■Mayor Sean M. Dunphy visited the new Rockridge retirement home at Laurel Park Thursday and was given a guided tour of the new facility. It is expected that Rockridge will be ready for occupancy about April 1.
■Anthony M. Symanski Jr. of Hatfield has joined Smith College as chief accountant in the office of the treasurer. He has been assistant controller at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, and was previously an accountant for the Pyrofax Gas Company of West Springfield.
■Propelled by more than 100 volunteers, two moving days went smoothly at JFK Middle School over the weekend, as students, parents and teachers got closer looks at the new $14.89 million school. Volunteers worked shifts moving materials out of rooms in the old portion of the school to the new addition, which will open Feb. 26.
■A Leverett woman who is a member of an international peace group is being held under house arrest in a Hutu refugee camp in Goma, Zaire. Paula Green, 51, was taken into custody Sunday as part of the Zairian Army’s attempt to break up the camp on the border with Rwanda, a country in central Africa.
■U.S. Sen. John Kerry encountered a loud and often angry crowd during a town hall meeting at the Northampton Center for the Arts on Saturday, as area residents grilled him about his support for the war in Afghanistan, federal spending and the federal government’s response to the recession.
■The number of people losing their homes to foreclosure in Hampshire County shot up by 75 percent in 2010 over the previous year, far exceeding a statewide increase of 32 percent during the same period, according to figures provided by The Warren Group in Boston.