Thanks , Rob, for submitting a news story on water research that highlights what is (hopefully) a trend: the delivery of clean water to the BOP and the increased efficiency of water usage during production of other goods.

For those of you who do not check the activity database faithfully, you might have missed the recent changes (Courtland and I updated and recategorized the 280+ activity capsules last week). There is now a "water" category, owing to the growing number of water-related activities. Some of these are focused on low-cost pumps for the BOP, others on individual or household water filtration , a village-wide solar-powered irrigation systems with delivery via "water credit cards." , and nutritional supplements to mix with water.

The 2006 Transparency International report is out, and this year's focus is on health services--apparently a sector particularly prone to corruption.  Why? The executive summary highlights three reasons: imbalance of information (health professionals know more than patients, and pharmaceutical companies know more about their products than public officials),  uncertainty in health markets (how many people will fall ill , where/when humanitarian disasters will strike makes it hard to manage resources), and the opaque, complex relations within the health system.