"We don't have anything to eat ... we don't even have some water to drink, " one woman said.

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The implications of discovering evidence for fresh water are exciting for macro-organisms as well: Rover chief scientist John Grotzinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has speculated that we would have been able to drink that ancient water, had we been there some 2, 3, or 4 billion years ago to witness glorious Lake Gale.

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Want to floss, pray, or drink water more often (some of the more popular choices)?

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An interruption to the electricity and water supplies in Basra, a city of more than 1m people caused, America says, by Iraq has threatened the health of its population, obliging some of them to wash in and drink dirty river water.

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He instructed me to dump a packet of salt and some government-issue powdered grape drink into my water.

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At Mid Staffordshire, some patients were left lying in their own urine and excrement for days, forced to drink water from vases.

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