■A rooster was “arrested” early this morning for disturbing the peace on Linden Street in Northampton. Officer Luke Scanlon corralled one of two brightly plumaged fowls and took it to the police station. The other bird remains at large.
■John F. Kennedy School was closed by a bomb threat at approximately 8 last night. A dance in progress at the school was immediately canceled, as was the last hour of a recreational basketball program in the school gym.
■Patricia Coonerty, a trustee of the Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, called for the ouster yesterday of the school’s superintendent and her two fellow elected trustees, over their handling of the school’s farm. Coonerty told a gathering of some 20 citizen supporters of the farm that their failure to adequately support farm manager Ed Maltby was the reason he has quit, claiming frustration and weariness.
■Journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault spoke last night of her pioneering journey as a University of Georgia student and the family that inspired her career. Hunter-Gault addressed an audience of about 200 at Mount Holyoke College’s Chapin Hall. She is the first in a series of speakers scheduled in the coming months to honor the 200th birthday of Mount Holyoke’s founder, Mary Lyon.
■Hampshire County is fertile fundraising territory for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. Individual contributions to Warren’s campaign in 2011 by county residents totaled about $83,000, according to filings with the Federal Elections Commission. That was the fifth highest total for Warren donors among the state’s 14 counties.
■The proposed Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter School cleared a key hurdle Thursday in its quest to open in the fall when it won the backing of state Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester. The school, which will draw some of its students from Northampton and South Hadley, was one of four new charter schools the commissioner recommended to the state Board of Education for approval.