Norovirus tends to makes the news when an outbreak occurs on cruise ships. But the virus affects many more people than ocean-going vacationers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates some 20 million people suffer acute intestinal illness from norovirus each year in this country. It's responsible for more than half of all cases of foodborne illness in the United States It can also get into municipal water supplies, when old pipes or storm overflow cause waste water contaminated with the norovirus to mix with drinking water.

The world is waking up to a crisis of ocean plastic - and we're tracking the developments and solutions as they happen. The world has a plastic pollution problem and it's snowballing - but so is public awareness and action. National Geographic magazine devoted a special cover package to plastic in June 2018. Here, we continue to track some of the developments around this important issue. We will update this article periodically as news develops.

The environmental, economic and medical impacts of the 2010 oil spill sparked by the Deepwater Horizon disaster reached hundreds of miles inland to wreak complicated havoc on five Gulf states, and the cascades of litigation to follow were just as complex. Two months after the April 2010 spill, BP created what was known as the Gulf Coast Claims Facility to head off lawsuits. In exchange for a waiver of liability, the fund made quick cash payouts.

This guide is aimed at decision-makers, technical experts and civil society members interested in carrying out vulnerability assessments. Using experiences from India as a context, it provides guidance on conducting vulnerability assessments. It entails - next to an assessment methodology - a rich and comprehensive selection of methods and tools to assess the different components contributing to a system's vulnerability to climate change.

The Ocean Conservancy released on Wednesday its International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) report, a compilation of litter collected from a one-day cleanup of beaches and waterways worldwide. For the first time since the report's inception more than 30 years ago, the 10 most common items picked up by volunteers around the world were made of plastic. Foam takeaway containers booted glass beverage bottles from this year's list.