A French student has spoken out after she was harassed by a man in a Paris street and then hit in the face when she told him to stop.
Marie Laguerre shared CCTV video of the man slapping her outside a cafe in the north-east of the capital.
The video has gone viral and coincides with a government push to impose on-the-spot fines for street harassment.
“The first fines should be handed out this autumn,” said Equalities Minister Marlène Schiappa.
Offenders will have to pay between €90 (£80; $105) and €750 under a package of measures that was backed by French MPs in May and is set to complete its passage through parliament this week.
The initiative has resonated among French women as the #MeToo movement and its French equivalent #BalanceTonPorc (“rat on your pig”) have gathered pace.
Ms. Laguerre, 22, had been returning home last Tuesday in the 19th district of Paris when a man started making obscene and degrading comments and “noises with sexual connotations,” she explained in an interview with French radio on Monday.
“It wasn’t the first time – that day, that week, or that month, it had been building up. I got angry and said ‘shut up.’ I didn’t think he’d hear, but he did,” she told French TV.
At that point the man became angry and threw an ashtray, missing her by inches, she added.
After exchanging insults, the man walked towards her and was captured striking her on the cafe’s video.
“I know he’s going to hit me. I could have run off but there was no question of that. I wasn’t going to look down and certainly wasn’t going to apologise,” she said. He hit her forcefully on the cheek and continued shouting at her.
While people sitting in the cafe remonstrated with the man, she went home but quickly decided to go back to the cafe to take witness statements and complain to the police.
Everyone at the cafe had found her response normal, she said, and the owner gave her the video to help catch the attacker.
It has now been viewed more than a million times.
Ms. Laguerre said fighting back against such aggression was hard, but all women were affected by it and it was time to say stop.
“I can’t keep quiet and we mustn’t stay silent,” she wrote on Facebook.
The equalities minister told Le Parisien newspaper she was outraged by the attack and said the aim of the new law was to impose a clear social ban on harassment.
Paris prosecutors have responded to the attack on Marie Laguerre by opening an inquiry into sexual harassment and armed violence, although the man has yet to be traced.
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Lombok earthquake: 543 hikers evacuated from Mt Rinjani
More than 500 hikers who were stranded on a mountain on the Indonesian island of Lombok after an earthquake have been safely evacuated.
The 6.4 magnitude quake on Sunday triggered landslides around Mount Rinjani, cutting off escape routes.
Most of the hikers and guides were able to walk down after a safe route was found for them but some were flown out by helicopter.
At least 16 people were killed in the quake and more than 330 were injured.
Rescue workers are still waiting to bring down the body of an Indonesian hiker who was killed by falling rocks.
A Malaysian tourist also died.
The volcano, which rises 3,726m (12,224ft) above sea level and is the second-highest one in Indonesia, is a favourite among sightseers.
Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told AFP that 543 people had arrived back at the foot of the mountain by Monday night.
I Gusti Lanang Wiswananda, a spokesman for Mataram search and rescue agency, told AFP that they were all “tired but in good condition.”
Hundreds of people in Lombok have been left homeless and are staying in temporary camps amid continuing aftershocks.
Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because it lies on the Ring of Fire – the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim.
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Syria war: IS ‘seized women and children’ in Sweida attack
Islamic State (IS) militants are holding more than 30 women and children hostage in south-western Syria, a monitor and local media say.
They are thought to have been seized during a wave of deadly IS attacks in Suweida province last week.
The Syrian government controls most of the region but IS militants hold a small amount of territory there.
Pro-government forces recently launched a campaign to retake remaining rebel – and jihadist – held areas in the south.
The abductions were reported by the Suwayda24 website and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, following a series of suicide bombings that targeted an area dominated by the Druze ethnic minority on 25 July.
More than 200 people were killed.
The Druze are the third-largest religious minority in Syria and are considered to be heretics by IS jihadists.
The SOHR said that at least 36 women and children had been seized by IS.
Several women have since managed to escape, and two have died, the reports say.
Negotiations to secure their release are underway, according to Suwayda24.
The IS group has so far not spoken about the kidnappings.
Over the past year, IS fighters have lost most of the land they once held across Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
At the peak of the group’s power, about 10 million people lived in IS-controlled areas, but the US military said earlier this year that the jihadists had been ousted from 98% of their former territory.
In Syria, the group is still present in small pockets in the southern provinces of Suweida and Deraa, as well as in parts of the country’s east.
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