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  • 9
    May
    2013
    11:11am, EDT

    Look like you've had a few drinks? Delhi's subway starts breath-testing passengers

    Raveendran / AFP - Getty Images file

    Delhi Metro passengers watch a policeman as he patrols with a sniffer dog on a train in this file photo.

    By Alastair Jamieson, Staff writer, NBC News

    Passengers on Delhi's subway face being breath-tested for alcohol consumption in an experiment aimed at preventing late-night brawls, according to local media reports.

    Anyone who appears drunk will be tested and possibly refused entry to the metro system, according to the Hindustan Times.

    The pilot project seeks to reduce the number of late-night fights on the city’s subway, which carries almost 2 million people a day.

    It also follows wider public concern about alcohol and lawlessness. The alleged perpetrators of the December 16, 2012 gang rape on a New Delhi minibus - in which a medical student died, prompting global outrage – were drunk, according to prosecutors.

    Although there is no law against being drunk on a train in India, anyone found to have more than 30mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood will be denied travel, according to the Telegraph newspaper in Calcutta.

    "Drunkenness is an unnecessary nuisance to other passengers. It's uncomfortable if you have to share space with someone who is reeking of alcohol," Hemendra Singh, spokesman for the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which is responsible for metro security, told AFP.

    Singh said officers would only breath-test people who shows signs of being under the influence of alcohol, adding that drunken brawls had become a problem on the metro, especially in the late evening.

    The CISF has asked metro authorities for 130 hand-held breath-testing devices, similar to the ones used by traffic police.

    Not everyone has welcomed the idea. “Not everyone who drinks is a potential rapist or a molester to be kept under watch. If there was a measure for silliness, this beats all records,” 21-year-old student Rakesh Srivastava told the Calcutta Telegraph. 

    Related:

    • Female tourists shun India after gang rape, murder
    • 5 accused men plead not guilty in India gang rape
    • India gang-rape victim's father: Hang the 'monsters' responsible

    10 comments

    This is a step in the right direction. You at least drive your own car now once you are denied access to public transportation after a long night of drinking.

    Show more
    Explore related topics: featured, india, alcohol, delhi, subway, metro
  • 25
    Jan
    2013
    1:32am, EST

    Greek riot police break up striking subway workers' sit-in

    By Karolina Tagaris, Reuters

    ATHENS - Greek riot police stormed a subway train depot in Athens early on Friday to disperse striking subway staff who defied a government order to return to work for a ninth consecutive day, a police official said.

    Scuffles broke out when police forced their way through a metal gate shortly after 4 a.m. (0200 GMT) and detained at least 10 workers, the official said on condition of anonymity. One woman was taken to hospital with light injuries, he added.

    The escalating standoff has turned into the latest test for Greece's fragile coalition as it faces down the unions to implement austerity measures demanded by foreign lenders as the price for bailout funds.


    Subway workers have ignored the order, issued under emergency legislation by the conservative-led government on Thursday, paralyzing the Athens subway in a week-long walkout.

    About 90 workers stayed at the train depot overnight in protest. The subway workers, who have defied a court order to return to work, oppose being included in a unified wage scheme for public sector workers that would slash their salaries.

    Bus and railway workers are joining the walkout on Friday in solidarity.

    Under the emergency law, workers can face arrest and up to five years in jail. No arrests have been made so far, the official said. 

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

    2 comments

    Oh the poor little subway babies don't want to have their pay and benefits cut and would rather see their country economically collapse. They rather everyone else feel the pain but them. I hope they all lose their jobs so that those who have been out of work for a while can take them and be happy to …

    Show more
    Explore related topics: greece, strike, subway, riot, austerity, transit
  • 27
    Jun
    2012
    12:22pm, EDT

    Shanghai subway to scantily clad women: No wonder you'll be sexually harassed!

    Peter Parks / AFP - Getty Images

    A man passes a women wearing shorts as she waits for a subway train in Shanghai on Wednesday. A subway operator in the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai has caused uproar by warning women not to wear revealing clothes to avoid being groped by the city's "perverts."

    By Ed Flanagan, NBC News

    BEIJING – For women in Shanghai looking to beat the heat this summer with skimpier clothes, the city’s subway authorities have a message: dress appropriately or be ready to deal with the inevitable sexual harassment. 

