Morning Briefing

In this CNN opinion piece, Jenna Davis -- a faculty member in Stanford University's Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, where her research and teaching focuses on water, sanitation and health, and a former member of the U.N. Millennium Task Force for Water and Sanitation -- reports on what she calls a "global sanitation crisis," writing, "More than 40 percent of the world's population does not have access to a toilet. These 2.6 billion people, most living in low- and middle-income countries in Asia and Africa, face the daily challenge of finding a bush, train track or empty lot where they can urinate and defecate in relative privacy."