The Dorchester Reporter reports the Neponset River overflowed its banks and flooded Milton station on the Mattapan Line this morning, forcing the Milton Fire Department to send firefighters in a raft to rescue one trolley's driver and six passengers.
The Boston Business Journal reports that local car magnate Herb Chambers is selling most of his dealerships to some Georgia concern for more than $1 billion. No immediate word if the names will be changed to some mongrelized phrase like all the Boch dealerships that now go by NuCar.
A Roslindale developer has filed plans for a four-story, 46-unit apartment building at 586 Canterbury St. next to the ScrubaDub, the Rozzie apartment building and the brook that runs along American Legion Highway. Read more.
Ron Newman attended today's patriotic down-with-kings rally at the State House, which he reports was his third in two weeks and "the largest so far." Read more.
Jamaica Plain News reports that Jeff Ferris, who opened his Ferris Wheels bike shop on South Street in 1982, has sold the business to Pierre Payette.
Somerville firefighters responded to Bow Market off Somerville Avenue around 8 p.m. for a small fire in the market's restaurant area - which they managed to knock down in about 20 minutes.
The Brookline Fire Department reports that top two floors of a three-story building undergoing renovations at 50 Vernon St., off Harvard Street, collapsed around 10 a.m. today. Read more.
A group of professors and students affiliated with Harvard Medical School write that it's all well and good for a consortium that includes Harvard and MIT to develop wind and solar farms in Texas and North Dakota, but what about the carbon-belching MATEP plant right in the middle of all those Harvard-affiliated hospitals and research centers in the Longwood Medical Area?
The Boston Fire Department reports firefighters responded to 26 Monponset St. around 4:15 p.m. for what turned into a two-alarm fire. Read more.
Jonatham Kamens reports that he and other employees at the US Digital Service got word from their new Musk overlords last night they have been fired. Read more.
Roving UHub photographer Clay Gollobin shows us three of the people protesting the acting president outside his showroom in Dedham today.
On a trip down to Plymouth, Mary Ellen spotted a rare four-legged herring gull enjoying some fresh shellfish.
Read more.
The Boston Planning Department this week approved a "Squares and Streets" plan for Roslindale Square that includes zoning changes to make it easier to add housing atop the square's one-story commercial buildings, engineering studies of realigning Washington and Poplar streets along Adams Park and creating a more plaza-like feel to the intersection of Belgrade Avenue with South and Roberts streets. Read more.
A group of gun groups and a student from Brewster at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy yesterday sued the state over a regulation that prohibits people between 18 and 20 from owning and walking around with guns - and say this will be their first crack at winning repeal of a law passed last year that also tightens restrictions on automatic weaponry and "ghost" guns. Read more.
Ron Newman attended the pro-democracy protest downtown today.
Erica Fletcher also participated in the Stop the Coup protest. Read more.
The Boston Business Journal reports that John Snow, Inc., which runs public-health programs in both the US and around the world, has laid off roughly 1,100 employees because the Musk administration has ended USAID funding.
Boston Police report officers with a search warrant arrested a Randolph man in an apartment on Cummins Highway in Mattapan Square, where they also found a loaded rifle, three guns and bags of coke, crack and fentanyl Wednesday morning. Read more.
Telegram.com reports the Republican Town Committee in Hudson has canceled an event next week where local y'all quedaists Mark Sahady and Sue Ianni were scheduled for some post-pardon adulation just because people who objected to their glorification were promising protests and vowing to close their accounts at the bank whose meeting room they were going to use. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court this week ruled a company that owns an office building and freight warehouse on five acres of Massport land off McClellan Highway in East Boston has to pay Boston property taxes - mainly because in 1993, the state Senate only sort of voted to override a Bill Weld veto of a measure that would have exempted the building, but not really. Read more.
The Boston Licensing Board yesterday approved plans by the owners of Tipsy's, the former Figueroa's at 739 Parker St. on Mission Hill, to add spirits to the beer and wine they already sell. Read more.
Boston Police report arresting a man on charges he drove into two pedestrians, killing one, on Washington Street between Northampton and Lenox streets on the night of Jan. 18 and then drove off. Read more.
Isabel Ravenna posts some video of people protesting the acting president's Tesla car and truck lines outside his showroom in the Prudential Center on Boylston Street today. Small group, but next time they should try more publicity in advance.
