iCET meeting will take place in New Delhi in late 2023.

• They also signed a new Implementation Arrangement for a Research Agency Partnership between the National Science Foundation and Indian science agencies.
• It helps to expand collaboration in a wide range of areas and to build a robust innovation ecosystem between the 2 countries.