By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – The Jackson, Mississippi, school district has agreed to stop shackling students to fixed objects, after it was sued for handcuffing pupils to railings and poles at a school for troubled children, officials said on Friday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center sued Jackson Public Schools in 2011 over its treatment of students at the district’s Capital City Alternative School. Students at that campus have been suspended or expelled from other schools.

LOS ANGELES, May 25 (Reuters) – With Americans packing up
for travel over the Memorial Day weekend, one coastal hot spot
in Southern California is winning praise as the best U.S. beach
in an annual ranking from a Florida professor.

San Diego’s Coronado tops the list from “Dr. Beach,”
otherwise known as Stephen Leatherman, director of the
laboratory for coastal research at Florida International
University.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Ronald Reagan’s foundation expressed outrage on Monday at a British company’s auction of what it says is a vial of the late U.S. president’s blood taken at the hospital where he was treated after a 1981 assassination attempt.

PFC Auctions, a company based in Guernsey in the United Kingdom, announced on Sunday that it would sell the vial of blood in an online auction set to end on Thursday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The USS Iowa, which ferried the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt across the perilous Atlantic waters to a historic meeting with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin in the dark days of World War Two, will have to be towed to its final port call.

The battleship saw combat in the Pacific, survived a devastating explosion in a gun turret, and even a snub from the city of San Francisco. At the end of its final voyage, the storied warship will have a permanent mooring in Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The USS Iowa, which ferried the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt across the perilous Atlantic waters to a historic meeting with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin in the dark days of World War Two, will have to be towed to its final port call.

The battleship saw combat in the Pacific, survived a devastating explosion in a gun turret, and even a snub from the city of San Francisco. At the end of its final voyage, the storied warship will have a permanent mooring in Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The parents of two Chinese graduate students slain near the University of Southern California last month have filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing the school of misrepresenting the area as safe and failing to provide security patrols.

The 15-page lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court comes just over a month after Ming Qu and Ying Wu, both 23, were fatally shot as they were sitting in a 2003 BMW car that had been double-parked.

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – Former National Football League star Junior Seau, who killed himself last week, was buried on Friday after a private ceremony in his California hometown, with tens of thousands expected to attend a public memorial service later in the day.

Relatives of the former 43-year-old linebacker, who was of Samoan descent, threw lei garlands on his casket during the burial at a cemetery in Oceanside, just north of San Diego. Seau, regarded as one of the best defensive players of his generation, died on May 2 at his home in Oceanside from a self-inflicted gunshot to the chest, according to police. He left no suicide note.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Football great Junior Seau’s brain will be examined for evidence of repetitive injuries from his playing days following the retired linebacker’s suicide in his California beachfront home, a pastor for the family said on Friday.

Seau, a 12-time Pro Bowl (all-star game) selection who played for 20 years in the National Football League, was found unconscious at his home by his girlfriend on Wednesday with a gunshot wound to the chest and a revolver nearby, police said.

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – A suspension of open water yacht racing in the Pacific Ocean off the San Francisco coast, enacted after five sailors died in a wreck last month, could end before a planned May 25 race, a U.S. Coast Guard official said on Tuesday.

The Coast Guard declared a temporary “stand down” last week following the fatal wreck near the Farallone Islands, and just two days before four more sailors died after setting off on a race from Southern California for Mexico.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Two sailors killed in a mysterious crash at sea that reduced their vessel to ruins during a yacht race from California to Mexico died of blunt-force injuries, while a third crewman drowned, coroners reported on Monday.

The finding of blunt-force trauma in two of the deaths aboard the 37-foot sailboat Aegean was further indication the impact was a powerful one. A fourth sailor was still missing as investigators sought to determine if the yacht struck another vessel, presumably a larger ship, or a land mass.