Free Republic

Just two weeks ago, the European Space Agency announced the discovery of a new black hole, the heaviest on the Milky Way, 33 times bigger than the Sun and 2,000 light years from Earth. Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Tsevi Mazeh, who was recently awarded the Israel Prize in physics, is among those responsible for the European Gaia spacecraft’s discovery. But if you ask him how excited he was that week, in which he both learned of his Israel prize award and his research on the new black was published, he’ll swiftly answer “The Israel prize wins bigtime.” “I cried a...

In the early 1990s, I attended a conference designed to teach journalists the tools of an emerging field known as computer-assisted investigative reporting. One of the hottest sessions explained how journalists could replicate stories that other papers had done locally using computer tools, including one especially popular project to determine if banks in your community were discriminating against minority borrowers in making mortgages. One newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had won a Pulitzer Prize for its computer-assisted series on the subject, and others, including the Washington Post and Detroit Free Press, had also weighed in with their own analyses based on...

Three used car dealerships are charged with helping illegal immigrants illegally buy cars. Investigators say then that the salespeople at the dealers, which are on Route 4 in Hamilton, would impersonate deputies to collect payments. Deputies swarmed into Paul's Auto, Credit Auto Sales and Payless Auto Sales around noon Thursday. Two of the owners as well as employees and customers were arrested – 12-people in all.