The toilet is a magnificent thing. Invented at the turn of the 19th century, the flush version has vastly improved human life.

The toilet has been credited with adding a decade to our longevity. The sanitation system to which it is attached was voted the greatest medical advance in 150 years by readers of the British Medical Journal.

New York— The theme of this year’s World Malaria Day is “Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria,” and the organizers carefully selected this theme to remind us that we must sustain progress against malaria to save lives.

In recent years, we have seen success in many regions: In Africa, malaria deaths have been reduced by nearly a third, and on other continents cases have been reduced by half.

TALCAHUANO, Chile — Eric Pineda, a dock agent in this old port south of Santiago, peered deep into the Achernar’s hold at a measly 10 tons of jack mackerel — the catch after four days in waters once so rich they filled the 17-meter fishing boat in a few hours.

Mr. Pineda, like everyone here, grew up with the bony, bronze-hued fish they call jurel, which roams in schools in the southern Pacific.

By 2050 there will be another 2.5 billion people on the planet. How to feed them? Science's answer: a diet of algae, insects and meat grown in a lab

If you read this story by Ken Ellingwood about the deluge of trash on a Mexican beach, you may be wondering: Just where does all the junk that goes into the ocean end up?

Nikolai Maximenko is trying to answer that question. Trash gathers into "garbage patches" that are too diffuse to spot from a satellite. Scientists have encountered several areas where trash collects in the ocean, but nobody is sure where all of it is.