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paris — A 76-year-old American swimmer took a dip in the River Seine on Thursday, braving the murky waters in central Paris to celebrate the Fourth of July and highlight the French government’s efforts to clean up the river for the Olympic Games. He had good timing: Hours later, regional authorities released data showing water quality in the river improved over the past week, raising hopes it can host Olympic swimming events after all. Joel Stratte McClure, who last swam in the Seine in 1976 for a magazine cover shoot, said he was impressed with the progress made in cleaning up the river, but still had concerns about its safety. “I may regret having swum,” McClure said before entering the water. “But if I come back alive, it will prove that the French have done a good job cleaning up the river.” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo initially planned to swim in the Seine last month to prove its cleanliness — prompting an online campaign by her many critics threatening to defecate in the river on the day of her dip. But she postponed the swim after President Emmanuel Macron announced snap legislative elections that have plunged France into political tensions and eclipsed pre-Olympic excitement for many. Heavy rainfall in recent months has also translated into faster-than-usual currents for this time of year, and Hidalgo says she will swim in the river in mid-July instead. “I think the president organized new elections to avoid swimming in the Seine,’’ McClure joked. After a brief swim, he declared the water “fantastic” and expressed hope that others would follow his lead and take advantage of the cleaner river. Marathon swimming and triathlon are scheduled to take place in the river near the Alexandre III bridge during the Olympics, which run from July 26-Aug. 11, and the Paralympics, which run from Aug. 28-Sept. 8. Unsafe levels of E. coli were found in the river last week for the third consecutive week. But on Thursday, regional authorities released new results showing an improvement. The test results by monitoring group Eau de Paris show that for all but one day from June 26 to July 2, contamination levels were below the safe limit of 900 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters determined by the World Triathlon Federation for competitions. French officials remain optimistic and insist there is no Plan B for Olympic open-water swimming events.

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Addis Ababa — Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday he was expecting about $10.5 billion in financial aid in the coming years once the country wraps up negotiations with international lending institutions.   Africa's second most populous nation, battered in recent years by several armed conflicts, the COVID pandemic, and climate shocks, has been engaged in drawn-out talks seeking to secure a support program from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).   There has been speculation that Ethiopia may have to devalue its currency, the birr, as a condition of IMF aid.   "We have been negotiating with the IMF and World Bank on a wide range of issues," Abiy said in an address to parliament, adding that both Ethiopia and the IMF "are stubborn."    "Several of our proposals were finally accepted," he said.    "When this process comes to a successful conclusion, and the reform is approved, we will receive $10.5 billion in the coming years."   The IMF had no immediate response to AFP's request for comment on Abiy's remarks.   According to a source close to the matter, the program currently being negotiated with the IMF concerns around $3.5 billion in financial assistance, and any agreement could result in the release of an equivalent amount from the World Bank.    Ethiopia has about $28 billion of external debt and is also grappling with sky-high inflation and a shortage of foreign currency reserves.   The landlocked country's credit rating was downgraded to a partial default in December by international agency Fitch after it missed a $33 million coupon payment on a Eurobond.    The two-year conflict in the northern Tigray region which ended in November 2022 led to the suspension of numerous development aid programs and budget assistance.   When he took office in 2018, Abiy pledged to embark on reforms of Ethiopia's closed and state-dominated economy, but little has changed since then.

