A microfinance provider in Karnataka has been selected alongside seven other organisations from Peru, Indonesia, Cambodia and Afghanistan as a finalist for the Ashden Awards, the world’s leading green energy prize.

The finalists will compete for over £120,000 pound prize, with the winners to be announced at a prestigious ceremony in London on May 30. Shri Kshethra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project in Karnataka is a prime example of the vital role a well-run microfinance organisation can play in meeting the poor’s energy needs.

A Karnataka-based NGO is one of the eight finalists for the UK-based green energy prize, the Ashden Award.

Shri Kshethra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project (SKDRDP) in Karnataka has been selected alongside seven other organisations from Peru, Indonesia, Cambodia, Africa and Afghanistan as a finalist for the Ashden Awards.

A press release said here that the finalists will compete for over £120,000 prize money. The winners will be announced in London on May 30.

Years after a malaria strain increasingly resistant to the most-effective drugs was confirmed from Cambodia in 2006, the artemisinin-resistant malaria has now been found to have spread along the Thailand-Burma border.

According to 10-year-long study published in the Lancet medical journal, the containment strategy will have to be reconsidered if the resistant parasites have spread to other parts as well.

New Delhi: Malaria that is resistant to the drug of choice — Artemisinin, has now emerged along the Thailand-Myanmar border — 800km westward from where it was first confirmed in Cambodia in 2006. Artemisinin Combination Therapies (ACT) kills malaria parasite in a human bloodstream within 24 to 36 hours. With the drug-resistant strain, ACT needs up to 120 hours to kill the parasite.

Nepal is looking to scale up its flagship household biogas programme, which has made forays into other developing countries in Asia and Africa.

Initiated in 1992 with support from the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), Nepal has installed over 240,000 household biogas plants with a thermal energy capacity of 444 megawatts and greenhouse gas savings of 367,409 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.

Thought bird flu was gone? Recent human deaths in Asia and Egypt are a reminder that the H5N1 virus is still alive and dangerous, and Vietnam is grappling with a new strain that has outsmarted vaccines used to protect poultry flocks.

Ten people have died in Cambodia, Indonesia, Egypt, China and Vietnam since December during the prime-time flu season when the virus typically flares in poultry.

"We are worried, and we will be very cautious," said To Long Thanh, director of Vietnam's Center for Animal Health Diagnostics in Vietnam.

Asian Development Bank (ADB) has said that people in Pakistan are likely to be particularly vulnerable to water shortages due to leakage, inefficient domestic water use, or underinvestment in providing access, especially in rural and slum areas.

The Bank in its recent report titled 'Green Growth, Resources and Resilience: Environmental Sustainability in Asia and the Pacific' has said that the availability of water is a major factor in food security, as nearly 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals are for agriculture, mainly for irrigation.