Around the world

FORT MEADE, Md. — An Army dog handler at Abu Ghraib was convicted Tuesday of tormenting prisoners with his snarling animal and competing with a comrade to make the Iraqis soil themselves. Sgt. Michael J. Smith, 24, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was found guilty at a court-martial of six of 13 counts. The judge later dismissed one of those six counts, saying it duplicated another.

Poor still pay for water — to Coke and Pepsi

MEXICO CITY — Violent protests have driven away corporate investment in desperately needed municipal water systems in developing nations. So the world’s poor buy bottled water from Coke, Pepsi and other multinational companies. "Water is not for sale,” demonstrators chanted at the World Water Forum this week. But they couldn’t be more wrong — private companies make much more money selling bottled water than they ever did developing public water systems. Companies also stand to benefit from a renewed push for big dams in the Third World.

So even though just about everybody, from CEOs to aid workers, spoke out against the privatization of water, the apparent victory for anti-corporate forces may prove hollow.

"Nobody is talking about privatizing a resource,” said Mexico’s Environment Secretary Jose Luis Luege. "That is something inalienable, sovereign.”

It’s also become big business.

Multinationals — Pepsi, Cadbury, Nestle, Danone and Coca-Cola — supply most of the bottled water in Mexico, now the world’s second-largest consumer.

Sales of bottled water in China jumped by more than 250 percent between 1999 and 2004. They tripled in India and almost doubled in Indonesia, according to a study released by the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental group.

Worldwide, the industry is now worth about $100 billion per year.

In the 1990s, private firms jumped into the water business by gobbling up public water systems and raising rates, sparking violent protests.<