A federal judge in Boston today barred the Musk administration from trying to enforce its White House occupant's diktat that babies born on American soil are not necessarily Americans, even if the 14th Amendment, which remains part of the Constitution, explicitly says they are. Read more.
The Boston Licensing Board today approved plans by a Taunton convenience-store owner to replace the old Simco's hot-dog stand at American Legion Highway and Canterbury Street with Tasty Kabob and Curry. Read more.
From an Asian-Peruvian fusion restaurant in Charlestown to a Colombian eatery in Hyde Park, the Boston Licensing Board today awarded 28 new beer-and-wine and all-alcohol licenses to restaurants across the city, as part of the 225 new licenses granted Boston by the state legislature last year. Read more.
The Boston Licensing Board today gave Side Chick, 692 Columbia Rd. in Dorchester, permission to extend its closing time from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Nobody spoke against the change at a hearing yesterday. Read more.
Federal officials swore today they have not yet carried out billions of dollars in threatened cuts for biomedical research and that they won't slice the funds until at least after a Boston judge decides at least one of the lawsuits filed over the cuts announced on Friday. Read more.
The Dorchester Reporter alerts us that the chain, long kept out of Boston by Tom Menino, is looking to move into Dorchester and Mattapan, with the backing of Mattapan state Rep. Russell Holmes, who says he's looking for "a Chick-fil-A in Black Dorchester, or [anywhere] in Dorchester" with local franchise owners.
They’re drinking right from the spout.
The Boston City Council today voted 12-1 to approve a request to the state legislature to let Boston temporarily increase the tax rate on commercial property to try to ease the tax burden on residential property owners caused by the sharp decrease in the value of commercial buildings downtown. Read more.
Boston University has filed plans for an 11-story building to house the Pardee School, home to all of its international-studies programs. Read more.
The Dorchester Reporter reports that Josh Kraft says if elected he would reduce the percentage of new housing units that have to be rented or sold as affordable from 20% to the 13% level before Michelle Wu became mayor. Kraft says this, coupled with tax breaks for landlords who agree to limit annual rent increases, would boost housing.
City Councilor Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, Downtown) today blocked immediate council action to accept a $14.4-million federal grant for safety improvements at 50 intersections across the city. Read more.
The Boston Licensing Board decides tomorrow whether to let Gavin Moseley, who operates Borrachito and the Garret in the Echelon building at 70 Pier 4 Blvd. in the Seaport, open a third joint next door, a sports bar called Rocco's. Read more.
A federal magistrate today approved extradition to Turkey for a teenager facing the equivalent of motor-vehicle homicide charges after he allegedly sped around a 17-m.p.h. curve at more than 100 m.p.h., slamming into people on the side of the road, killing one of them and injuring four others. Read more.
A woman attending a work event at Ned Devine's in Faneuil Hall Marketplace on Sept. 25 told police the last thing she remembered was going into the women's room after 8:30 p.m. - until she woke up in a stall around 2:15 a.m., all the lights off and nobody else in the locked-up bar. Read more.
The Massachusetts Council of Churches and 26 other religious groups, including the Boston-based Unitarian Universalist Association, this morning sued Homeland Security and ICE over their announced intentions to have agents storm religious sanctuaries in their efforts to find brown people to deport. Read more.
Three local research universities and other private and public universities across the country this evening sued the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services over the way they suddenly slashed federal funds for research, including money they had already agreed to pay. Read more.
Update: Massachusetts and New York hospitals and a national group of medical schools ask to join suit. Complaint linked at the end of the story.
A federal judge in Boston today blocked the National Institutes of Health from making immediate cuts in research grants - many already approved by the government - and to file proof now and then every two weeks that it is continuing to distribute the money. Read more.
A federal jury today acquitted Litang "Henry" Liang, a former director at Chinatown Main Streets, of charged that he spied on members of Boston's Chinese-American community and tried to recruit some of them to back the regime, according to court records. Read more.
Update: Judge grants temporary restraining order blocking the cuts.
Massachusetts and 21 other states today sued the federal government over its plans to slash funding for National Institutes of Health grants, including money the government had already agreed to pay out. Read more.
