Delhi Metro Commuters Can Now Recharge Smart Cards via SMS

Delhi Metro commuters, who have an account with ICICI bank with a registered mobile number, can now top-up their Delhi Metro smart cards by sending an SMS.

"The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation today launched the top up facility of Metro smart cards. With this new facility, the commuters will now be able to top up their smart cards by sending an SMS to 9222208888," said DMRC Executive Director (corporate communications) Anuj Dayal.

The recharge through SMS, however, can only be done by passengers who have an account with ICICI bank with their mobile number registered with the account. To avail the facility, the passenger needs to send the SMS in the format: . The card engraved ID is written on the backside of the smart card, and the maximum permissible amount currently is Rs. 1,000.

Once the SMS is processed, the passenger will get a confirmatory message from ICICI bank. After this, the passenger will need to go to one of the 71 Delhi Metro stations, and insert the smart card at an add value machine (AVM) installed near a customer care centre in order to complete the add value process. Till date, a total of 147 AVMs are installed at the 71 Delhi Metro stations, which includes 14 stations of Line-1, 15 stations of Line-2, 33 stations of Line-3/4, three stations of Line-5 and six stations of Line-6.

Google Quadruples Turing Award for Computing to $1 Million

Prize money for the prestigious Turing Award for brilliance in the computing industry has quadrupled to $1 million (roughly Rs. 6 crores) after a cash injection from Google, organizers said Thursday.

The Association for Computing Machinery said the payout for the honour would place the Turing Award roughly on a par with a Nobel Prize.The jump in the amount of the prize reflects the effect computing innovations have had on people's lives and is meant to spotlight scientists and engineers behind important advances, the ACM said in a statement.

"The Turing Award is now funded at the monetary level of the world's most prestigious cultural and scientific awards and prizes," said ACM President Alexander Wolf, a professor in the department of computing at Imperial College London.

"With the generous support of Google, we can celebrate the mainstream role of computing in transforming the world and the way we communicate, conduct business, and access entertainment."

The award was created in 1966 and named for Alan Turing, the British mathematician whose work is widely held to have influenced computers, robotics, cryptology, artificial intelligence and more. A film chronicling Turing's turbulent life and times "The Imitation Game" is due for release later this year and is tipped to figure among contenders at next year's Oscars. Winners of the Turing Award tend to be scientists or mathematicians whose names are not widely known but whose pioneering accomplishments underpin computing innovations that now touch on many aspects of modern life.

"We think it's important to recognize when people make fundamental contributions in computer science, and we want to help ACM raise awareness of these innovators and the contributions they've made to the world," Said Google vice president of engineering Stuart Feldman.

The 2014 Turing Award will be the first raised from $250,000 (roughly Rs. 1.53 crores) to a million dollars, and it will be awarded at an event early next year.

For a time Google and Intel funded the award, but Intel has since stopped contributing to the prize money.

Networked Guns Are A Smarter Attempt To Keep Cops In Check

It seems insane that it's taken this long to get here, but at long last, people are finally using the myriad tech at our disposal to hold cops accountable for their actions. Most recently, its a simple, relatively tiny chip being put in guns to one massively important job-telling headquarters every time a police officer fires a weapon. And its for our protection just as much as their own.

Specifically, it's the police departments in Santa Cruz, California and Carrollton, Texas that will be testing out a new type of networked gun from California company Yardarm, part of a solution to what's become an alarmingly lax attitude tpwords tracking cops' firearm usage. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, while no comprehensive database of police shootings exist, some police agencies do self-report-750 out of 17,000 total agencies, to be exact. And while the self-reported number of "justifiable homicides" is about 400, academics and other journalistic agencies claim that number to be over 1,000.

As D. Brian Burghart, editor and publisher of the Reno News & Review and the only person purportedly attempting to track police shootings, told the Washington Post:

Don't you find it spookey? This is information, this is the government's job. One of the government's major jobs is to protect us. How can it protect us if it doesn't know what the best practices are? If it doesn't know if one local department is killing people at a higher rate than others? When it can't make decisions based on real numbers to come up with best practices? That to me is an abdication of responsibilities.

