State officials have launched a radio advertising campaign in an effort to get the word out about its new Tennessee Reconnect program. Tennessee Reconnect is a last-dollar scholarship program that was part of Gov. Bill Haslam’s Tennessee Promise legislation passed last year. The initiative allows adults to attend one of Tennessee’s 27 colleges of applied technology free of tuition and fees. It also ties in with Haslam’s “Drive to 55″ campaign to improve the state’s graduation rates from the current 32 percent to 55 percent by 2025 in order to help improve overall job qualifications and attract employers to...

72-year-old John Brown Ramsey, Jr. of Manchester was arrested last week on 33 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. Manchester Police Investigator Butch Stewart served warrants several weeks ago on Ramsey to take his computer to send it to the TBI for testing. According to the indictments, Ramsey possessed the pornographic material. The TBI checked Ramsey’s computer and allegedly found images that “included minors engaged in sexual activity or simulated sexual activity” on the computer. Manchester Police Chief Investigator Billy Butler says that they do not think any of the children shown on the computer images were local....

A Manchester woman was arrested on statutory rape charges after an alleged incident that occurred on Wednesday April 22. 48-year-old Kimberly Faye Sherrell of Archery Lane, Manchester is accused of having oral sex with a 14-year-old autistic boy. The teenager was apparently able to tell Manchester police what had happened to him. Sherrell was booked into the Coffee County Jail on the charge. The woman at last report was being held under a $50,000...

One of four defendants charged in the 2013 murder of Corey N. Matthews will go on trial May 4. David Jenkins is scheduled to appear at 9 a.m. on May 4 in Franklin County Circuit Court with Judge Thomas Graham presiding. Jenkins, along with John Corey Lanier, Coty Keith Holmes and Todd E. Dalton, have remained in custody, charged in the March 24, 2013 murder of Matthews, whose badly beaten body was found face up in a Cowan, TN cornfield. The men at one time all lived in Coffee County. All four men are being held in separate jails...

Gov. Bill Haslam has signed a bill to strip local governments of the power to bar people with handgun carry permits from being armed in parks, playgrounds and sports fields. The bill got tied up amid bickering between Republicans who control both the state House and Senate, and only passed once lawmakers agreed to remove the Capitol complex from the areas where permit holders could be armed. Opponents say the final version of the legislation is still confusing due to a provision banning guns “within the immediate vicinity” of school activities, but not defining a specific distance. More than...

The Coffee County Sheriff’s Dept. will host an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony at its new jail on Saturday and the public is invited to attend. The $22 million, 400-bed facility is located at 3176 Hillsboro Highway. The open house will take place from 1-5 p.m. Inside the new jail visitors will find separate quarters for male and female inmates. Also the facility has a roughly 1,200-square-foot medical wing inside the new jail that includes numerous examination rooms, a restroom and a quarantine facility for inmates with contagious illnesses. Each cell at the new jail will house two inmates....