Heena Sharma Blog

Uber Technologies Inc . found more than 3,000 allegations of sexual assaults involving drivers or passengers on its platform in the US last year, part of an extensive and long-awaited review in response to public safety concerns. The ride-hailing company released an 84-page safety report Thursday, seeking to quantify the misconduct and deaths that occur on its system and argue that its service is safer than alternatives. US customers took about 1.3 billion trips last year, Uber said. About 50 people have died in Uber collisions annually for the past two years, at a rate about half the national average for automotive fatalities, according to the company. Nine people were killed in physical assaults last year, Uber said. Uber drivers reported nearly as many allegations of sexual assault as passengers, who made 56 per cent of the claims. There is little comparable data on assaults in taxis or other transportation systems, and experts have said the attacks are widely under-rep...

After a series of high-profile rape cases , India launched a national register of sex offenders for the first time in September. Those convicted of sex crimes – including rape and sexual harassment – will now be added to a database, access to which will be given to law enforcement agencies, but not the public. The aim of the new register is to reduce the number of crimes committed against women in India. But discouraging offences through a register is just part of the answer to improving women’s safety. Cultural attitudes toward sexual assault also need to change, as these can affect whether crimes are reported. Evidence from other countries with similar sex offender registers is mixed, finding that they don’t seem to have an effect on re-offending rates – though they may stop sex crimes from being committed by people not already on the register. Researchers suggest that one of the reasons for this is the potential cost to offenders of being added to the register, such as...

The Swedish Academy has been facing a crisis after reports emerged of 18 women claiming to have been raped, sexually assaulted or harassed by an Academy member’s husband International News  : The Swedish Academy said on Friday it would postpone this year’s Nobel Literature Prize for the first time in almost 70 years, as it is rocked by turmoil over links to a man accused of rape and sexual assault. “The Swedish Academy intends to decide on and announce the Nobel Prize in Literature   for 2018 in parallel with the naming of the 2019 laureate,” it said. The institution, founded in 1786, has on seven previous occasions chosen to reserve the prize: in 1915, 1919, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1936 and 1949. “On five of those occasions, the prize was delayed then awarded at the same time as the following year’s prize,” the Academy said in a statement. The body has been plunged in crisis since November, in the wake of the global #MeToo campaign, when Swedish newspaper of referen...