■The 153rd annual Three County Fair at Northampton will be launched Sunday with a full program of activities, ranging from an antique automobile fair and all-star gymkhana Sunday afternoon to pari-mutuel horse racing Monday through Saturday. The fair is the nation’s oldest in continual operation.
■After 12 years of proposing, planning and constructing, Hampshire College’s first class, consisting of 250 students, will begin this studies, and the loose amalgam known as “The Five Colleges” will for the first time actually include five operational colleges.
■John Heaps took over as president and chief executive officer of the Florence Savings Bank on May 1. Heaps’ last job was executive vice president and director of small-business banking for Bank of Boston in Hartford, Conn.
■John Calipari’s new 10-year contract, which was finalized yesterday, gives the 36-year-old men’s basketball coach ample incentive to stay at the University of Massachusetts, while making it easy for him to leave if he chooses to. “I’ve said it all along, I plan to be at UMass for a very long time,” Calipari said in a statement yesterday.