With the Paris Olympics fast approaching, questions remain over whether the Seine will be clean enough for athletes to swim in. Triathlon and marathon events are set to take place in the river, where swimming has been illegal for over a century. 

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, took a dip in the Seine this week to prove it was clean. But uncertainty about the Seine's safety is still a focal point of this year's Games. 

'A complicated and very costly problem'
Paris has invested $1.5 billion over the past few years in a massive clean-up project, building new infrastructure to trap more stormwater when it rains. It's the "same water that contains bacteria-laden wastewater that enters the river during periods of heavy rain and makes it unsafe to swim in," said The Associated Press. In May, Paris officials instituted an underground storage basin to collect excess rainwater and prevent wastewater from flowing into the Seine. 

But a few days of torrential rain could push the levels of E. coli beyond a limit the World Triathlon Federation has deemed safe for competition. It's a "complicated and very costly problem," Metin Duran, a professor at Villanova University who has researched stormwater management, said to the AP.

Official city testing showed that E. coli levels at the Pont Alexandre III bridge, where the triathlon events will be held, were above acceptable levels on 22 out of 30 days between June 3 and July 2, "potentially exposing athletes to serious health risks," CNN said. Still, authorities say the Seine's water quality has improved recently, and they are "confident for the Olympics now."

'The health of the athletes must come first'
Time will tell if the confidence of French leaders will convince Olympic athletes that the river is safe. Their reactions have been mixed. The Seine is "not made for swimming this year," Brazil's Ana Marcela Cunha said to Bloomberg. "I think that the health of the athletes must come first." U.S. triathlete Morgan Pearson said to Yahoo Sports that he is "not concerned at all" and can "only really control myself and my training."

Scientists have invented a new drug that raises the tantalizing prospect of increasing human lifespan by up to 25%. The breakthrough speaks to the quest for a longer life that is "woven through human history," said the BBC. But how close are we to finding a cure for aging? And do we necessarily even want to? 

What did the commentators say? 
Middle-age lab mice gained an increased lifespan of nearly 25% after scientists found that switching off a protein called IL-11 prevented cancer and improved metabolism, lung health and muscle function. The finding "opens up" the possibility of taking the therapy to humans, Professor Stuart Cook, from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Medical Science at London's Imperial College, said to The Telegraph. The hope is that "one day" anti-IL11 therapy will be "used as widely as possible, so that people the world over can lead healthier lives for longer."

"Eternal youth" is the "stuff of religion and mythology," said Helen Pilcher at BBC Science Focus. It "sounds like snake oil," but there is a "growing body of research that is betting on making it a reality."

New technologies could play a part. Bio-tech firm Insilico Medicine "wants to cure diseases and slow aging, with the help of AI," said Reed Albergotti at Semafor. The researchers believe AI may "enable so much precision" that pills could "target the specific cells in our body that make us get older," and "human lifespans will increase drastically."

What next? 
Aging has never looked so "treatable," but clinical trials "don't come cheap," said Pilcher. "So the question is: Who pays?" Government funding agencies "seemingly aren't keen to invest in the anti-aging area," regulators "don't tend to fund studies of drugs that are already on the market," and the pharmaceutical industry "won't cough up for trials of drugs that are generic, cheap or off-patent, with no profit margin." 

Yet while miraculous anti-aging pills are not imminent, anti-IL-11 treatments are currently in human clinical trials for other conditions, "potentially providing exciting opportunities to study its effects in aging humans in the future," said Cook.