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For more than 100 years, swimming in the Seine had been banned due to concerns over what the water could do to human health. Now Olympic athletes are swimming in it and falling sick. Photo: RNZ / Quin Tauetau News of athletes falling sick after swimming in the River Seine comes as no surprise to Parisians; the city locals know the water is filthy, and they have been trying to warn us since well before the Olympics began. Test results published less than two months before the swimming competitions were scheduled to be held revealed elevated levels of bacteria in the river. Despite a mammoth cleanup effort costing upwards of NZ$2.3 billion (€1.3 billion), it is clear the river is not clean enough to swim in. RNZ unpacks the filthy history of the River Seine. Why swim in the Seine at all? ...

By Holly Richardson, Conor Byrne and Romy Stephens, ABC News File image. Photo: AFP / DAVID GRAY Human remains have been found inside a crocodile that wildlife officers euthanased in far north Queensland. Police say Newcastle man David Hogbin, 40, was with family members when he fell into the Annan River near Cooktown and failed to resurface on Saturday. A spokeswoman for Sonic Healthcare Australia said Dr Hogbin would be missed by colleagues. "We are deeply saddened by the news of this tragic event," she said. "This is a very challenging time for our team." Dr Hogbin has worked at several medical centres in New South Wales. His biography at Jewells Medical Centre, 13km south-west of Newcastle, said Dr Hogbin was a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners after...

An emotional Shaun Johnson fronted media on Tuesday at Go Media Mt Smart Stadium, saying that it had been a "draining 24 hours" since he made his decision to retire at the end of this season. "A lot went into yesterday," Johnson said. "But it feels good knowing that I've made the decision, a little bit like a weight's been lifted off my shoulders. To be able to come out and say it, announce it the way I wanted to. "Departures can be forced sometimes. So for me to have control over this, knowing that there was something there for me (an offer to stay on) next year, but I've made the decision not to." Johnson will hang up the boots after 11 seasons at the Warriors, as well as a 44-game stint at the Sharks from 2019-21. He guided the side to their last grand final appearance in his first year...

A man looks at an electronic quotation board displaying stock prices of Nikkei 225 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo on August 6, 2024. Tokyo stocks bounced back in early trade on August 6 following a historic selloff on worries over the US economy and a stronger yen. Photo: AFP / KAZUHIRO NOGI Japanese stocks rebounded sharply in early trade on Tuesday, after their biggest single day rout since the 1987 Black Monday sell-off in the previous session. The Nikkei rallied 8.1 percent at 34,004.22 as of 0026 GMT, while the broader Topix was up 8.57 percent. The Nikkei plunged 12.4 percent on Monday in its worst performance since the October 1987 crash, as investors were shaken by last week's plunge in global stock markets, US recession risks and worries investments funded by a cheap yen ...

The discontinued heartburn drug Zantac. Photo: 123rf / © Terry Putman 2016 By Brendan Pierson, Reuters GSK won the latest trial over claims that discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer, as a jury on Monday found that the drug was not responsible for an Illinois woman's illness, a company spokesperson said. Carrie Joiner had alleged in her lawsuit in state court in Chicago that she developed colorectal cancer from a carcinogenic contaminant called NDMA found in the once-blockuster drug. A lawyer for Joiner did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Zantac was sold at different times by GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi and Boehringer Ingelheim. First approved by US regulators in 1983, it became the world's best-selling medicine in 1988 and one of the first to top $1 billion in annu...