■Four-year-old hopes for a national park on the Mount Holyoke Range brightened yesterday with the news that Sen. Edward Kennedy has taken further steps to win congressional approval of the park. The 13,150-acre park would stretch from the Connecticut River Oxbow across the Mount Holyoke Range to Granby.
■For the first time in its history, Clarke School for the Deaf may charge tuition to pupils who are residents of Massachusetts, its president disclosed yesterday. For its entire 104-year history, said Dr. George T. Pratt, the Clarke School has never charged fees to Massachusetts residents.
■The Registry of Motor Vehicles on King Street is looking to expand, and that could mean a move. Sites under consideration are at the Hampshire Mall in Hadley, at 59 Service Center Road in Northampton, and an enlargement of the current space at 141 King St.
■The “blue mold” tobacco fungus that crept up the Connecticut River Valley has infested area tobacco crops, agricultural officials say. While the extent of the invasion is not known, one “quick and dirty estimate” says the losses could be upwards of one fifth of the broadleaf tobacco crop in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
■Calls for police officers and firefighters to quell disturbances caused by college-age people over the last three weeks are up over the same period last year. Amherst police made 67 arrests for underage drinking, excessive noise, driving while intoxicated, and carrying open containers of alcohol, compared to 52 such arrests last year during the same period.
■The owner of a century-old barn at 290 Lincoln Ave., in Amherst, next to a home Robert Frost visited periodically during his time in Amherst, will be permitted to tear it down. Members of the Historical Commission found the barn is not a historically significant building, but they still chastised the current owner for seeking to destroy it.