■Two players who will figure prominently in Northampton High’s basketball future this winter are 6-3 center Jimmy Wentzel and 6-1 veteran guard Steve Woodruff. Hamp opens its season Dec. 15 by playing host to Pittsfield.
■Close to 1,500 University of Massachusetts students shivered in 18-degree temperatures while their dormitories were being searched for bombs when seven different bomb scares were reported to police Sunday night and early this morning. The high-rise dormitories in the Southwest Complex were affected as were other dormitories.
■At last, western Massachusetts has its own domain on the information superhighway. But the only information people will find there about the four western Massachusetts counties is a listing of strip clubs and swingers bars. Tracking “wmass.com” on the Internet’s World Wide Web leads to the Western Massachusetts Exotic Nights home page, a list of adults-only establishments in the Pioneer Valley.
■Northampton native Patrick Wolff was crowned the nation’s chess king this week after winning the U.S. Chess Championship in California. This is the second time that Wolff, 27, a student at Harvard University, has won the national championship.
■The plane that crashed Sunday afternoon in East Leverett Meadow was attempting to make an emergency landing when it clipped a high-tension wire with a wheel, causing it to plummet to the earth, killing one passenger and injuring another three, Massachusetts State Police said Monday.
■If it seems like downtown Northampton is sparkling a bit brighter than usual this holiday season, it’s not an illusion. There are more holiday lights — 24,000, to be exact — in more places than ever before, and the trend hasn’t gone unnoticed by shoppers and others who frequent downtown.