■Doug Cooney of Northampton, a junior at the University of Massachusetts, is representing UMass at the national collegiate weight-lifting championships at Cornell University this weekend. Cooney won the junior New England championship as a freshman at UMass. He will be competing and reporting on the championships for the Gazette.
■At about 5:15 this morning, Sister Cathleen O’Connor was awakened by the telephone at St. Mary’s Convent on Gothic Street. A voice on the phone told her that a bomb was set to go off in the convent. Northampton firefighters rushed to the scene and did a search but found nothing.
■Mary Kasper, co-coordinator of the Northampton Arts Council, asked an intern for the city, Jenna Breines, to conduct an inventory of downtown pay telephones. Kasper learned from the survey that pay telephones are as difficult to spot as restrooms. “Nobody knows where the phones are. It’s a chronic problem,” said Kasper.
■Soil samples taken in a practice football field below Northampton High School, at the base of a steep bank, show a “soil profile” that makes the field legally a wetland. That legal wetland is exactly where architects for the school renovation-expansion project plan a “multisport facility” — which would be the centerpiece for a newly landscaped complex of fields.
■Smith College President Carol T. Christ announced Friday that she will retire from her position as the head of the college in June 2013. In a letter addressed to the college community, Christ wrote, “As I sit in my study, looking out over Paradise Pond and the hills beyond, I feel thankful for the opportunity I have been given to lead this remarkable institution.”
■A handful of Hampshire County’s prominent business leaders are launching a new regional organization aimed at being a unified voice on economic development, civic and municipal issues. The Hampshire County Chamber of Commerce intends to unite businesses, institutions, and municipalities behind a shared strategy for economic growth and competitiveness.