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Port Sudan, Sudan — Pro-democracy activists in Sudan on Thursday said around 25 people drowned in the Nile River while trying to flee fighting between the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces in the southeast. "Around 25 citizens, most of them women and children, have died in a boat sinking" while crossing the Blue Nile River in the southeastern state of Sennar, a local resistance committee said in a statement. The committee is one of hundreds across Sudan that used to organize pro-democracy protests and have coordinated frontline aid since the war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, began last year. "Entire families perished" in the accident, they said, while fleeing the RSF's recent advance through Sennar. On Saturday, the RSF announced they had captured a military base in Sinja, the capital of Sennar state, where over half a million people had sought shelter from the war. Witnesses also reported the RSF sweeping through neighboring villages, pushing residents to flee in small wooden boats across the Nile. At least 55,000 people fled Sinja within a three-day period, the United Nations said Monday. Local authorities in neighboring Gedaref state estimated on Thursday that some 120,000 displaced people had arrived this week. The state's health minister Ahmed al-Amin Adam said 90,000 had been officially registered. Over 10 million people are currently displaced across Sudan, in what the U.N. calls the world's worst displacement crisis. Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. The conflict in the country of 48 million has killed tens of thousands, with some estimates putting the death toll as high as 150,000, according to the United States envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello. It has also torn the country apart into competing zones of control. The RSF holds much of the capital and the agricultural heartland to its south, nearly all of Darfur and swathes of the southern Kordofan states. In El-Fasher in North Darfur — the only state capital in the Darfur region that the RSF has not captured — a paramilitary attack on a market on Wednesday "killed 15 civilians and injured 29 others," Health Ministry official Ibrahim Khater told AFP Thursday. Since fighting in the city began in early May, at least 278 people have been killed, according to French charity Doctors without Borders, or MSF. But the real toll is likely much higher, with most of those wounded unable to reach health facilities amid an ongoing siege and heavy street battles. The hospitals in El-Fasher — nearly all of which have shut down — have themselves been attacked at least nine times since May, according to MSF. Both sides have been accused of war crimes, including targeting civilian infrastructure and indiscriminately shelling homes, markets and hospitals.

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GENEVA — The United Nations’ chief human rights official warns that Venezuela’s upcoming presidential elections are unlikely to be free and fair because widespread repression in the country prevents dissident voices from being heard. In his latest update on the human rights situation in Venezuela, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk presents a starkly critical assessment of an autocratic government that stifles dissent by the arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of its perceived opponents. “My office continues to receive reports of detentions as election day approaches, including of supporters and members of the opposition. This does not augur well, and I urge a change to such practices,” said the U.N. human rights chief, who engaged in an interactive dialogue at the U.N. Human Rights Council Wednesday and Thursday. He said his office has documented “with concern” an increase in threats, harassment and assaults against civil society actors, journalists, unionists and other voices considered critical, “including through arrests and prosecutions, and 38 cases of arbitrary detention.” In January, the government rid itself of President Nicolas Maduro’s main opponent for the top job by barring opposition leader Maria Corina Machado from running in an election for 15 years. In April, Venezuela’s main opposition coalition agreed to unite behind one candidate, former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez, to challenge Maduro, a decision that many observers believe could be a winning hand. Türk called on Venezuelan authorities to lift restrictions on civic space and “to ensure fully transparent, inclusive and participatory electoral processes, in line with international standards.” Venezuelan objections Alexander Gabriel Yanez Deleuze, Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, lashed back at the high commissioner’s disparagement of his government. He blamed “foreign and domestic” players of aggressive behavior aimed at undermining the sovereignty and peace in his country “that has been won thanks to the leadership of President Nicolas Maduro.” “The high commissioner, the Venezuelan opposition, however, are calling out a fraud and are calling for violence because they do not accept the Bolivarian revolution,” he said. He accused the United States and its acolytes of “having published communiques that are already written today” and that are aimed at subverting the election. He said this ploy will not work. “The 28th of July will see the ballot tables closed and the electoral council counting all the votes. There will be 17 different auditors before, during and after the election, and we will be announcing the result, which is part of the people's resistance,” he said. Opposition detentions Türk was not persuaded by this argument and reiterated his appeal for the government to refrain “from adopting legislation that would further restrict the right to participate in public affairs, and the freedoms of association and expression.” He also reiterated his call for the release of all people who have been arbitrarily detained in Venezuela, including those remaining in pretrial detention beyond the limits set out in national law. According to the report, between April 2023 and February 2024, U.N. human rights monitors conducted nine visits to detention centers in five states across the country and interviewed 146 people deprived of their liberty, “with a view to improving detention conditions, including access to health and food.” Among the findings, the high commissioner said he was particularly worried about reports of intimidation and ill-treatment of inmates who had been transferred to the Rodeo maximum security prison, “as well as of their relatives and lawyers.” “I remain concerned that people continue to be charged with terrorism-related offenses that do not comply with international human rights standards … and where there are also issues with the right to a fair trial,” he said. In the past year, the high commissioner’s office has documented 29 cases of individuals prosecuted for terrorism-related offenses and 28 cases of detained individuals, “some perceived as dissident voices, whose whereabouts have been concealed from their relatives and lawyers.” Türk said: “This occurred for periods ranging from two to 41 days, thus amounting to enforced disappearance. All allegations of enforced disappearances must be investigated and prosecuted, and the practice must end.”

