** Winning bells: Bengaluru’s short play festival announces prizes

The ‘best actor’ award was bagged by Viveka for the play Sikdaurga Seerunde, while Vedika won the ‘best actor–female’ for Hannondane Deepavali, staged by ShuddiRanga group. According to Hanu Ramasanjeeva, artistic director of the Bengaluru Short Play Festival, the event aimed to bring new writers to the limelight. “The objective was to bring new writers and new stories. Usually, we find very similar plots and run-of-mill storylines. This event definitely gave scope to the new writers I believe.”

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** Kodagu girl wins the UN H2021 Water Summit storytelling competition

During the lockdown situation, when the world took the virtual path, Yashmi was introduced to the UN Ocean Decade Summit and she took part in the virtual programs conducted by the initiative.

“The earth is already in a bad state and it will be inherited by us tomorrow. We want to breathe the same pristine air that our grandparents breathed,” shared Manavattira Yashmi Dechamma, a ninth-grade student who has been selected for the UN Ocean Decade Summit to be hosted in Hawaii soon.

** This multi-lingual bot is transforming digital banking in rural India

Bengaluru-based voice automation company, Vernacular.ai’s AI voice assistant VIVA, which understands 16 languages and more than 160 dialects, is being implemented across banks in rural India.

The dream of building a startup took Sourabh Gupta and Akshay Deshraj, IIT-Roorkee alumni, to Bengaluru.

** Mount Carmel College to give new look to five govt schools

Mount Carmel College (MCC), Autonomous, will revamp five government schools under the State Government’s Akshara Project, where institute’s and entities adopt and develop government schools.

In January, MCC adopted government schools at MSR Palya, Gedhanahalli, OPH Road, Jeevanahalli and Ramaswamipalya that run classes from classes one to seven.

** Swadeshi HANSA-NG trainer aircraft with advanced features rolled out in Bengaluru

CSIR National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) rolled out its HANSA-NG (Next Generation) aircraft on Wednesday at the aircraft hangar at the Belur campus. Shekar C Mande, DG CSIR, held the ceremonial rolling out with R Madhavan, Chairman and Managing, HAL