New York Court of Appeals Chief Judge Janet DiFiore administered the oath of office to swear Nassau District Attorney Madeline Singas into office on Monday. The ceremony, held at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, featured several guest speakers. Singas’s family and friends attended the ceremony, with several family members in town from Greece. more

In the coming weeks and months, local school districts will be planning their 2016-17 budgets, deciding how to allocate their pieces of that very large pie. It’s our right to have a say in how that money will be spent. more

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a saying: “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.” For King, service to others was the highest form of humanity. more

Kennedy High School junior Claire Kelly spent three weeks last summer at the University of Chicago, delving deep into the human brain, examining the connection between impulsivity and drug addiction. Senior Rachel Mashal, the class of 2016 salutatorian, put fruit flies on a restricted diet to determine whether lower food intake would ward off drug addiction — specifically caffeine addiction — while also extending life. (As it turn out, it did both.) And senior Alexis Tillman hung out on lonely street corners (with either her mom or dad nearby) for weeks, filming homeless panhandlers to determine what, precisely, might persuade charitable passersby to give them loose change or even a dollar or two. more

This fall six Hofstra University graduate journalism students visited Hempstead High School weekly to teach members of the newspaper club about how to write news and feature articles and to introduce … more

With the convictions of former State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, pundits now claim that Albany’s pay-to-play system of dishonest dealing has finally been . . . more

A pharmacist from Merrick, a doctor and an accountant are all charged in a “massive” fraud scheme dating back to 2012 that involved fake prescriptions for the pain medication oxycodone, according … more

Only 20 percent of Long Islanders voted in last week’s election, but they made sure their voices were heard loud and clear: They were sick of the corruption that has plagued politics at all levels of government. more

In a good year, many, if not most, Nassau County voters are cynical about local politics. Two powerful machines, led by the major political parties, exercise tight control over . . . more

The drug addicts’ brain scans that Dr. Stephen Dewey takes appear in psychedelic shades of red, yellow, green and blue, each indicating a level of brain activity — or inactivity. Red means excited. Blue is dormant. Dewey is the laboratory director for behavioral and molecular neuro-imaging at the North Shore-LIJ Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. In that capacity, he’s put hundreds of addicts’ brains to the test — the positron emission tomography test, that is — seeking to understand precisely what happens to the mind when a pot smoker lights up or a heroin junkie shoots up. And, he has found, it isn’t pretty. more