■University of Massachusetts students have given way to the establishment as 1,400 delegates to the 1970 Democratic state convention arrived in Amherst. The atmosphere has been one of anticipation, but the only candidate for governor who exuded confidence was former Lt. Gov. Francis X. Bellotti who said he had “200 votes or enough to stop a first ballot victory for anyone.”
■A complete 1970 engine automatic transmission and instructional material has been given to Smith Vocational High School by Ford Motor Co. and Blyda Ford of Northampton. The engine is complete with all the anti-pollution control units that are in use today.
■Young people are learning that mountain biking is more than pedaling over hill and dale — and even a Vermont mountain — in a new program run by the Florence Teen Center. The 10-week program is imparting a world of survival techniques, from fixing derailleurs and flat tires to tips on sensible eating for a journey.
■After a year and a half of shoestring existence, a 24-hour storefront Florence church is in arrears on its rent and power bills and had its electricity shut off Tuesday. The situation is threatening continued use of the Faith Christian Church Academy as a shelter for the homeless, officials say.
■The vacant Hill & Dale Mall on King Street is about to get a face-lift that its owners hope leads to a larger effort to spruce up the site and attract a tenant or group of tenants for the first time since Price Chopper closed its doors 15 years ago. The ZBA ruled Thursday that the Colvest Group Inc., which bought the building three years ago, can move ahead with a handful of proposed changes to the building’s exterior.
■A new study has found that wood-burning power plants using trees and other “biomass” from New England forests release more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than coal plants do over time. The report concludes that the net cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases from replacing coal-fired plants with biomass would be 3 percent greater by 2050 than from using coal to generate electricity.