The World's First Glow-In-The-Dark Bike Path Is A Ghostly Green

At 8PM last night, cyclists in the Dutch town of Nuenen were finally able to ride on a bike path that's been in the making for months. What took so long? This particular bike path represents the product of a collaboration between a designer and a construction company who want to build smarter, more efficient roads. Like this one, which glows.

The Van Gogh-Roosegaarde bike path (Nuenen is the hometown of Van Gogh and the city commissioned the path as a tribute) is coated in light-emitting paint and embedded with small, mosaic-like LEDs that suck power from a nearby solar array. Charging all day, the path glows nearly all night. When it goes out-or when clouds prevent the array from charging-an auxiliary power can feed it light.

"I wanted to create a place that people will experience in a special way, the technical combined with experience, that's what techno-poetry means to me," says the path's designer, the Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde. Roosegaarde worked with a infrastructure and construction company called Heijmans on the project-it's a smaller, more whimsical version of the "smart highways" the group is working to develop around the Netherlands. It's been two years since the project got underway, so it's nice to see some of it coming to fruition, at least in the prototype phase: A few weeks ago, the group unveiled their first smart highway,which is lined with paint that absorbs light during the day and emits it at night. 

The World's First Glow-In-The-Dark Bike Path Is A Ghostly Green

At 8PM last night, cyclists in the Dutch town of Nuenen were finally able to ride on a bike path that's been in the making for months. What took so long? This particular bike path represents the product of a collaboration between a designer and a construction company who want to build smarter, more efficient roads. Like this one, which glows.

The Van Gogh-Roosegaarde bike path (Nuenen is the hometown of Van Gogh and the city commissioned the path as a tribute) is coated in light-emitting paint and embedded with small, mosaic-like LEDs that suck power from a nearby solar array. Charging all day, the path glows nearly all night. When it goes out-or when clouds prevent the array from charging-an auxiliary power can feed it light.

"I wanted to create a place that people will experience in a special way, the technical combined with experience, that's what techno-poetry means to me," says the path's designer, the Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde. Roosegaarde worked with a infrastructure and construction company called Heijmans on the project-it's a smaller, more whimsical version of the "smart highways" the group is working to develop around the Netherlands. It's been two years since the project got underway, so it's nice to see some of it coming to fruition, at least in the prototype phase: A few weeks ago, the group unveiled their first smart highway,which is lined with paint that absorbs light during the day and emits it at night. 

Secret U.S. Spy Program Targeted Cell Phones

The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.

Planes are equipped with devices—some known as “dirtboxes” to law-enforcement officials because of the initials of the  BoeingCo. unit that produces them—which mimic cell towers of large telecommunications firms and trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information. The technology in the two-foot-square device enables investigators to scoop data from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight, collecting their identifying information and general location, these people said.

People with knowledge of the program wouldn’t discuss the frequency or duration of such flights, but said they take place on a regular basis. A Justice Department official would neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a program. The official said discussion of such matters would allow criminal suspects or foreign powers to determine U.S. surveillance capabilities. Justice Department agencies comply with federal law, including by seeking court approval, the official said.

Press image of the LG Cookie Smart leaks online

With the world swooning over smartphones and the dropping prices, there is a segment of mobile phones that caters to an audience that wants a phone without all the hype and hoopla that comes with smartphones. In turn, this segment of mobile phones which are called feature phones are usually priced a lot lower that their smartphone counterparts. Understanding the sentiment of this audience and their probable budget constraints, LG had showcased a couple of feature phones at MWC 2012. One of these handsets was the LG T375. After the announcement, things had gotten rather quiet regarding the feature phone, that is until now, when website NieuweMobiel has unearthed a press shot of this handset.

The next LG Cookie As per the report, this handset comes equipped with a 3.2-inch display and sports a resolution of 240 x 320. There is not much information on what the specifications of this handset behold but the website states that it supports Wi-Fi, dual-SIM capabilities, a 2 megapixel camera and is light in weight at just 96g. Along with the above mentioned specifications, the LG Cookie Smart T375 is also expected to come equipped with GSM and EDGE connectivity. The feature phone will also have widgets for popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allowing one to put the Internet feature on this handset to its full potential. The handset will also feature Push email and will come equipped with a slot for a MicroSD card allowing one to add additional media or data files if required.

