Murder trial puts French judiciary in the dock

The Guardian reports Emile Louis has been charged with the abduction and murder of seven women, many with learning difficulties and living in care, who were among 30 who disappeared in the Yonne region of northern Burgundy over the course of three decades. Probes into the disappearances have either been deliberately blocked or handled incompetently and dozens of case files have gone missing, leading to speculation that the girls were victims of a high-level sex ring that raped and murdered its way through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, then stifled all subsequent investigations. Full report in The Guardian