Boston

CommonWealth Beacon takes a look at the controversy over ShotSpotter, the expensive system police in Boston and other cities use to locate the source of potential gunfire: BPD Commissioner Michael Cox stood by the system at a Monday hearing, but critics say it has a large number of false positives, which means people in the minority neighborhoods where the sensors are located are more likely to be grilled by police investigating false leads. Chicago announced earlier this year it's abandoning the system.

So far, the auroras we've seen have been a fun phenomenon but haven't caused any problems on earth. A series of auroras over several days in 1859, though, was so powerful they knocked out telegraph service across North American and Europe - and even started small fires in some telegraph offices, including in Springfield. Read more.

The Courthouse News Service reports on a hearing today before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston on the City Council's decades-long policy of having a local member of the clergy open its weekly meetings with an invocation.

The hearing came on the Satanic Temple's appeal of a district court judge's ruling allowing the council to continue not inviting the group to give an invocation.

News item: Britney Spears says she's moving to Boston.

Tom Brady's condo on Comm. Ave. in the Back Bay is now for sale. Or do you think she'd be one of those people who buys an actual house in, oh, Newton, then says she's from Boston?

After dealing with the issue of Gaza today, Boston city councilors agreed to tackle a more traditional council issue: Potholes, more specifically, the rough shape of the surprising number of private ways the city still has. Read more.

The state Ethics Commission today fined Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden $5,000 for the way the DA's press office released a statement that basically accused his opponent of sexually assaulting a girl when the two were in high school. Read more.

The Dorchester Reporter reports that after all 16 members of the Boston Landmarks Commission - which has oversight over demolition of any Boston building more than 50 years old - criticized Wu's handling of several major projects in the city, she fired its executive director, Rosanne Foley. Foley was appointed to the post by then Mayor Walsh in 2015.

CommonWealth Beacon takes a look at the new Boston Policy Institute, whose donors it won't reveal - unlike the older, more staid and currently leaderless Boston Municipal Research Bureau. The group's organizers say they have to keep their donors secret to avoid retribution from City Hall.

A group of white and Asian-American parents - and their California-based law firm - this week asked the US Supreme Court to overturn rulings by federal courts in Boston that the School Committee did nothing wrong when it changed the way students are accepted to the three exam schools by including Zip codes in addition to grades as a criterion. Read more.