Just to reiterate our above statement, though the handset is named Cookie Smart, this is not a smartphone but a feature phone designed for those on a strict budget.

OnePlus One smartphone coming to India in the next two months

OnePlus One smartphone is all set to launch in India in the next two months, according to company sources and reports indicate that the price of the smartphone could be under Rs 25,000.

The Chinese brand OnePlus refers to its OnePlus One phone as the ‘flagship killer’. We had previously reported that the company had begun looking for a General Manager for its India operations and had put up a listing for the same on the company’s careers page.

The posting had read like this: “You will be the sun, the light that leads OnePlus into the Indian market; the center of orbit for all projects, operations, and service; the ambassador that spreads the OnePlus brand across India like a wildfire. This position requires authority, leadership, and resolve when things get rough. We need you to weather the storm with us.” As far as features of the OnePlus One phone go, it has a large 5.5-inch LTPS IPS display with 1080×1920 pixel resolution and offers a pixel density of 401ppi.

The display comes with Gorilla Glass 3 protection and the same adaptive backlight technology that’s seen in some Sharp displays. In addition, the phone is one of the few to have 3GB of RAM and is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC with a quad-core processor clocked at 2.5GHz with Adreno 330 GPU.

There’s a a 13-megapixel rear IMX214 sensor with a six-lens array and f/2.0 aperture that boasts quick shutter speed of only 0.3-seconds. It also comes with a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. There’s no microSD card slot in the phone, and the phone only comes in 16 or 64 GB on-board storage. Connectivity includes: 4G LTE (region dependent), Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC functionality. The battery is rated at 3,100mAh and is non-removable.

From video to direct messaging: Twitter is all set to get some serious updates

Twitter will be getting some major updates in the coming year, including the ability to natively record and share videos from within the app version of the site. According to an official blog post by Kevin Well , the Vice-President of Product at Twitter, the company showcased this plan at its Analyst Day conference and they’ve chosen to share some details with users as well.

For starters, one big change that Weil mentions is that Twitter users will soon “be able to record, edit and share your own videos natively on Twitter too.” This feature is expected within the first half of 2015.

Weill also wrote about Twitter’s plans to ensure that users see more relevant tweets on their feed. He wrote, “…there’s no way even the most avid Twitter user will find everything that’s relevant to their interests in any particular moment. That’s why we’re exploring ways to surface relevant Tweets so the content that is interesting to you is easy to discover – whether you stay on Twitter all day or visit for a few minutes – while still preserving the real-time nature of the platform…”

How does Twitter plan to give users more relevant content? One way that Weil mentions is by giving users “a snapshot of what’s happening,” rather than a barrage of tweets, which might just be all saying the same thing. Also Twitter plans “to use information on who you follow and what you engage with to surface highlights content” around that particular kind of engagement. Twitter is also working on “an instant, personalised timeline for new users who don’t want to spend time cultivating one on their own.”

US government warns on bug in Apple’s iOS software

The US government warned iPhone and iPad users on Thursday to be on the alert for hackers who may exploit a vulnerability in Apple’s iOS operating system that would enable them to steal sensitive data.

There was the potential for hacks using a newly identified technique known as the “Masque Attack,” the government said in an online bulletin from the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Teams.The network security company, FireEye, disclosed the vulnerability behind the “Masque Attack” earlier this week, saying it had been exploited to launch a campaign dubbed “WireLurker” and that more attacks could follow.

Hackers could potentially steal login credentials, access sensitive data stored on iOS devices and remotely monitor activity on those devices, the government said. Such attacks could be avoided if iPad and iPhone users only installed apps from Apple’s App Store or from their own organizations, it said.

Users should not click “Install” from pop-ups when surfing the web. If iOS flashes a warning that says “Untrusted App Developer,” users should click on “Don’t Trust” and immediately uninstall the app, the bulletin said.

OnePlus One (64GB) review: Flagship killer or not, at Rs 25,000 you cannot go wrong with this!

Mobile phones have become a commodity in the current scenario. Every other day you hear about a new phone launch, a new phone maker in town and more. Barring the regular titans such as Samsung, Apple, Sony and HTC, few amongst the newest handset makers manage to generate a global buzz. Xiaomi, with its economically priced offerings in the form of the Mi3 and the RedMi 1S, vowed the Indian audience where most of its flash sales were sold out within seconds.

