■In Akron, Ohio, this week champions and celebrities gather for the 33rd annual All-American Soap Box Derby. Representing the Gazette-Kiwanis Derby this week will be Edward Seymour of Florence, this year’s Soap Box Derby winner.
■At a recent meeting of the West Farms Civic Association a membership committee was established. Co-chairmen are Mrs. John Holich and Mrs. Sam Apgar. Other members of the committee are Mrs. Richard Bowler, Mrs. Joseph Frost and Frank Gurecki.
■Some 80 Northampton schoolteachers will be canceling their reservations at a weeklong training institute later this month if they have not settled on a new contract by then. The “work to rule” job action they voted in June would force them to cancel their participation in workshops on the New Zealand literacy approach to teaching.
■With a temporary park set up at Sheldon Field on Bridge Street for skateboarders, a task force is pondering where to build one permanently. Members of the Mayor’s Task Force on Skateboarding are looking at Veterans Field off South Street as the best place to build a permanent facility.
■A former fabric manufacturer will house a long-awaited, high-performance regional computing center that should spur jobs and research opportunities, Gov. Deval Patrick announced Monday. The Holyoke High Performance Computing Center will be located at the former headquarters of Mastex, which shut down last year, between Cabot and Appleton streets in the downtown canal district.
■The owners of a financially troubled nursing center are no longer in talks with a New York investor who was seeking to buy and take over management of the facility. The owners of the Northampton Rehabilitation and Nursing Center on Bridge Road apologized for the turmoil that talks with prospective buyer Samuel Pinter caused during the past few months.