■Mrs. Betty Learned Williams, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Wilfred H. Learned of Florence, an assistant director of the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C., has returned from a trip around the world. She left Washington Jan. 26 to visit the Volunteer Peace Corps setup in various places around the globe.
■John Rogers, president of the Student Council at Northampton High School, and Hiram Brownell, editor of the school newspaper “Devil’s Advocate,” have been selected by the faculty to represent Northampton High School at the Presidential Classroom for Young Americans, held in February in Washington, D.C.
■The Northampton Board of Health has rejected a compromise offered by a group of restaurateurs that would have allowed some smoking in local restaurants. The unanimous decision by health officials not to accept the compromise came at a two-hour private session Wednesday night.
■While drivers keep their eyes on the road, cameras are keeping track of student behavior in the back rows of some area school buses. The eye of the video camcorder is heralded by school administrators as an objective observer, the most advanced way of monitoring what one official called the “he said-she said finger-pointing” of school bus scuffles.
■Northampton physician Jay Fleitman, who chairs the city’s Board of Health, has started the long climb to unseat Democratic Congressman Richard Neal of Springfield. As a Republican, Fleitman knows he has his work cut out for him, but says, “I’m not doing this to make a statement. I’m doing it to win.”
■In less than two months of fundraising, the Northampton Neighbor’s Relief Fund appears to have topped out at around $83,000. The fund, which is administered by the United Way of Hampshire County, was created to benefit the victims of the Dec. 27 arsons in downtown neighborhoods.