Another Chinese player that has garnered a lot of attention this year is OnePlus. Phone makers may take potshots at their rivals, come up with hilarious advertisements and so on. But OnePlus goes one step further as it adopts the tagline – 2014 Flagship Killer, Never Settle. That’s an ambitious tagline if there ever was one.

Obviously, just the selling method isn’t the only reason behind the buzz. OnePlus One comes with top end specifications at an affordable price point and it comes with the Cyanogen Mod ROM of Android. A pre-rooted phone with flagship specs and an affordable price point – any Android geeks fantasy. So let us check out if the OnePlus One delivers on the ‘Flagship Killer’ buzz or is it just another phablet.

Google Hangouts lets you make free international calls for a minute

Google has announced that the first minute of voice calls through Hangouts will be free in 25 countries.

Earlier reports had suggested Google may shut down Google Voice and integrate it into Hangouts.  Google’s Hangouts app for desktops and mobile will allowed users to instant message, make free domestic voice calls, video chat and calls to phone numbers (including free calls to US and Canada) using an internet connection.

However, you shall need to have some calling credit in your Google account to get your first minute free, as you’ll be charged for the duration of your call beyond that first minute. Google also says that this free quick call offering will be available for the rest of the year. Android users can try the Hangout Dailer app on their device.

The 25 countries where the new Hangouts feature is accessible include Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, U.K. and the U.S.

Google Hangouts is available for download for Andriod, iOS and your Desktop.

Facebook introduces new ‘Mentions’ app, but it’s only for famous people

Facebook has announced a new app called ‘Mentions’ for iOS users. Although anyone can download it, only Facebook-recognised/verified celebrities can use it. Basically, it is aimed at helping celebrities manage their public figure pages on the social network.

“If you get to use Mentions — which would mean that you are a “verified public figure,” someone with one of those blue check marks next to your name, with a “public page,” one of those pages that people can read but not comment on,” said a report on Re/code. The whole deal is to make it simpler for people with verified pages to manage their Facebook account by viewing posts that mention them. It will also help these people to respond more quickly and easily via the dedicated app. 

Facebook Mentions also shows a timeline of posts that reference the particular user. This timeline is also almost similar to the news feed you view. Verified users can create new posts and also host live Q&A sessions within the app. In order to help sustain its position in the social space, Facebook is trying every trick in the book. While many celebrities are on Facebook, they mostly take to Twitter to share their thoughts or Reddit for the Q&A sessions.

Datawind to launch new phone with free lifetime Internet for Rs 2,000

With an aim to double its volumes, low-cost mobile devices maker Datawind on Thursday said it will launch a Rs 2,000 smartphone before Diwali that will come bundled with free Internet for life.

The company said the device will be based on Android operating system and have a 3.5 inch size. Datawind currently has three smartphones and 5 tablets under its portfolio and is selling 40,000-50,000 devices every month.

“We are looking forward to launch our Rs 2,000 smartphone and few other devices before Diwali and intent is to double our sales by the end of this calender year,” Datawind Executive Vice President Rupinder Singh said. He added the company is in talks with three mobile operators for the lifetime free Internet offer but refused to divulge more details as the deal is yet to be finalised.

Asked about manufacturing in the country, Singh said the company has aggressive plans but did not mention any timeline for implementation. Datawind had won the contract to supply 1 lakh units of Aakash tablets priced at $49.98 apiece in 2011, translated into a price of Rs 2,276 at that time.

The project was then handled by IIT Jodhpur which provided the specifications for the product. It, however, ran into controversy following IIT Jodhpur rejecting the devices manufactured by Datawind.

Facebook’s new Save button allows bookmarking of news feeds, pages

Facebook which acquired the read-it-later startup Spool around two years ago, has finally put it to use by announcing a new feature called ‘Save’. Clearly designed to compete with popular mobile app Pocket,  Facebook’s new offering helps store links from News Feed and Facebook Pages, allowing users to view/read it later. This means, the next time you run through your inundated feeds section, you can simply mark an interesting article to be read later.