    The controversy online started on June 20 when someone posted on the Shanghai Number 2 Subway Line official Weibo account – Chinese version of Twitter – a picture of a female passenger wearing a revealing dress with the comment: “If that’s what you wear on the subway, then no wonder you will be sexually harassed! There are perverts riding the subway every day and we can’t catch them all. Girls, you’ve got to respect yourself!”

    Outrage over the comment was swift and voluminous, quickly becoming the second-most discussed topic on Weibo with nearly 16,000 forwards and 7,000 comments tagged to the original post alone.


    No right to judge!
    The overwhelming number of comments condemned the message and its insinuation that revealing dress could be viewed as an invitation for harassment; branding it blatant gender discrimination. 

    "It's a woman’s business to choose what to wear, if laws or your regulations do not forbid her from dressing like this, you [the Metro] have no right to chastise them,” wrote one commentator. “If your logic were right, then all men would harass women in the swimming pool.”

    “You have the right to judge whether people are dressing elegantly or not.  And you have the right to like it or not,” wrote another critic of the Shanghai Metro. “But you have no right to harass anyone!” 

    Some people also raised questions about the fact that the Shanghai Metro staff took a photo of the unwitting passenger in the first place, and, adding insult to injury, used the photo in its controversial public service announcement. 

    Zhejiang Province Police

    The Zhejiang province police department's diagram meant to give women guidance on how men's lurking eyes can lead to sexual harrassment.

    “First I think the Metro has no right to insult others, especially their passengers. It's a matter of professional decency,” wrote Hao Junbo, a lawyer on Weibo. “If the Metro published this person's picture without approval beforehand, it violates the passenger's rights.”

    Responding to the criticism, Lan Tian, a press officer for Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, the authority that runs the Shanghai subway, justified the company’s comments to the Chinese state newspaper Global Times.

    "As the city's subway operator, we have the responsibility to warn women of the potential danger of sexual harassment on the subway," he told the Global Times. "At the same time, we are not justifying any kind of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior." 

    Nevertheless, perhaps inspired by the general sentiment expressed online, a couple days later on June 24, several women went to another subway station in Shanghai to protest the Weibo post by the Shanghai Metro.

    Donning black veils that covered their faces and holding signs that said things like, “Just because I'm slutty doesn't mean you can be dirty,” the girls rode the subway in an attempt to call attention to the issue.

    Interestingly, this time though, online sentiment was against the protestors, with many arguing that women should in fact dress more conservatively while riding the subway. A recent online poll by Sina Weibo found that 55 percent of over 10,000 people agreed with that sentiment.

    Elaborate diagrams to thwart harassment
    By all accounts, reports of sexual harassment on the Shanghai metro have been on the rise this year. An editorial in Wednesday’s edition of China’s People’s Daily noted that there had been seven cases of sexual harassment since May of this year.

    There has been a greater emphasis nationally to raise awareness about sexual harassment and to educate Chinese women on how to protect themselves. But some of the recent articles on how to avoid becoming a victim of sexual harassment verge on the ridiculous. 

    A recent article by the popular Chinese web portal, QQ, includes a number of graphics showing how men attempt to harass women by looking up skirts on elevators or even when women try on shoes at department stores.  

    But this diagram put out on the Zhejiang province police department’s official Weibo account earlier this year was perhaps the most puzzling. It looks like an elaborate SAT math question requiring a thorough grounding in geometry. For example, the second and third illustrations are designed to help women understand the angles at which men can position their heads or bodies to look up their skirts while riding the subway.

    If the diagram is confusing already with its multiple diagrams, consider the English translation of the explanation:

    “If the eyes of the ‘observer’, i.e. the point E, is right on the extension of segment BC, then point B would fall into his eyesight. Then, let's make another line of DE which goes through E and is perpendicular to the extension of AC, then the right triangle of DEC is similar to the right triangle of ABC. So clearly, the length of DC is the horizontal distance between the man's eye and the lady’s skirt. Ladies, have you figured that out?” 

    Unsure if you have figured out whether that man is looking up your skirt? Consult the closest math teacher in your subway car.

    NBC News’ Horace Lu contributed to this report.