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PARIS — Some 30,000 police will be deployed across France late Sunday following the high-stakes runoff of a parliamentary election to ensure there is no trouble, a minister said, as three candidates said they had been victims of attacks on the campaign trail. Sunday's second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally, or RN, secures a parliamentary majority for the first time and forms the next government in France, the euro zone's second-largest economy. The campaign has been marred by political tensions but also growing violence. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said he would be "very careful" about security on Sunday evening, when the election's results will be announced. Some 5,000 of the 30,000 police deployed that evening will be in Paris and its surroundings, and they will "ensure that the radical right and radical left do not take advantage of the situation to cause mayhem," he told France 2 TV. Darmanin said four people had been arrested over an attack that occurred on Wednesday evening on government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot and her team when they were out putting up campaign posters. While Thevenot herself was not harmed, her deputy and a party activist were injured by an unidentified group of about 10 youths who were defacing campaign posters, Thevenot told Le Parisien newspaper. An RN candidate in Savoie, Marie Dauchy, also said she had been attacked by a shopkeeper at a market on Wednesday. Separately, the 77-year-old deputy mayor of a small town near Grenoble, in southeastern France, was punched in the face on Thursday morning when putting up a poster for Olivier Veran, a former spokesperson for President Emmanuel Macron. Veran denounced a "completely unprecedented context of violence in this campaign." Meanwhile, a poll on Wednesday suggested efforts by mainstream parties to block the far right from reaching an absolute majority might work. The Harris Interactive poll for Challenges magazine showed the anti-immigration RN and its allies would get 190 to 220 seats in the 577-strong assembly, while the center-right Republicans, or LR, would win 30 to 50 seats. This could rule out the possibility of a far-right minority government supported by part of the LR parliamentary group. The poll was published after more than 200 candidates across the political spectrum withdrew their candidacies to clear the path for whoever was best placed to defeat the RN candidate in their district, in a process known as the "republican front." However, much uncertainty remains, including whether voters will go along with these efforts to block the RN.

July 20 marks the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. An interactive exhibit at Manhattan's Intrepid Museum reminds viewers of the enormity of that undertaking and what went into the first moon landing. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Vladimir Badikov.

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Phnom Penh — Buddhist monks in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh chanted blessings and threw flowers on Thursday to welcome 14 trafficked artifacts repatriated from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Angkorian artworks, which included a 10th century goddess sandstone statute and a large Buddha head from the 7th century, were stolen by antiquities trafficker Douglas Latchford before ending up in New York.   "I am so glad and so happy to see our ancestors back home," Cambodian Culture Minister Phoeurng Sackona said at the repatriation ceremony.   "We have many more treasures at the Met which we also hope will be returned to Cambodia," she added. Sackona said more than 50 stolen artifacts would return to Cambodia from the United States in the near future. The minister also called on private collectors and museums around the world to follow the Met and return looted artifacts. "This return of our national treasures, held by the Met, is of utmost importance not only for Cambodia, but for all of humankind," she said.   Latchford, who died aged 88 at his home in Bangkok, was widely regarded as a scholar of Cambodian antiquities, winning praise for his books on Khmer Empire art. He was charged in 2019 by prosecutors in New York with smuggling looted Cambodian relics and helping to sell them on the international art market. The Met said in December that it would return 14 antiquities to Cambodia and two to Thailand after they were linked to Latchford. A 900-year-old statue of the Hindu god Shiva and a bronze sculpture of a female figure were returned to Thailand by the museum in May.  Thousands of statues and sculptures are believed to have been trafficked from Cambodia from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, while sites in neighboring Thailand were also hit by smugglers. The return of the items comes as a growing number of museums worldwide discuss steps to repatriate looted artworks, particularly those taken during the colonial era.

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Kuala Lumpur — A chemical leak Thursday at an engineering section of Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur International Airport sickened at least 20 people, an emergency services official said.  "A total of six victims received treatment at the air disaster unit, 13 victims were taken to a medical center and one victim was transferred to a public hospital," local rescue officer Muhammad Nur Khairi Samsumin said in a statement.  The 20 people, who belonged to three companies working at the facility, suffered dizziness after exposure to the leak, he said.  The incident did not disrupt air travel at the country's premier airport.  Officers from the emergency services and health department were sent to the scene.  The statement did not say what caused the leak.   

