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Japan

Shanghai Subway To Harassed Women: You Had It Coming

Worldcrunch

WANT DAILY (China)

SHANGHAI - There have been numerous recent reports of female passengers being harassed on Shanghai's subway. Instead of acknowledging the complaints and enforcing security measures, the Shanghai subway authority has decided instead to post a photo of a woman wearing a transparent dress clearly showing her underwear on its website.

The photo's caption said: "If you takes the subway dressed like this, it's no wonder you get harassed. Since there are so many big bad wolves on the subway, girls should behave themselves!"

This quickly sparked serious controversy, as Chinese netizen outrage denounced the subway company's blaming the victim.

The "Voice of the Feminist" movement responded to the provocation by stating, "Women should be able to own their bodies. The subway company should take a stand against sexual harassment". This week, two volunteers from the feminist group protested on the subway with a board that read, "I may be hot, but you can't harass me", the Want Daily newspaper reported.

A man called Buddy said in his blog that "If the notion takes hold that women who wear less have only themselves to blame if they tempt males to commit crime , the end result will be that a woman won't be allowed out unless she covers herself from head to toe."

Joe, another blogger asked if "according to the subway company, does this mean that me are allowed to harass women at the swimming pool?"

Others, however, defended the Shanghai metro authority, saying an appropriate dress code in public is common sense.

Photo - Weibo/xiangqi119

Photo - via Want Daily

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

Bucha To Bakhmut, Mariupol To Maryinka: Our Brutal Introduction To Ukraine's 'Hero Cities'

The world has come to know Ukraine’s geography through decisive battles and unspeakable war crimes in places like Mariupol, Bucha and now Bakhmut. We zoom in on what these places mean for the war, in both strategic and symbolic terms.

Bucha To Bakhmut, Mariupol To Maryinka: Our Brutal Introduction To Ukraine's 'Hero Cities'

Ukrainian soldiers preparing a tank for combat on the Bakhmut front.

Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Bakhmut, an eastern city of just over 70,000, was known across the region for its sparkling wine and salt mines – and around the world, it was barely known at all.

Through cruel coincidences of fate and geography, the names of places like Bakhmut have become iconic as they appear in newspaper headlines, day after day.

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Now, Bakhmut joins the annals of history alongside places like Iwo Jima, Gallipoli or Falluja that appeared on the map in pitched battles. Or like Aleppo — introduced to many around the world as the site of atrocities during the Syrian Civil War, though known to both history and food buffs for its UNESCO-recognized ancient souk and thousands of years of multicultural culinary wonders.

Over the past 15 months, the world has come to know Ukrainian geography, often in the most tragic circumstances. Just a few weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion in Feb. 2022, the Ukrainian government recognized 14 cities, including Kherson, Mariupol, Bucha and Irpin, as “Hero Cities” – a distinction dating back to World War II, when the Soviet Union recognized cities like Kyiv and Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd) for their residents’ bravery and determination in the face of the Nazi invasion.

After more than a year of full-scale war and as Ukraine's long-awaited counterattack nears, we look at some of the places that have become the site of crucial battles in the ongoing conflict, forever seared into posterity:

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