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STEUBENVILLE, Ohio, Jan 5 (Reuters) - A county sheriff under fire for how he has handled a high school rape investigation faced down a raucous crowd of protesters on Saturday and said no further suspects would be charged in a case that has rattled Ohio football country.

Ma'lik Richmond and Trenton Mays, both 16 and members of the Steubenville High School football team, are charged with raping a 16-year-old fellow student at a party last August, according to statements from their attorneys.

Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla, accused of shielding the popular football program from a more rigorous investigation, told reporters no one else would be charged in the case, just moments after he addressed about 1,000 protesters gathered in front of the Jefferson County Courthouse.

"I'm not going to stand here and try to convince you that I'm not the bad guy," he said to a chorus of boos. "You've already made your minds up."

Jan. 7, 2013 BBC

A stolen Henri Matisse painting, valued at $1m (£620,000), has been found by an art recovery specialist in London.

Le Jardin, or The Garden, was taken from the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm during a robbery in the early hours of 11 May, 1987.

According to reports at the time, attempts were made to sell it back to the museum for exorbitant sums.

The recovery came after an art dealer in Essex was offered the painting by a Polish collector just before Christmas.

Before handling the work, Charles Roberts, of Charles Fine Art, made a search of the Art Loss Register (ALR), a database of stolen, missing and looted artwork.

Once the match was confirmed, the recovery was handed to ALR director Christopher Marinello, who successfully negotiated the return of the painting, after convincing the individual concerned to release it to the UK.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A cat carrying a saw and a mobile phone was "detained" as it entered a prison gate in northeast Brazil, Brazilian media reported on Saturday.

Prison guards were surprised when they saw a white cat crossing the main gate of the prison, its body wrapped with tape. A closer look showed the feline also carried drills, an earphone, a memory card, batteries and a phone charger.

All 263 detainees in the prison of Arapiraca, a city of 215,000 people in the state of Alagoas, are considered suspect in the plot, which is being investigated by local police.

"It's tough to find out who's responsible for the action as the cat doesn't speak," a prison spokesperson told local paper Estado de S.Paulo.

The cat was taken to an animal disease center to receive medical care.

The incident took place on New Year's day but was first reported by national media on Saturday.

Associated Press

Violent crime in Detroit shadows the landscape like its rows of abandoned buildings, but now the city faces a new precedent, even as gun-related killings decline nationwide: More people were killed here last year than at any time in the past 20 years.

"America has a problem with guns, but the epicenter seems to be here in Detroit," Interim Detroit Police Chief Chester Logan said at a news conference Thursday, as city officials reported 386 criminal homicides in 2012, the highest since 1992.

"As the chief of police in the city of Detroit, I take a certain amount of blame for the spiraling gunplay in the city," he said, "but one of the things you should realize, and everybody here in this room should realize, is that gunplay is a national problem.”

Logan is correct: The United States is in the throes of another cultural self-examination about guns after the horrific deaths of 20 children and six adults at the hands of a 20-year-old gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

GATESVILLE, Texas (AP) — Jerry Hartfield was still a young man when an uncle visited him in prison to tell him that his murder conviction had been overturned and he would get a new trial.

Not long afterward, he was moved off of death row.

"A sergeant told me to pack my stuff and I wouldn't return. I've been waiting ever since for that new trial," Hartfield, now 56, said during a recent interview at the prison near Gatesville where he's serving life for the 1976 robbery and killing of a Bay City bus station worker. He says he's innocent.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Hartfield's murder conviction in 1980 because it found a potential juror improperly was dismissed for expressing reservations about the death penalty. The state tried twice but failed to get the court to re-examine that ruling, and on March 15, 1983 — 11 days after the court's second rejection — then-Gov. Mark White commuted Hartfield's sentence to life in prison.

(AP) A man with domestic problems fatally shot eight people, including a pregnant woman and two children, after taking alcohol and drugs in a rampage Friday near the Philippine capital that ended when he was shot dead by police, officials said.

At least eight other people were wounded in Kawit township, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) south of Manila, Cavite provincial Gov. Jonvic Remulla said.

The violence happened days after the death of a 7-year-old girl who was hit in the head by a stray bullet during New Year's Eve revelry in Manila sparked public criticism over lax gun control in the Philippines. Friday's rampage fueled pressure for more assertive action by authorities to deal with unlicensed firearms.

Ronald Bae, who was killed in the shootout with responding police, had been on a "drug and alcohol binge" with his friends since Monday, drinking and taking methamphetamine, Remulla said.

NPR

If a stranger attacks you inside your own home, the law has always permitted you to defend yourself. On the other hand, if an altercation breaks out in public, the law requires you to try to retreat. At least, that's what it used to do.

In 2005, Florida became the first of nearly two-dozen states to pass a "stand your ground" law that removed the requirement to retreat. If you felt at risk of harm in a park or on the street, you could use lethal force to defend yourself. The shooting of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., drew national attention to these laws.

Now, researchers who've studied the effect of the laws have found that states with a stand your ground law have more homicides than states without such laws.

"These laws lower the cost of using lethal force," says Mark Hoekstra, an economist with Texas A&M University who examined stand your ground laws. "Our study finds that, as a result, you get more of it."

Daily Mail

Four armed robbers are today being hunted by Paris police after £1million of goods was taken in the first ever organised raid on an Apple Store in France.

One worker was injured in the News Year's Eve attack on the shop in the Opera district of the French capital.

It took place at around 9pm on Monday, three hours after the close of business on the flagship store, which had reported outstanding business over Christmas and New Year.

Police believe it was coordinated to take place as police dealt with large crowds building up for the New Year Eve’s celebrations on the Champs Elysee and by the Eiffel Tower. 

The robbers, who were masked and carrying handguns, are believed to have attacked a security guard before helping themselves to smartphones and tablets.