Reuters: In 2006, then President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, a native of Brazil's historically drought-plagued northeast, pushed through an idea that long-suffering residents of the region had been hearing about for more than a century.
At last, he promised, Brazil would channel water to the sun-baked region from the So Francisco, the country's second-longest river. By 2010, he said, water would be pumped over hills and into a 477 kilometer-long network of canals, aqueducts and reservoirs to quench thirsty...