PARIS, July 5 — Water pollution levels in Paris’ Seine river have improved, data showed yesterday, three weeks before the Olympics, in which the French capital’s landmark waterway is meant to be a swimming venue.

JERUSALEM, July 5 — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told United States President Joe Biden yesterday he will send a delegation to resume stalled negotiations on a hostage release deal with Hamas, their administrations said.

JAKARTA, July 4 — Indonesia has pledged full support for Malaysia in its role as the Asean chair in 2025, particularly in addressing the Myanmar issue, said its Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.

LONDON, July 4 — The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled yesterday that declarations of intervention filed by seven states in a genocide case brought by Gambia against Myanmar are admissible.

UNITED NATIONS, July 4 — An Israeli military evacuation order covering a third of the Gaza Strip has “wiped out” the United Nations’ attempts to improve humanitarian aid delivery via the Kerem Shalom crossing, a senior UN aid official said yesterday.

KUALA LUMPUR, July 3 — Asia-Pacific airlines saw a 27 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) increase in passenger demand in May 2024, measured in revenue passenger kilometres, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

GAZA, July 3 — Israeli forces bombarded several areas of the southern Gaza Strip yesterday and thousands of Palestinians fled their homes in what could be part of a final push of Israel’s intensive military operations in nine months of war.

MABINI, July 3  — Green campaigners in a diving resort in the Philippines have come up with the town’s shores: offering to swap a bag of rice for every sack of trash gathered by local residents.

KUALA LUMPUR, July 2 — The Japanese yen weakened to a fresh 38-year low today, crossing the 161 mark to a low of 161.6 against the greenback, mainly attributed to the contraction in Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) for the first quarter (1Q) of 2024, said Bank Muamalat Malaysia Bhd chief economist Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid.

SINGAPORE, July 2 — Singapore is prepared in principle to recognise Palestine’s statehood, said Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.

SYDNEY, July 2 — New Zealand’s conservative coalition government will proceed with a bill that would make it compulsory for digital technology platforms to pay media companies for news, it said today.

SYDNEY, July 2 — Australia is giving the internet industry six months to come up with an enforceable code detailing how it will stop children from seeing pornography and other inappropriate material online, or face having a code imposed on it, a regulator said today.

YALA, July 1 — Thai police have arrested a local man suspected of being involved in a car bomb explosion in Yala, southern Thailand, early yesterday morning that claimed a woman’s life.

SINGAPORE, July 1 — Foreign-registered commercial diesel vehicles with smoke emissions of 50 Hartridge Smoke Units (HSU) or more will be turned back at land checkpoints and denied entry into Singapore beginning April 1, 2026.

SYDNEY, July 1 — New vaping regulations in Australia came into force today, moving e-cigarettes behind pharmacy counters in a bid to curb youth vaping, although opponents forced the government to walk back a stricter prohibition.

KUALA LUMPUR, July 1 — The World Bank has appointed Zafer Mustafaoglu as its country director for the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, effective today.

CAMBRIDGE, July 1 — AstraZeneca said today the European Union’s drug regulator accepted a market authorisation application for its investigational Covid-19 prevention drug, sipavibart, for an accelerated assessment.

HANOI, June 30 — Vietnam is set to build at least 10 new undersea cable routes by 2030, increasing the total number to 15 with a minimum capacity of 350 TeraBits per second (Tbps).

PARIS, June 28 — Water pollution levels in Paris’ River Seine are still much higher than allowed for bathing, data showed today, one month before the Olympics in which the capital’s landmark waterway is meant to be one of the swimming venues.

BENGALURU, June 28 — India is planning to offer incentives to promote local manufacturing of GLP-1 drugs used to treat diabetes and obesity, in 2026, a top government official said today.