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SUNDERLAND — The Sunderland Public Library is offering sensory-friendly hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursdays.

By CHRIS LISINSKI

On the same day President Donald Trump signed a landmark domestic policy bill that will reshape state finances for years to come, Gov. Maura Healey approved a $60.9 billion annual budget and rolled out a companion proposal designed to empower her administration with greater cost-cutting power.

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

The top amateur girls golfers in the state will be heading to Bernardston this week.

I read the June 27 article “Planners OK Hawley Street condo project,” which concerned a small condo project at 111 Hawley St. I was pleased that the design appears sympathetic to the existing neighborhood, that it is only eight housing units, and that there will be more than ample parking for residents and guests of the condos. I particularly noted architect Scott Laidlaw’s comments: “The buildings’ design was inspired by row house located on nearby Eastern Avenue … We used front porches and front stoops … to really retain the idea that this is a residential neighborhood.”

By SAM FERLAND

FLORENCE — Former Daily Hampshire Gazette publisher Charles “Charlie” W. DeRose, 84, who alongside his late brother Peter L. DeRose turned the Gazette into a true community newspaper, died on Tuesday, July 1, after a long battle with illness.

By SAMUEL GELINAS

GOSHEN — Upper Highland Lake at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) State Forest is currently closed due to elevated bacterial levels in the water. The lake will be tested again on Monday.

By Bob Katzen

By CHRIS LARABEE

DEERFIELD — With paperwork complete, the Selectboard is expected to award the contract for the 1888 Building rehabilitation project at its July 9 meeting.

By CHRIS LARABEE

Local advocates are urging the Legislature to remove a specific provision in Gov. Maura Healey’s Energy Affordability, Independence & Innovation Act that would repeal a 1982 referendum requiring voters at a statewide election to approve any new nuclear facilities in Massachusetts.

By RUDY PERKINS

One of the least discussed reasons Donald Trump is pushing tariffs is that wide-ranging tariffs will act much like a regressive national sales tax, shifting more of the national tax burden onto low- and middle-income taxpayers, and away from the wealthy. Lower-income Americans, who spend more of their income on everyday goods, instead of, say, corporate stocks, will end up paying a disproportionate share of the tariffs.

By SCOTT MERZBACH

HADLEY — Despite recent repairs on Moody Bridge Road, including installation of a new culvert pipe, members of the Select Board say they are not inclined to support a full, end-to-end, reopening of the street.

By SCOTT MERZBACH

LEVERETT — Town and school employees are being advised not to provide assistance toward any Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions or offer help to any other federal official who might come to Leverett tasked with removing undocumented immigrants.

We are all the good Samaritan.

I now know about the “waste, fraud, and abuse” the Republicans have been talking about for years. Waste is holding a $45 million parade for the president’s birthday and sending 10 agents in armored vehicles to arrest people of color. Fraud is promising to arrest and deport drug dealers and murders from abroad but instead doing it without legal warrants or due process to high school juniors, 55-year-old barbers who are grandfathers, and graduate students who exercise their freedom of speech right in a published article. Abuse is inventing a crisis by claiming there’s an insurrection in Los Angeles so the Marines and National Guard can be called out to solve a problem that didn’t exist.

Kurt Heidinger

In a recent critique of Olin Rose-Bardawil’s column about what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch deem a genocide committed by Israelis on Palestinians, a letter writer incorrectly claims it began on Oct. 7, 2023; when in fact it began with the Nakba — the violent, homocidal removal and dispossession of Palestinians by racist European settler colonists in 1947. Readers are encouraged to do a simple internet search of “Nakba” to learn how Israel’s mass murder of innocent mothers and babies began and then never ended.

By JEFF LAJOIE

For the first time in nearly a decade, Western Massachusetts will play host to the state’s biggest amateur golf tournament.