BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un met in northeast China on Tuesday in an unannounced visit by the North Korean leader ahead of an expected summit with US President Donald Trump.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV showed Xi and Kim taking a seaside stroll in the northeastern city of Dalian and holding talks, while the official Xinhua news agency said the two leaders met on Monday and Tuesday.
It was Kim’s second visit to China since March, highlighting efforts by the Cold War-era allies to mend ties that have chilled as Beijing has supported UN sanctions over Pyongyang’s nuclear activities.
Beijing is keen to avoid being left out in the cold in the wake of Kim’s historic summit last month with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his planned meeting with Trump in June.
“After the first meeting between me and Comrade Chairman (Kim), both China-DPRK relations and the Korean peninsula situation have made positive progress. I feel happy about it,” Xi said, according to Xinhua.
For his part, Kim was quoted as saying: “These are the positive outcomes of the historic meeting between me and Comrade General Secretary (Xi).”
Japanese media had earlier shown images of an airplane normally used by North Korean VIPs flying out of Dalian, fueling speculation that Kim had been in town.
Xi Jinping and N. Korea’s Kim Jong Un met in China
Xi Jinping and N. Korea’s Kim Jong Un met in China
- This is Kim Jung Un's second visit to China since March
- Kim is due to meet with President Donald Trump this summer
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.
