Authored by Calum Patterson via Dexerto,
New broadcasting guidelines have been introduced in Europe to prevent women athletes from being sexualized through camera angles and slow-motion replays.
The European Broadcasting Union partnered with European Athletics to release new guidance for women's athletics coverage, with broadcasters urged to focus on performance and technical ability.
The guidelines warn against lingering shots of athletes' bodies, low camera angles that capture revealing views, and slow-motion replays that offer little technical or storytelling value.
"The sexualization of women athletes through selective camera angles and editing choices continues to be a significant concern across many sports broadcasts," said Glen Killane, Executive Director of EBU Sports.
"Lingering shots on bodies, low-angle cameras that capture revealing views, and excessive slow-motion replays that serve no technical or storytelling purpose are among the issues observed in the media coverage of women's athletics competitions today."
Broadcasters urged to avoid 'compromising' shotsThe 23-page Raising the Bar document uses examples from real broadcasts to highlight potentially "compromising" shots across high jump, pole vault, long jump, and running events.
Broadcasters are advised to avoid tight shots from behind athletes, low cameras underneath competitors, and certain slow-motion replays. Instead, wider angles showing run-ups, take-offs, and technique are encouraged.
British Olympic pole vaulter Holly Bradshaw said some athletes have even become distracted by camera positions during competitions.
"Many athletes, myself included have been in competitive scenarios where they are more focused on the cameras instead of their own performance," she said.
Bradshaw also revealed she has received social media abuse and seen "inappropriate videos" of herself and fellow athletes created from slow-motion competition footage.
The guidelines are now available to broadcasters covering women's athletics, with the EBU saying coverage should focus on athletes' "technical ability and compelling storytelling."
Never forget. https://t.co/q5Fzz1gp6G pic.twitter.com/CPthfFWxBx
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) July 14, 2026 Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 21:45Immense controversy has remained centered on Ben Gurion International Airport as dozens of giant US Air Force refueling tankers have essentially taken over the main Israeli flight hub for many months, since the start of Trump's Operation Epic Fury. Reports also say it has cost the airport hundreds of millions of dollars at this point.
The Israeli government itself seems to be divided, and there's been outrage among the general public as the presence of the American tankers has blocked and slowed regular commercial flights, leading to the recent cancelations of many passengers' tickets, but with an expected tens of thousands more cancelations to come.
On Tuesday the simmering controversy erupted again, and has even raised the possibility of introducing fresh tensions with Washington, after Israeli Transportation Minister Miri Regev announced that the government will not allow more than 20 US refueling tankers to be parked at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport at any given time.
Regev specifically addressed the domestic public's concerns over air travel. "Hundreds of thousands of plane tickets were bought by Israelis to fly and enjoy their summer vacation," the official said. "We promised that we will enable commercial flights and we will not cancel a single ticket because of American refueling planes."
Haaretz had already by June tallied that "Some 75 U.S. refueling planes occupy more than half of Ben-Gurion Airport's parking spots and fill up takeoff and landing slots" and cites airport officials who warn: "For lack of a solution, 1.5 million passengers may have their flights canceled this summer."
Anadolu Agency"Therefore I have given instructions that we will not allow any US refueling tankers to land at Ben Gurion Airport beyond the agreed number of 20 planes and the remaining planes will land at Air Force bases," Regev adds.
Israeli media notes that the crisis has been building:
The directive comes after the Israel Airports Authority warned that unless more US aircraft are removed from the country’s main international air gateway, as many as 50,000 flight tickets could be at risk of cancellation in the coming weeks.
The monthslong presence of US military aircraft at Ben Gurion Airport amid the Iran war has been preventing a full return to normal commercial flight operations, while also driving up operational costs for local airlines.
It's a deep irony that Israelis are increasingly complaining the United States military has effectively taken over Israel's international travel hub.
