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In the Nation

Girl, 11, won't be charged in death

LONG BEACH, Calif. - Prosecutors declined to file charges against the opponent of a 10-year-old girl who died hours after an after-school fight, police said Wednesday.

The death of Joanna Ramos came after a "fight between two children that ended with unintended and tragic results," but no crime was committed, police said in a statement. The name of Joanna's 11-year-old opponent has not been made public. District attorney spokeswoman Jane Robison declined further comment.

Joanna was pronounced dead Feb. 24, about six hours after she tussled with the other girl in an alley near her school. Her family previously said she underwent emergency surgery for a blood clot on her brain. - AP

Nazi-claimed art back with family

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A 500-year-old painting auctioned by the French government during the Nazi occupation in World War II is back in the hands of a Jewish family who proved it was sold illegally.

U.S. authorities in Tallahassee on Wednesday signed paperwork to return the 16th-century Baroque painting to representatives of the family of Federico Gentili di Giuseppe.

He died in 1940 shortly before the Nazis occupied France. The Vichy government sold the painting, but the sale has been deemed illegal. The family plans to auction Christ Carrying the Cross this year. It could fetch up to $3.5 million.

U.S. authorities seized the painting from a Florida museum in November. - AP

Vatican targets U.S. nun group

The Vatican's orthodoxy watchdog has announced a full-scale overhaul of a group representing most U.S. nuns and named an American archbishop to oversee the reform.

The Vatican agency on Wednesday cited the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the largest umbrella group for Roman Catholic religious sisters in the United States, for using materials that "do not promote church teaching" on family life and sexuality, for sometimes taking positions in opposition to the nation's bishops, and for being "silent on the right to life from conception to natural death. . . ."

Representatives for the women's group, based in Silver Spring, Md., did not immediately respond to requests for comment. - AP

4 Kan. inmates flee; 2 still loose

TOPEKA, Kan. - The Kansas Department of Corrections said that one of the four inmates who escaped from jail Wednesday has been captured in Nebraska. Another had been quickly apprehended.

A department spokesman said Drew Wade, 21, was taken into custody Wednesday evening in Nebraska.

The four escaped from the Ottawa County jail in Minneapolis, Kan., where they had been transferred because of overcrowding at a state prison. The two still at large include a convicted murderer. - AP

Elsewhere:

A military judge has once again postponed the trial of the Army psychiatrist charged in the deadly Fort Hood shooting rampage. Maj. Nidal Hasan's court martial is now set to begin in August instead of June on the Texas Army post.