■In Northampton, in Williamsburg, in Easthampton, in Hatfield, in Hadley — in every Hampshire County town except Amherst and Cummington — children returned to school today, even though the hot summer weather was perfect for swimming and not bad at all for touch football and riding bicycles and playing in the front yard and doing other summer things.
■Northampton’s Recycling Center will be open on Saturday on Locust Street. Clean glass containers of any size, shape, color, or type are acceptable. The metal ring which attaches the cap to many glass bottles should be removed and glass should be sorted as to color — clear, green, and brown.
■The City Council voted to exercise one of its greatest powers last night and buy, through eminent domain, a house on Federal Street, interrupting a previously agreed-upon sale. The city will spend up to $215,000 for a house and 2.2 acres, land that will eventually be used as athletic fields for Northampton High School.
■Suzanne Wilson, a writer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s Hampshire Life magazine, has won a first-place award in the New England Associated Press News Executives Association’s annual competition. Wilson’s story about the sexual abuse of parishioners by a former priest was given top honors in the enterprise category for newspapers similar in size to the Gazette.
■Valley residents concerned about climate change will work to raise awareness of the problem Sept. 24 and 25 with marches, rallies, a sustainability summit and even a mock funeral for fossil fuels. The events connect with national programming guided by the 350.org group, which is rallying people worldwide to reduce greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
■The region’s four private colleges are teaming up this fall to create a consortium designed to prepare the next generation of scientists in biomathematics. Under the direction of Smith College, the new Four College Biomathematics Consortium kicks off this fall, thanks to a five-year, $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.