I coulda sworn there was one in Calcutta.

What the article is saying, correctly, is that the objects previously identified as black holes may not be. It's not saying that there are not any.

By definition, a black hole is an object from which the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. Black holes are theoretically possible in Newtonian physics, and were discussed long before Einstein. Any reasonable theory of gravity will include Newtonian gravity as an approximation, and therefore will include black holes.

It's just a matter of getting enough mass in one pile. Now, whether that pile is expected to have interesting and bizarre properties depends on the theory. It isn't expected under Newtonian physics, since the speed of light has no particular significance there, which is why black holes didn't become celebrities until relativity came along.

You need to pick your battles more carefully.

Battles? They're walkovers.

Every time an astronomer says "I don't believe in black holes," somewhere a black hole dies.

People who actually care about baseball will believe anything...

Bob has it right that black holes are possible under both Newtonian and relativistic theories (the difference is the size of the event horizon versus mass). But the article is not correct either. If you assume quantum mechanics, then black holes can have neither charge nor magnetic field, since the force carriers (photons) cannot escape the event horizon. But a charged rotating accretion disk could generate a magnetic field. The evidence remains mixed since the theories are not consistent and the observations are remote.