Media reports have been going so far as to call Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport a "US military base" - as the prominent local newspaper Haaretz does:
The US refueling aircraft and other military assets, which have been stationed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport for months, are causing congestion and may result in flight cancellations, Israeli officials and media reports have said, calling the facility a "US military base."
That prior report complained that "U.S. Air Force refueling aircraft have been stationed at Ben Gurion International Airport for three months, occupying parking spots, taking up takeoff and landing slots and worsening congestion at Israel's main international gateway since the war with Iran erupted in late February, officials say."
Again, a central irony here is that it has largely been US military assets protecting Israel the whole time, going all the way back from last year's June war, from Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks.
The U.S. has reportedly paused the withdrawal of its aerial refueling aircraft from Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport as tensions with Iran continue to escalate.
The Times of Israel, citing the Israel Airports Authority, reports that the tankers continue to occupy parking space… pic.twitter.com/ag8FY7ETET
The Netanyahu government is perceived by many to be a prime reason the US and Iran are at war in the first place, and so the Pentagon might argue that it's only fair that Israel host its large fleet of military planes and refueling aircraft.
Iran's large retaliatory strikes on US airbases in the Gulf region during the opening weeks of the conflict essentially forced the Pentagon to move its expensive, large aerial assets much further back from the front lines of the war. Previously several parked tankers at Gulf facilities were destroyed or damaged.
It still remains unclear whether the Transportation Minister's directive is approved by Netanyahu's office. Likely all it will take is one angry phone call from President Trump and the order could be reversed.
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 21:20Authored by Ian Miller via The Brownstone Institute,
Six years since “15 Days to Slow the Spread", data shows why our policies didn't work...
That policy has to have been one of the most disastrous in world history, created by “experts” who took all established pre-pandemic planning documents and tossed them out the window at the first opportunity.
It was a policy based on inaccurate reports out of China, which claimed that their lockdowns effectively stamped out transmission of Covid-19 within a matter of days.
It was a policy that ignored solid research – from established epidemiologists like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya – which found that the coronavirus had already spread much more widely than previously realized.
It must be noted forever that lockdowns and the associated mask mandates, vaccine passports, and school closures continued in some places for several years. The ramifications of those wretched policies will be quite literally endless. It’s not an exaggeration to say that lockdowns, our policies, and responses have quite literally changed the course of world history.
One would think that there would definitely be a concerted effort to understand whether such policies were effective or not. Whether approaching respiratory viruses with authoritarian crackdowns on businesses and schools was necessary to save lives.
Yet six years later, there’s unfortunately very little interest in examining those questions. And when you understand the data from Sweden, you will see exactly why.
Study on Swedish Approach to Covid Shows Lockdowns Didn’t WorkA study published in PubMed examined the Swedish approach to Covid policy, relative to its European counterparts, primarily because Sweden did not rely on lockdowns in response to the pandemic, but instead used “voluntary and sustainable mitigation recommendations,” the study says.
Despite a “majority of Swedes” supporting those policies, “this approach faced rapid and continuous criticism.”
That criticism came primarily from public health figures such as, surprise, surprise, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who criticized Sweden repeatedly for going against the herd.
“You’ve compared us to Sweden, and there are a lot of differences,” he said during a Senate Committee hearing in September 2020. “But compare Sweden’s death rate to other comparable Scandinavian countries. It’s worse. So I don’t think it’s appropriate to compare Sweden with us.”
“If you look at Sweden, they are in some trouble,” Fauci claimed on Good Morning America in late 2020. “They are starting to see that their death rate is much higher than the surrounding countries of Norway, Denmark, and Finland…They’re starting to see now that they’re having to rethink some of the things they did.”
This was, of course, not true. They did not “rethink” their strategy of light touch recommendations over lockdowns. And comparing Sweden exclusively to its neighbors is an absurd misdirection that no other country was subjected to. But Fauci, obviously never one for honesty or intellectual integrity, represented many public health figures who were anxious to see Sweden fail.
Yet as this research shows, reality was precisely the opposite.
