More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
At an Olympics aiming to set the highest level of television standards, the head of broadcasting at the Tokyo Games is trying to banish overly sexualized images of female athletes.
"Sport appeal, not sex appeal" is one mantra Olympic officials push in an effort to reach gender equity on the field of play and on screen.
"You will not see in our coverage some things that we have been seeing in the past, with details and close-up on parts of the body," Olympic Broadcasting Services chief executive Yiannis Exarchos said Monday.
That can be difficult with state-of-the-art technology filming sports -- such as beach volleyball, gymnastics, swimming and track -- where female athletes' uniforms can be scant and skimpy.
Gymnasts from Germany sent a message against uniforms they believe exploit their sexuality by competing in Tokyo wearing unitards that covered their legs to the ankle.
A stronger protest was made this month away from the Olympics. At a European beach handball event, Norway's women refused to play in bikini bottoms and instead wanted to wear skin-tight shorts. They were fined for breaking clothing rules.
The International Olympic Committee does not govern those kinds of rules for individual sports, but it does run OBS and controls the broadcast output from Tokyo shown to the world.
"What we can do is to make sure that our coverage does not highlight or feature in any particular way what people are wearing," Exarchos said.
To achieve this, the IOC updated "Portrayal Guidelines" to steer all Olympic sports and their rights holders toward "gender-equal and fair" broadcasts of their events. Advice includes "do not focus unnecessarily on looks, clothing or intimate body parts" and reframing or deleting a "wardrobe malfunction ... to respect the integrity of the athlete."
The Olympic goals go beyond ending sexualized images, Exarchos said.
More women's and mixed gender events are on the Olympic program and are scheduled more prominently. Women's finals are held after men's finals in volleyball and team handball.
"We in media have not yet done all that we can do," said Exarchos, while claiming progress over the past 15 years. "This is something that we need to be frank and open (about) among ourselves."
It's a theme for the Tokyo Olympics, whose adviser on gender equality was critical of Japanese media while sharing the stage Monday with the head of Olympic broadcasting.
"It's really biased when it comes to gender," said Naoko Imoto, who swam for Japan at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and now works for UNICEF, the United Nations children's rights agency.
"Many of the channels look at female athletes (as) girls or wives or mothers and not really as pure athletes," she said. "Most of it also really gives attention to the looks saying ... they are beautiful or sexy."
The Tokyo Olympics have been positioned as a chance to drive change in Japanese society and embrace diversity. Imoto said she hoped Japanese media and sports officials would talk after the Games "about the standards of portrayal."
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”