    More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

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    • Iraq orders Voice of America, 43 other media outlets to close
    • Report: Syrian general, dozens of other soldiers defect to Turkey

    Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world


     

     

    465 comments

    Sadly, the women who dress in revealing ways end up with the attention from many pigs in the world. Happens everywhere. Happens to women who aren't dressed in revealing attire, as well. We just hear and read about more harassment of women in revealing clothes -- because that's what the press wants u …

    Show more
    Explore related topics: featured, china, subway, shanghai, sexual-harassment, ed-flanagan
  • 14
    Jun
    2012
    10:39pm, EDT

    Last fugitive in 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack arrested

    Asahi Shimbun / AFP/Getty Images

    FILE PHOTO: On March 20, 1995, subway passengers waited to receive medical attention after inhaling nerve gas.

    By Arata Yamamoto, NBC News in Tokyo

    Updated at 7:11 a.m. ET: TOKYO - After 17 years on the run, the last remaining member of the Japanese doomsday cult wanted for the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system was arrested by police Friday.

    Katsuya Takahashi, a former member of the Aum Shirikyo cult who is believed to have been responsible for transporting cult members to the site of the subway attack, which left 13 dead and 54 wounded.


    He was arrested at a 24 hour comic book cafe after a tip-off to Tokyo police from a cafe employee.

    The search for Takahashi had been dormant for close to two decades, but took a dramatic turn earlier this month when another former cult member Naoko Kikuchi who had been wanted for her involvement in the sarin production, was apprehended by the police.

    Suspect in 1995 Tokyo gas attack arrested in Japan


    Follow @msnbc_world

    After questioning Kikuchi, investigators were able to piece together the last 17 years of Takahashi's life, leading them to the construction company where Takahashi had been working up until Kikuchi's arrest.

    From there, surveillance videos surfaced capturing images of Takahashi at a nearby bank and a shopping center.

    Takahashi has told police that he was only following orders from the cult, and wasn't aware of some of the operations' objectives.

    AP / Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department via Kyodo News

    Video footage of a surveillance camera released by Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department shows Katsuya Takahashi, a former member of Aum Shinrikyo cult, at a bank near Tokyo.

    Although the principle ringleaders of the cult have long been convicted and sentenced, authorities are hoping that this arrest of the last Aum Shirikyo suspect will shed new facts and details on the cults' most heinous crimes.

    The cult was founded in 1984 by leader Shoko Asahara on a doomsday principle that World War III would be instigated by the United States. Asahara predicted the world would come to an end in 1997.  

    Msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

    More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

    • Gruesome photos spotlight China's one-child policy
    • Egyptian media targets Islamist candidate
    • Report: US expands secret 'shadow war' in Africa
    • Transgender pageant winner murdered in South Africa

    Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

    47 comments

    Hang him high until his skinny neck snaps.

    Show more
    Explore related topics: featured, japan, gas, attack, tokyo, subway, cult, 1995, sarin, attacksarin-gas-attack
  • 2
    Feb
    2012
    6:55pm, EST

    Dead bodies stashed in London subway broom closets

    By msnbc.com staff

    Some 50 people a year kill themselves on London’s subway, and in order to keep the trains running their bodies are often stored in cleaning closets until someone can claim them, a new television documentary reveals.

    Several subway workers, disgusted with the practice, spoke to the documentary filmmaker on condition of anonymity, Britain’s Telegraph reported on Thursday.


    The documentary, called "Confessions from the Underground" quotes one disturbed emergency worker as saying he put a body in area where industrial trash containers are stored.

    “Putting a body in there, not in the bin, in with the bins, it’s not really respectful,” the man said, according to the Telegraph. “However, do I keep the station shut until the coroner and his guys gets there and inconvenience the rest of London?”

    In other interview, a worker said janitors who went to a closet to use a mob or a bucket sometimes encounter a “poor unfortunate person’s body there.”

    A spokesman for London’s Underground told the Telegraph that counseling was made available to workers if needed.

    The documentary was scheduled to be broadcast Thursday night in Britain.

    More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

    • Egyptians share the blame in soccer tragedy
    • White House: No decision yet on end to combat in Afghanistan
    • London landlords evict tenants to gouge tourists?
    • Defiant Chinese village takes steps toward democracy

     

    7 comments

    This is so sad, People died and no matter what the reason was they had they're gone and all people do here is make jokes and the authorities don't even give the bodies proper care. Yeah I think the world has went down a few more notches this time. Rest in peace those that have left us.

    Show more
    Explore related topics: london, suicide, subway, bodies, underground

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