Introducing the new feature, Facebook writes in its official blog, “Every day, people find all sorts of interesting items on Facebook that they don’t have time to explore right away. Now you can save items that you find on Facebook to check out later when you have more time. You can save items like links, places, movies, TV and music. Only you can see the items you save unless you choose to share them with friends.”

Microsoft plans to provide free Internet across India using ‘white space’ TV spectrum

Microsoft has announced its plans to bring Internet connectivity across the country completely free of cost.

As revealed to HIndustan Times, Microsoft has proposed to make use of the “white space” or the unused spectrum between two TV channels, to make Internet connectivity to a vast population an economically-viable solution.

Unlike Wi-Fi, which has a range of only about 100 metres, the 200-300 MHz spectrum in the white space can reach up to 10 km. This spectrum currently belongs to the government-owned Doordarshan TV channel and is not used at all. This solution addresses the key hurdle in setting up Internet connectivity across remote areas in the country: the lack of digital infrastructure. According to Microsoft India’s chief, Bhaskar Pramanik, the initiative will help bring Internet accessible to a vast population a cost-effective manner. 

It will create an eco-system that will benefit other technology service providers, including manufacturers of routers, and not just Microsoft .Microsoft is seeking permission to kick-start the project in two major districts as of now.

Facebook users asked to download separate messaging app

Earlier in April, there were reports of Facebook's intention to force users to download its standalone messaging app by discontinuing private chats from the mobile app. Now, the company has confirmed about putting the plan into action by pulling out the messaging feature from the Facebook mobile app.

According to a report by The Verge, Facebook will soon start notifying users to switch to its standalone messaging app. Besides, with new messaging apps for iOS and Android, the company plans to improve the speed and add features such as the ability to take selfies and videos within the app. The notification reads, “We’re moving Messages. Soon they’ll be in our other app Messenger. You’ll be able to do more, like take selfies and videos within the app – and its much faster.”

If it makes things any better, the company claims that splitting it into two apps will ensure that both work efficiently. But hassle of managing separate apps – one for social networking and other just for messaging might annoy some users. However, these changes will not reflect on the desktop, and the messaging feature will continue to be part of the desktop application. Like it or not, downloading the standalone app will soon be the only way users can chat using Facebook.

Aakash maker Datawind offers free Internet for a year with UbiSlate 7Cz, 3G7 tablets

DataWind, makers of low-cost Aakash tablets, today said a large part of the Rs 168 crore (30 million Canadian dollars) raised through an IPO (Initial Public Offer) would be invested towards expansion in India.

“The majority of it will be invested in India;…it will be over the period of next six months, the funding is here- it is just how fast we can go in,” DataWind Chief Executive Officer Suneet Singh Tuli told reporters here.To a question, he said “large part of the investment will not only go into expansion of Amritsar facility but throughout India.”

“…We have subcontract manufacturers in Delhi. We want to support the sub contract manufacturers. We have been working with a number of state governments. We want to replicate it in other states also. We have been working with universities for further research. We want to fund those researches.”

“It is not just the plants we want to fund; we actually want to fund research which does breakthroughs with such lower cost devices,” he added.

Facebook and Airtel bring Internet.org app for offer free Internet in Zambia

Facebook is launching a mobile app that gives users in Zambia free access to a handful of online services on mobile phones, broadening an effort to boost Internet usage in underdeveloped countries.The Internet.org app will offer, in partnership with wireless operator Airtel, more than a dozen services including online encyclopedia Wikipedia, websites devoted to weather, job listings and health information, as well as Facebook’s own social network and messaging service.

The app will be available in additional countries over the coming months and years, Guy Rosen, product management director for Facebook’s Internet.org effort said on Wednesday. Facebook will not pay Airtel for the bandwidth, Rosen said, but Airtel will benefit as users who are exposed to Internet services eventually decide to pay for broader, unrestricted access. Access to the information on the app’s included services is free, but links that lead to information on other websites will require that users pay wireless data charges. The free version of Facebook in the app does not allow for the video playback.

Facebook has partnered with more than 150 wireless providers over the past four years to offer free or discounted access to its social network, but the new app in Zambia marks the first time the company has added Web services beyond its own social network to the menu of free services.

Microsoft plans to provide free Internet across India using ‘white space’ TV spectrum

Microsoft has announced its plans to bring Internet connectivity across the country completely free of cost.

