Veteran Kannada actor Umesh Passes away
Bengaluru (PTI): Veteran Kannada actor 'Mysore' Srikantayya Umesh died on Sunday after prolonged illness, family sources said.
He was 80.
The actor has been suffering from cancer for quite some time and was recently admitted to a hospital where he breathed his last.
His career in the film industry spanned over five decades where he acted in over 350 films.
Born on April 24, 1945 in Mysuru, Umesh started his career at the age of four when he played a role in 'Lanchavatara' fame Master K Hirannaiah's theatre group.
Later, he joined Gubbi Veeranna's theatre troupe.
Umesh got a major break in the film industry in 1960 when he played the lead role in the movie 'Makkala Rajya'.
After the debut, there was a lull in his film career, which was marked with struggle. He was forced to return to theatres.
The actor got the next break in the film industry through 'Katha Sangama' in 1977. Since then, there has been no looking back for Umesh.
He acted in movies like 'Nagara Hole' (1978), 'Guru Shishyaru' (1981), 'Anupama' (1981), 'Kaamana Billu' (1983) and 'Venkata in Sankata' (2007).
The actor worked with all the leading Kannada actors of his time, right from Kannada matinee idol Rajkumar, Vishnu Vardhan, Ambareesh, Srinath, Shankar Nag, Ananth Nag, Arvind Ramesh, B Saroja Devi and Bharathi. He also acted with Tamil actors Sivaji Ganesan and Rajinikanth.
Umesh was a versatile actor. He got Karnataka State Film Award in 1975 for best supporting actor in 'Katha Sangama' and Karnataka Nataka Akademy Award in 2013 for his contribution to theatres.
Condoling his demise, JD(S) leader and Union Minister H D Kumaraswamy said he was deeply saddened to hear the news.
"Umesh would make audiences float in a sea of laughter through his fresh humour," he said.
"Having delivered captivating performances in numerous films including 'Guru Shishyaru', 'Haalu Jenu', 'Apurva Sangama', his departure is a huge loss to the Kannada art world," Kumaraswamy said in a post on 'X'.
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Ambani, Adani pledge USD 210 bn for India's AI push
New Delhi (PTI): Conglomerates run by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani committed USD 210 billion investment to creating infrastructure that will help India emerge as an AI development hub.
At the India AI Impact Summit, Ambani announced a Rs 10 lakh crore (about USD 110 billion) investment in artificial intelligence over the next seven years in gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar, leveraging up to 10 GW of green power surplus, and a nationwide edge-compute layer integrated with telecom and digital operator Jio's networks to deliver low-latency AI across India.
"Our resolve is clear: make intelligence as ubiquitous as connectivity," he said. "When compute becomes infrastructure, innovation will become inevitable."
Adani, on the other hand, unveiled a USD 100-billion investment to develop renewable-energy-powered, hyperscale AI-ready data centres by 2035 -- one of the world's largest integrated energy-compute commitments.
The initiative is expected to catalyse an additional USD 150 billion across server manufacturing, cloud platforms, and supporting industries, creating a projected USD 250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India.
India must architect its own artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure rather than rely on imports, Adani Group executive director Jeet Adani said on Thursday, warning that AI will redefine national sovereignty.
Other major investments announced at the Summit included USD 50 billion commitment by Microsoft by the end of the decade to expand artificial intelligence access across the Global South. "India, not surprisingly, is one of the largest," its vice chair and president, Brad Smith, said.
The firm had unveiled USD 17.5 billion investment in AI investments in India last year.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a new subsea cable initiative to boost AI connectivity between India, the US and other locations, alongside partnerships for cloud infrastructure platform support to over 20 million public servants across 800 districts.
Yotta Data Services, backed by a real estate group headed by Niranjan Hiranandani, announced over USD 2 billion spend on Nvidia's latest chips in an artificial intelligence computing hub it is setting up just outside the national capital.
While Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) signed up ChatGPT parent OpenAI as its first customer for its data centre unit under the global AI infrastructure initiative Stargate, infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro announced a proposed venture with Nvidia to build AI-ready data centre infrastructure, advanced computing platforms, and ecosystem enablement required to support large-scale AI workloads.
