Inaugural iCET dialogue has potential to take India-US relationship to next level

Inaugural iCET dialogue has potential to take India-US relationship to next level

• The first high-level dialogue on the Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his American counterpart Jake Sullivan can be a "strategic enabler" and has the potential to take the India-US ties to the next level, according to experts.
• Doval and Sullivan are scheduled to meet at the White House on Tuesday along with their respective high-powered delegations for the inaugural iCET dialogue.
• The iCET was first mentioned in a joint statement after the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden in Tokyo in May 2022.

China’s Sichuan to scrap three child limits

• Southwest China’s Sichuan province will lift its three-child birth limit and remove restrictions on single parents as the world’s most populous nation faces a looming demographic crisis. 
• China’s population shrank last year for the first time in more than six decades, official data released this month showed, and the nation of 1.4 billion has seen birth rates plunge to record lows as its workforce ages.
• China ended its strict “one child policy” – imposed in the 1980s out offears of overpopulation – in2016 and began allowing couples to have three children in 2021. But that has failed to reverse the demographic decline.
• Faced with falling birth rates, authorities in Sichuan said they would remove the limit on the number of children a family can have andlift a ban on single women registering a birth. 
• The Sichuan Provincial Health Commission said the new rules would take effect on February 15.