LONDON: The husband of a British-Iranian woman who has been detained for more than five years in Iran said Saturday that he is ending his hunger strike outside Britain’s Foreign Office after 21 days.
Richard Ratcliffe has been sleeping in a tent outside the Foreign Office’s main entrance in an effort to pressure the British government to secure the release of his wife and other detained British-Iranian nationals. He began his demonstration last month after his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, lost her latest appeal in Iran.
“We probably hoped we’d get a breakthrough doing this. We haven’t yet,” Ratcliffe said. “I didn’t want to go out in an ambulance. I want to walk out with my head held high.”
Ratcliffe said he had started to get pains in his feet overnight, and a discussion with a doctor persuaded him to end the hunger strike. He said he planned to go to a hospital to get checked and hopes to be able to eat something after that.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe served five years in prison after being taken into custody at Tehran’s airport in April 2016 and convicted of plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters and rights groups deny.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was employed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, and was arrested as she was returning home to Britain after visiting family. Rights groups accuse Iran of holding dual-nationals as bargaining chips for money or influence in negotiations with the West, something Tehran denies.
In May, she was sentenced to an additional year in prison on charges of spreading “propaganda against the system” for having participated in a protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009. An appeals court last month upheld the verdict, which includes a one-year travel ban, meaning she wouldn’t be able to leave Iran until 2023.
Her husband appeared glum after he met Thursday with British foreign minister James Cleverly in the wake of discussions he had with Iranian officials in London.
After describing his meeting with Cleverly as “depressing,” Ratcliffe said he was nearing the end of his hunger strike “as a strategy.”
Husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe ends 21-day hunger strike
https://arab.news/49tmz
Husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe ends 21-day hunger strike
- “We probably hoped we’d get a breakthrough doing this. We haven’t yet,” Ratcliffe said
- Ratcliffe said a discussion with a doctor persuaded him to end the hunger strike
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.
