KUALA LUMPUR: Eleven foreign workers were killed in a landslide at a construction site in northwest Malaysia on Saturday, authorities said.
Earlier estimates had put the George Town death toll at 14, but three workers had managed to escape, said Ervin Galen Teruki, deputy operations head of the Fire and Rescue Department in Penang state.
A seventh body was found on Sunday morning.
Fire officials earlier identified the victims as foreign workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Pakistan. The construction site supervisor, a Malaysian, remains missing.
The landslide occurred on Saturday morning at a site where two 49-story condominium towers are being built. The cause has yet to be determined.
A stop-work order had been issued for the development, pending investigations, according to the Penang Island city council mayor Maimunah Mohammad Sharif.
Several residential and commercial towers are still under construction in the area.
Local media reported anger among residents and activists, some of who said they had previously protested against the increasing development of hillslopes around the area.
Death toll from Malaysia construction site landslide at 11
Death toll from Malaysia construction site landslide at 11
India plans AI ‘data city’ on staggering scale
- ‘The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius’
NEW DELHI: As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says.
“The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, which is positioning the city of Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of India’s AI push.
“And as a nation ... we have taken a stand that we’ve got to embrace it,” he said ahead of an international AI summit next week in New Delhi.
Lokesh boasts the state has secured investment agreements of $175 billion involving 760 projects, including a $15 billion investment by Google for its largest AI infrastructure hub outside the United States.
And a joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield and US firm Digital Realty is investing $11 billion to develop an AI data center in the same city.
Visakhapatnam — home to around two million people and popularly known as “Vizag” — is better known for its cricket ground that hosts international matches than cutting-edge technology.
But the southeastern port city is now being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.
“The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius,” Lokesh said. For comparison, Taiwan is roughly 100 kilometers wide.
Lokesh said the plan goes far beyond data connectivity, adding that his state had “received close to 25 percent of all foreign direct investments” to India in 2025.
“It’s not just about the data centers,” he explained while outlining a sweeping vision of change, with Andhra Pradesh offering land at one US cent per acre for major investors.
