A pregnant woman has been killed by dogs in a forest in northern France where a hunt with hounds was taking place, investigators have said. The body of Elisa Pilarski, 29, who was walking her own dogs, was discovered near the town of Villers-Cotterêts.

She died after “several dog bites to the upper and lower limbs and the head,” prosecutor Frédéric Trinh said. Police said they were carrying out tests on 93 dogs and that they had opened a manslaughter investigation. The tests, comparing fresh DNA samples with those taken from Ms Pilarski, will try to establish which animals were responsible for the attack and who they belonged to.

Five dogs belonging to Ms Pilarski, who was reportedly six months pregnant at the time of her death, were among those being tested. A post mortem examination showed that the victim had suffered dog bites to the head, torso and arms, causing a severe haemorrhage and massive blood loss.(BBC)…[+]

Orin Jules, the Sophia man who last week admitted to killing his brother in 2016 following a row over their family shop, was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Jules, 30, admitted that on June 18th, 2016, at Sophia, he unlawfully killed Dexter Jules. Although Orin Jules was charged with murder, when he appeared before Justice Sandil Kissoon last week at the High Court in Georgetown, he pleaded guilty to the lesser count of manslaughter.

According to prosecutor Mandel Moore, on the day in question, Orin Jules, subsequent to an argument between him and his brother, pulled a knife and stabbed his brother.(stabroek news)…[+]

Europe is in danger of creating a “lost generation” of young refugees who have fled war and persecution in their countries, the EU’s rights agency says. The Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) said it had identified seri ous challenges in integrating people aged between 16 and 24 across the EU.

It has urged member states to speed up asylum procedures, simplify family reunification and provide more housing. From 2015 to 2018, almost two million people received protection in the EU. Based on interviews with refugees and frontline staff in Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Sweden, the FRA released a report on Tuesday highlighting “serious obstacles” for young people seeking asylum across the bloc.

It has called on countries to implement “smart investments” to help encourage successful integration. “This report aims to contribute to reflection on how to achieve this, thus making sure that a whole generation will not be lost,” it reads.(BBC)…[+]

“I don’t know what else to do,” declared Taylor Swift in a lengthy Twitter post last week. “I just want to be able to perform my own music.” The star was distressed and upset. She wanted to play a medley of her hits at Sunday’s American Music Awards but her old record label had forbidden it.

Or so she claimed. The label hit back with a statement of its own, saying it hadn’t tried to stop the show and that Swift’s narrative “does not exist”. Insults were traded, politicians weighed in and, eventually, a settlement was reached.

Big Machine Records issued a statement on Monday night saying it had agreed “to grant all licences of their artists’ performances” for “the upcoming American Music Awards”. It didn’t mention Swift by name but the implication was clear: Her performance could go ahead. But the second half of the statement was the really interesting part. “It should be noted,” said the label, “that recording artists do not need label approval for live performances on television or any other live media.(BBC)…[+]

The island of Leguan, Region 3 is now better protected from overtopping with the reconstruction of the sea defence at Success. The Department of Public Information said that works on the hundreds of metres of rip-rap are part of a $334M Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) funded project on the island. Yesterday, Finance Minister, Winston Jordan commissioned the project which was completed last month.(Stabroek News)…[+]

Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera has acknowledged that the police committed “abuses” when dealing with protests which have been rocking the country for the past month.

He said “there was excessive use of force” in the police response to mass protests against inequality. There would be “no impunity” for those who committed excesses and abuses, he added. Twenty-two people have been killed and more than 2,300 injured.

In a televised speech, President Piñera acknowledged for the first time since the protests began that “abuses and crimes were committed, and the rights of all were not respected”.But he also criticised protesters who had engaged in acts of violence such as arson and attacks on the security forces, saying there would be no impunity either for them “nor for those [security agents] who committed excesses and abuses“.(BBC)…[+]

President Donald Trump has said he likes “the idea” of testifying in the impeachment inquiry against him. In a tweet on Monday Mr Trump said he would “strongly consider” the move after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested it over the weekend.

The Democrat-led inquiry is establishing whether Mr Trump withheld aid to Ukraine in return for an inquiry into ex-Vice President Joe Biden. The Republican president has dismissed it as a “witch hunt”.

On Sunday, Ms Pelosi said the president was welcome to “speak all the truth that he wants if he wants” before investigators. “If he has information that is exculpatory, that means ex, taking away, culpable, blame, then we look forward to seeing it,” she told the CBS News programme Face the Nation. In his tweets, Mr Trump attacked Ms Pelosi as “Our Crazy, Do Nothing” speaker, but said he would consider testifying “in order to get Congress focused again”.(BBC)…[+]

Sources at the dorms of the Anna Regina Multilateral School in Essequibo are angry over a report in Guyana Times about the students being affected because the kitchen was out of “essential food items.”

The Duke of York has answered questions about his links to Jeffrey Epstein for the first time, in a BBC interview. He spoke to BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis in an interview recorded at Buckingham Palace on Thursday.

Maitlis said it was a “no holds barred interview”, which will be broadcast on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Saturday. The duke faces serious claims over his ties to the 66-year-old US financier, who took his own life while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

In 2015, Prince Andrew was named in court papers as part of a US civil case against Epstein. One of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Roberts – now Virginia Giuffre – said she was forced to have sex with the duke three times between 1999 and 2002, in London, New York and on a private Caribbean island owned by Epstein.

At the time she was under-age according to Florida state’s law.(BBC)…[+]

For the second year in a row, Canada has refused visas to dozens of researchers – most of them from Africa – who were hoping to attend an artificial intelligence (AI) conference in Vancouver. The hassles have caused at least one other AI conference to choose a different country for their next event.

The Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NeurIPS), which brings together thousands of experts and researchers from all over the world, will be held in Vancouver next month. Last week, NeurIPS began hearing that several attendees had had their visas denied.

It was the second year in a row the conference has had visa troubles. In 2018, when the conference was held in Montreal, more than 100 attendees were denied visas.

The issue prompted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to defend Canada’s immigration system during the G7. “I can assure you that Canada is world-class in the way that it approves visas and encourages people from around the world to come participate in important global conversations like these,” he told Wired Magazine at the G7 in 2018. “I’m sure that  there will be people looking into what you have described.”

This year, event organisers had been working with Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada to try to make the visa process smoother, providing a list of names of people invited to attend the conference. But still problems persisted.(BBC)…[+]