West Helena News

James Cotton CELEBRATED SOUNDS: James Cotton has earned multiple awards for his booming harmonica notes, recorded nearly 30 solo albums and been inducted in both the Smithsonian Institution and the Blues Hall of Fame.

HELENA-WEST HELENA - Members of the Phillips County Quorum Court were overwhelmed Tuesday night by the amount of planning and money needed to reopen the county's decrepit jail.

The Arkansas Education Board agreed Monday to let two southwest Arkansas school districts merge and voted to keep two other districts under state control due to fiscal problems.

Pulaski County Special School District superintendent Jerry Guess listens Monday as the state Board of Education discusses continuation of the districts fiscal distress classification.

IMBODEN GRADUATION: Class motto: Our lives are before us, the past is behind us, but our memories are forever with us.

WEST HELENA, AR - The National Weather Service has a flood advisory in effect at Helena with the Mississippi expected to crest just short of flood stage on Sunday.

HELENA-WEST HELENA - Phillips County closed its jail Tuesday after a state inspection last month found that some of the jail's locks didn't work, inmates had easy access to materials they could fashion into weapons and human waste was overflowing onto cell floors.

In 1993, Helena's slackwater harbor was completed and county officials promised it would attract manufacturing jobs to the crumbling, poverty-ridden Mississippi Delta region.