As revealed to HIndustan TImes, Microsoft has proposed to make use of the “white space” or the unused spectrum between two TV channels, to make Internet connectivity to a vast population an economically-viable solution. Unlike Wi-Fi, which has a range of only about 100 metres, the 200-300 MHz spectrum in the white space can reach up to 10 km. This spectrum currently belongs to the government-owned Doordarshan TV channel and is not used at all.

This solution addresses the key hurdle in setting up Internet connectivity across remote areas in the country: the lack of digital infrastructure. 

According to Microsoft India’s chief, Bhaskar Pramanik, the initiative will help bring Internet accessible to a vast population a cost-effective manner. It will create an eco-system that will benefit other technology service providers, including manufacturers of routers, and not just Microsoft . Microsoft is seeking permission to kick-start the project in two major districts as of now.

Stainless Steel Apple Watch variant likely to be priced $500, Gold for $4,000

Rumours around the Apple Watch have started gathering pace. Earlier this week, we heard about the Apple Watch coming in sring, and now there are reports suggesting the prices of the device.

While the base model is expected to be priced at $350, the stainless steel variant will be priced at $500 and the gold somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000. This bit of news comes from iGen.fr, a French website that has revealed accurate details about the Iphoen 6 modules in the past.

This also means the base model, aluminium variant, will be priced at $350. The report also talks about the availability of the watch. Unlike the previous report suggesting a spring launch, it says the watch will be released as soon as possible.9To5Mac has got its hands on the transcript of the video message shared by Angela Ahrendts, who is the Apple Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores, who said that the wearable should reach markets after Chinese New Year and by spring.

Meet Reuben Paul: An 8-year-old CEO to address a cyber security summit

An eight-year old Indian-origin child prodigy, is among experts who will address a cyber security conference, starting on Thursday, where Minister of State for External Affairs, V K Singh, is also listed as a keynote speaker.In his address at the summit on November 14, the US-based whizkid Reuben Paul, will highlight and demonstrate the need for developing the current generation, with cyber security skills, according to the organisers of Ground Zero Summit, to be held in New Delhi.

The organisers said, “8 year old Reuben Paul will give a keynote at Houston Security Conference.”

“I started learning about computer languages around one- and-a-half years back. Now I design my own projects,” Reuben told PTI. The prodigy has been trained by his father, Mano Paul, in Object C programming language, and is now learning Swift programming, for Apple’s iOS platform. Mano Paul, born and raised in Odisha, moved to the US in 2000. In August, Reuben started Prudent Games, his own gaming firm and is designated as CEO of the company. Mano Paul is his partner in the company.

“This will be Reuben’s fourth conference where he will be giving lecture on cyber security. He will talk about the need to create awareness about cyber security among young kids as well as demo white page hacking,” Mano Paul said.

Indian girl’s drawing on Assam wildlife wins Doodle4Google contest for Children’s Day

On the occasion of Children’s Day, Google joined in the celebrations of Jawaharlal Nehru’s birth anniversary with a Doodle.

A girl from Pune, Vaidehi Reddy, was the winner of this year’s Doodle design competition, called Doodle4Google contest.  The contest was held across 50 cities and 1700 schools in India. The central theme required students to draw a place they wish to visit in India. At the end, 12 Doodles were shortlisted and put up online for users to vote. Vaidehi’s doodle was a depiction of colorful Assam showcasing the state’s natural and cultural background. The doodle features drawings of a tiger, one-horned rhinoceros, bamboo sticks, a bright pink flower, a jute bag and a lady holding the traditional jaapi.
The word Tea is highlighted in the image as well. Her doodle was titled as “Natural and Cultural Paradise – Assam”.

“Tourists visit Goa and other places. Assam is unique. The trees there are different from those I have seen elsewhere. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Assam is its natural beauty,” said Vaidehi, a student of the Army Public School, Pune. Vaidehi, who turns 14 today, believes that the North East doesn’t get it’s due and people should visit Assam as the state has so much to offer.

Gayatri Redddy, Vaidehi’ mother voiced out that she was proud of her daughter’s achievement. She also highlighted that her daughter was awestruck when they visited North East earlier.