TIRANA, Albania: Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama will travel to Washington next week to join the first meeting of US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” he told a podcast on Sunday.
“I will be in Washington for the official creation of the peace council and the launch of the activities of this council,” Rama said in an interview with Albanian podcast Flasim.
The board, of which Trump is the chairman, was originally intended to oversee the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip after two years of the Israel-Hamas war, but its charter appears to extend beyond the Palestinian territory.
The first meeting is scheduled to take place on February 19 in Washington.
Permanent members of the “Board of Peace” must pay $1 billion to join, leading to criticisms that the board could become a “pay-to-play” version of the UN Security Council.
Trump launched his “Board of Peace” at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, and at least 19 countries have signed its founding charter.
Some countries — including Croatia, France, Italy, New Zealand and Norway — have already declined to join it, and others have said they could only consider doing so if its charter were changed.
Rama has previously said his country would not pay to be permanent members of the initiative.
“Albania has the privilege of being a founding state, and it will not contribute financially to join or remain as a permanent member,” Rama said on Sunday.
Albanian PM says he will attend US ‘Board of Peace’ meeting
https://arab.news/826bh
Albanian PM says he will attend US ‘Board of Peace’ meeting
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.