The study explains that Sweden received criticism for “not legally enforcing mask-wearing in public spaces,” as well as keeping schools open and “being too permissive” with its policies. All the things that we were told were necessary to stop Covid and save lives. The researchers tested these statements using excess mortality data and stringency indices to compare Sweden across the whole of Europe, not just its neighbors.
They chose excess mortality because, unlike Covid specific measurements, it’s less subject to bias, differences in testing, and counting, and individual definitions of Covid-caused outcomes. It also accounts for deaths that “could potentially be indirectly attributed to the negative effects of strict lockdown measures and the overall strain on healthcare systems, leading to reduced access to healthcare for other diseases, among other factors.”
Turns out that what they discovered was that Sweden vastly outperformed the rest of Europe from 2020-2022, with outcomes that were remarkably similar to the other Nordic countries.
“Among 42 European countries, the cumulative excess all-cause mortality from January 2020 to December 2022 ranged from 46 (Luxembourg) to 1,080 (Bulgaria) deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, with a median of 351/100,000,” they write. “In Sweden, the excess mortality rate of 158/100,000 was among the lowest, ranked 37th among 42 countries, and not very different from other Nordic countries: Norway (129), Denmark (97), and Finland (228).”
So why did Sweden underperform in 2020 relative to their neighbors? Likely due, as the study explains, to “mortality displacement due to low all-cause mortality in 2019,” as well as “poorly organized older adult care structures.”
What does this mean? Essentially, there were significantly fewer deaths from all causes in Sweden in 2019, meaning there were more extremely elderly people alive in 2020 that were susceptible to severe outcomes from Covid. This is reflected in the massive age gradient with Covid-associated deaths. In Sweden, “~40% of the COVID-19-associated deaths were among patients in nursing homes,” the study says, “and 67% of all COVID-19 deaths were among individuals above 80 years of age, representing 10% of all deaths in that age group.”
For younger age groups, Covid was mostly a non-issue. “COVID-19 deaths below 50 years of age represented only 1.2% of all COVID deaths, including 21 individuals below 20 years of age, mostly with underlying co-morbidities, representing 1% of all deaths in that age group.”
Effectively, Covid ravaged extremely elderly people, while those under 50, despite the lack of mask mandates and lockdowns, saw very limited impact.
Sweden’s Lack of Lockdowns Led to Better OutcomesEqually important, they examined the “stringency index” for countries across Europe, then made a data table comparing that stringency to excess mortality from 2020-2022. Effectively, how strict were a country’s policies, and how much did that matter to reducing excess mortality?
Turns out, there’s a definitive, resounding answer which this chart demonstrates perfectly. Countries are plotted based on their stringency index, the x-axis, and excess mortality, the y-axis. The line demonstrates the trend in mortality rates, and there’s virtually no relationship between the severity of policy and preventing excess mortality.
The R-squared, effectively the relationship between stringency index and excess mortality, is just 0.14. The closer to 1, the more related stringency is to outcomes. This is 0.14.
Countries like Italy and Spain were some of the strictest when it came to lockdowns and mandates, yet ranked near the top in excess mortality rates. The UK, Portugal, the Netherlands and others were significantly more stringent and also had demonstrably worse outcomes. Denmark was the second least strict country and had the best outcomes, at least in this examination.
What does this tell us? Well, put simply, Fauci was wrong. Sweden did not underperform relative to its neighbors. It did significantly better than the rest of Europe, and of course, the United States. Lockdowns and stringency were not related, whatsoever, to reducing excess mortality. They never mandated masks, one of his chief policy recommendations, and outperformed other countries like Germany which imposed N95-level mandates for months on end.
This is a clear repudiation of the lockdown model. Which is precisely why Sweden’s example is deliberately being ignored today.
Because learning the actual results of these historically bad policies requires humility, accountability, and honesty, all qualities that many in public health are truly incapable of possessing.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/14/2026 - 20:55