As part of an excellent spate of articles on water -- including pieces on attempts to create privatized drinking water cartels -- the CSM reports this benchmark: Finally, the world's drinking glass is more than half full:

"Across the developing world, some 700 million people have gained a household connection to drinking water since 1990 - and helped the world reach a crucial tipping point. Now for the first time, more than half the globe's people have drinking water piped into their homes, according to an August report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF. Such progress, along with the spread of sanitation systems, has reduced hygiene-related illnesses, pushed more students into schoolrooms, and begun to break the cycle of urban poverty by making water much less expensive."