To the highest bidder: East Baton Rouge Parish will host an online auction via CivicSource.com for tax adjudicated properties from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. Wednesday. The parish, in an attempt to collect delinquent real estate taxes, will sell 16 properties. The winning bidders will receive full ownership of each property with title insurance. The average starting bid for the properties, which includes closing costs, is $3,500 plus the cost of title insurance. In a statement, William Aaron II, special assistant parish attorney, says East Baton Rouge has found success online in addressing the number of adjudicated properties in the parish. A list, map and street views of the property up for auction is online. Registration for the auction is required.
A familiar face: The City Club of Baton Rouge announced today that Chef Eric Brandt is returning as executive chef of the club’s kitchen. Brandt will begin May 9 and is replacing Chef Eric Arceneaux, who is moving to Georgia. “We are very pleased to welcome back Chef Eric Brandt to City Club team,” says Missy Epperson, president of the club’s board of governors. City Club is a private dining club that has been in operation for nearly 60 years. The club underwent a major interior and exterior renovation and added 2,000 square feet of space that included a banquet-style kitchen, outdoor patio and a garden room in 2013. Brandt is a Baton Rouge native who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America. According to the club, he trained under his father, Charles Brandt, from 1984 to 2002.
Breakthrough: The New York Times reports it was a good day for Albert Einstein when an international collaboration of physicists announced in February that they detected ripples in space time, known as gravitational waves, from the collision of two gigantic black holes far, far away. Neither gravitational waves nor black holes—both predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity—had been seen directly before. It was also a good day for the researchers, for whom great honors were immediately predicted. Now those predictions are coming true. On Tuesday, Yuri Milner, a Russian Internet entrepreneur and philanthropist, announced that he was giving $3 million to the gravitational-wave discoverers. The award is a special addition to the $3 million Breakthrough Prizes in Fundamental Physics he awards every fall. Read the full story.
