Jackson Free Press

There's never a slow news week in Jackson, Miss., and last week was no exception. Here are the local stories JFP reporters brought you in case you missed them:

1. Starting in July if you're riding in a car in Mississippi, seatbelts are required for everyone in the vehicle. But previously, state law only required those passengers in the front seat to wear seatbelts.
2. Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker said in Jackson Tuesday that he supports President Donald Trump's decision to order air strikes on a Syrian air base last week.
3. Thousands of Mississippi's third graders will sit in front of computers later this month to take the statewide reading test, but the eyes of teachers and administrators at Finch Elementary School will be intensely focused on a dozen students at this Wilkinson County school.
4. Students used over $8.9 million in state financial aid at the University of Mississippi last year. The Legislature changed financial-aid law this year, however, and now students can no longer receive more than one grant.
5. Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber showed up recently alone late on a Friday to sit in the JFP's Zen Den for an almost two hour interview about his first term and what he will do differently, if re-elected.
6. Local job seekers may benefit from several upgrades to the Eudora Welty Library in downtown Jackson, including a new technology learning lab, 44 new computers and a freshly painted autism resource center.
7. The Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning board has narrowed its pool of candidates for the future president of Jackson State University and announced that interviews could begin soon.
8. Mississippi does not have to publicly disclose details of how it carries out executions, the state's highest court ruled Thursday.
9. Cecil McCrory, a businessman who bribed Mississippi's former prisons chief, will only have to pay a $20,000 fine, not the $150,000 originally imposed, after he testified Wednesday that his debts outweigh his assets.
10. The National Labor Relations Board is leveling new charges that Nissan Motor Co. and a contract worker agency at Nissan's Mississippi plant are violating workers' rights.

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