Solar rebate program starts Jan. 23

State officials say they will begin taking applications Jan. 23 from homeowners, businesses, and municipal governments interested in collecting rebates for installing solar electric panels under a new $68 million Commonwealth Solar program. The state's renewable energy trust, which is funded by a roughly 25-cent-a-month tax on electric bills, launched a website, masstech.org/solar, with details about the plan. Governor Deval Patrick's administration announced plans yesterday to replace the current system requiring people and organizations to file complex grant applications with a new program offering the equivalent of mail-in rebates covering one-third to one-half of the cost of a normal residential-sized system, or a maximum $1 million for a commercial installation.

NASA has chosen MIT to lead a $375 million mission to map the moon's interior and reconstruct its thermal history in 2011, NASA announced this week. Professor Maria Zuber will lead the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission, which will put two satellites into orbit around the moon to help answer fundamental questions about the moon's internal structure and its history of collisions with asteroids. The information will also facilitate any future mission to land on the moon, officials said. NASA chose the MIT-led mission from two dozen proposals.

A gay woman married in Massachusetts has filed for divorce in Rhode Island's Superior Court, a tactical move intended to skirt a major roadblock caused by a recent state Supreme Court ruling. Louis Pulner, a lawyer for Margaret Chambers, said the woman filed the motion Thursday, a week after Rhode Island's Supreme Court ruled that the couple's divorce case could not proceed in Family Court. (AP)

The state Supreme Court says police may randomly check registration information on passing cars even when there is no suspicion that a law is being broken. The court ysterday overturned a lower court ruling that the checks were illegal under a 2006 state law banning the use of video surveillance cameras and similar devices to check vehicle ownership or registration information. The law bans the use of cameras "or other imaging device or any other device, including but not limited to a transponder, cellular telephone, global positioning satellite, or radio frequency identification device" to check registrations of nonsuspicious cars. (AP)

The man who as a teenager shot and killed Pamela Smart's husband 17 years ago has been granted a hearing on Jan. 25 to ask for a sentence reduction. William Flynn was 16 and having an affair with Smart when he shot and killed her husband in Derry in May 1990. Flynn, now 33, is an inmate at the Maine State Prison. Members of Gregg Smart's family say they plan to attend the hearing to argue against sentence reduction. (AP)

Fire officials blamed smoking for an early morning fire that led to the evacuation of 59 elderly residents from a housing complex in Westbrook. The Westbrook Fire Department says the fire at 2 a.m. yesterday was caused by a resident who was smoking a cigarette while using her oxygen tank in violation of a no-smoking policy. Officials say the resident who caused the fire was treated for smoke inhalation. Five others were taken to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation and minor injuries. (AP)

A retired schoolteacher who tried to bring a loaded gun onto a plane has been cleared by a federal court jury. Sheldon I. Hochman, 62, of Mount Holly was charged after security screeners at Rutland Southern Vermont State Airport found the pistol along with loose ammunition in a fanny pack in July 2006. Hochman was headed to Alaska for his honeymoon when it happened and said he did not mean to pack the pistol. (AP)