BENGALURU, India — Months of scorching temperatures sometimes over 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in parts of India this year — its worst heat wave in over a decade — left hundreds dead or ill. But the official number of deaths listed in government reports barely scratches the surface of the true toll and that's affecting future preparations for similar swelters, according to public health experts.  India now has a bit of respite from the intense heat, and a different set of extreme weather problems as monsoon rain lashes the northeast, but for months the extreme heat took a toll on large swaths of the country, particularly in northern India, where government officials reported at least 110 heat-related deaths.  Public health experts say the true number of heat-related deaths is likely in the thousands but because heat is often not listed as a reason on a death certificate many heat deaths don't get counted in official figures. The worry, they say, is that undercounting the deaths means the heat wave problem isn't as prioritized as it should be, and officials are missing out on ways to prepare their residents for the scorching temperatures.  All of India’s warmest years on record have been in the last decade. Studies by public health experts found that up to 1,116 people have died every year between 2008 and 2019 due to heat.  Difficulties registering heat deaths  As part of his work in public health, Srinath Reddy, the founder of the Public Health Foundation of India, has advised state governments on how to factor in heat when recording deaths.  He found that as a result of “incomplete reporting, delayed reporting and misclassification of deaths,” heat-related deaths are significantly undercounted around the country. Despite national guidelines for recording deaths, many doctors — especially those in overcrowded public hospitals where resources are already strained — don’t follow it, he said.  “Most doctors just record the immediate cause of death and attribution to environmental triggers like heat are not recorded,” Reddy said. That's because heat deaths can be classified as exertional or non-exertional: Exertional is when a person dies due to direct exposure to high temperatures and non-exertional is when young children, older people or people with pre-existing health conditions become seriously ill or sometimes die from the heat, even if indoors.  “The heatwave is the final straw for the second category of people," said Dileep Mavalankar, former head of the Indian Institute of Public Health in Gandhinagar. “Most people dying during heat waves belong to this category but their deaths are not recorded as connected to the heat.”  Mavalankar agreed the official number of heat deaths this year is an undercount. He said there were 40,000 recorded case of heat stroke, but only 110 deaths. “This is just 0.3% of the total number of heatstroke cases recorded, but usually heat deaths should be 20 to 30% of heatstroke cases,” he said.  “We need to be counting deaths better," Mavalankar said. “That is the only way we will know how severe the consequences of extreme heat are." 

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London — Britain voted Thursday in a general election widely expected to hand the opposition Labour party a landslide win and end nearly a decade-and-a-half of Conservative rule.  The first national ballot since Boris Johnson won the Tories a decisive victory in 2019 follows Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's surprise call to hold it six months earlier than required.  His gamble looks set to backfire spectacularly, with polls throughout the six-week campaign -- and for the last two years -- pointing to a heavy defeat for his right-wing party.  That would almost certainly put Labour leader Keir Starmer, 61, in Downing Street, as leader of the largest party in parliament.  Centre-left Labour is projected to win its first general election since 2005 by historic proportions, with a flurry of election-eve polls all forecasting its biggest-ever victory.  But Starmer was taking nothing for granted as he urged voters not to stay at home. "Britain's future is on the ballot," he said. "But change will only happen if you vote for it."  Voting began at 7:00 am (0600 GMT) in more than 40,000 polling stations across the country, from church halls, community centers and schools to more unusual venues such as pubs and even a ship.  Sunak was among the early birds, casting his ballot at his Richmond and Northallerton constituency in Yorkshire, northern England. Starmer voted around two hours later in his north London seat.  "I just moved back from Australia and I've got the feeling that everything has turned wrong in this country and a lot of people are not satisfied," said Ianthe Jacob, a 32-year-old writer, after voting in Hackney, east London.  In Saint Albans, north of London, 22-year-old student Judith told AFP: "I don't really trust any of them but will vote. A lot of my friends feel the same."  Voting closes at 10:00 pm (2100 GMT). Broadcasters then announce exit polls, which typically provide an accurate picture of how the main parties have performed.  Results from the UK's 650 constituencies trickle in overnight, with the winning party expected to hit 326 seats -- the threshold for a parliamentary majority -- as dawn breaks Friday.   Polls suggest voters will punish the Tories after 14 years of often chaotic rule and could oust a string of government ministers.