Or maybe somebody just likes all the raptors that have been showing up at Jamaica Pond lately. Trout House Comics shows us what's written in the snow on the pond today.
Boston Police report arresting three people on gun charges - one for possession of a loaded machine gun - in the Mildred Hailey Apartments in Jamaica Plain after gunfire in the Annunciation Road development around 12:45 a.m. on Sunday that sent one bullet through a window and a mirror before it lodged in an apartment wall. Read more.
Update: Approved 8-1.
The Cambridge City Council is scheduled to vote today on zoning changes that would allow apartments and condos everywhere in the city, in part by eliminating minimum lot sizes and allowing four-story buildings everywhere without the need for zoning variances everywhere - with two more stories for buildings with at least 20% of the units rented or sold as affordable. Read more.
The Crimson reports Boston firefighters recovered the body of somebody who apparently jumped into the river from the Cambridge side of the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge around 2 a.m. on Sunday.
The T shut the Orange Line at Tufts and requested Boston firefighters around 7:30 p.m. when something related to the third rail on the outbound side began to smoke - possibly a heater installed along the power source.
Rob Adams naturally made some French toast this morning, and plated it on some Fiestaware.
Carl Bergstrom details the impact of a federal rule announced yesterday that could mean the immediate loss of hundreds of millions of dollars paid to research universities, including funds already budgeted - a key part of the Project 2025 that the Liar in Chief swore he knew nothing about.
The Quincy Patriot-Ledger introduces us to the ten-foot-tall statues of two Catholic saints that Mayor Tom Koch is paying to have installed at the front of the city's new public-safety building - St. Florian pouring water on a flaming building for the firefighters and St. Michael standing on the head and neck of a guy screaming in agony to represent police. Read more.
Unlike some of its neighbors, Boston doesn't think tonight's snowstorm warrants an emergency declaration, so just use common sense, clear your sidewalk and remember that, even if you don't live in the South End, you can't just save that parking space you shoveled out. At least, not legally.
All the commuter-rail lines in and out of South Station - save the Worcester and Kingston lines - are now reporting delays, possibly because a train slipped just a bit off the rails. Based on the delay times posted by the T, we're guessing it's the 1:17 p.m. outbound Fairmount Line train, which the T reports "remains stopped after South Station and is 45-55 minutes behind schedule."
Amtrak reports "lengthy delays" due to "a disabled commuter train blocking the tracks in the area."
Boston Police report BPD, State Police and FBI investigators looking into a human-trafficking ring at a Mattapan Square apartment arrested six people Thursday - including one man who tried to flee by jumping out a window, and the man whose car he jumped into in a vain escape attempt. Read more.
A Cambridge college student and a Salem video-game designer are among seven people who have sued to block a new government policy that only allows passports to have gender designed as "M" or "F." Read more.
A driver somehow flipped his car on VFW Parkway inbound in West Roxbury just before the intersection with Centre Street around 10:30 a.m. He was able to get out of what was left of his vehicle and declined medical attention.
WBZ reports on restaurants in East Boston, which has a large immigrant community.
Brookline Police report arresting a local man they say teaches at the Josiah Quincy Upper School in Boston's Chinatown on charges he convinced at least six girls, aged 12-17, in other states to send him nude photos of themselves over the Discord network. Read more.
The MBTA announced today that New Bedford, Fall River and other South Coast points will get commuter-rail service starting on the morning of March 24 - for the first time in 65 years. Read more.
A concerned citizen files a 311 complaint just in time for all the snow we could get over the next week: Read more.
The University of Massachusetts legal office today notified workers at all of its campuses today on what to do if somebody from ICE - or any other government agency - shows up and starts asking questions about students or other employees: Tell them nothing and send them to the UMass Office of the General Counsel (OGC) or, if they have a warrant, to the campus police. Read more.
The owners of the one-story Stats Bar and Grille in South Boston's Perkins Square want to replace it with a five-story building with a ground-floor restaurant and four floors of apartments. Read more.
A Newton man is scheduled for an appearance in federal court today on a charge that he managed to slide his fingers in between the back and cushion of the seat of a 17-year-old in front of him to finger her buttocks while flying back from Puerto Rico to Logan with his family. Read more.
A federal judge yesterday sentenced Aizavier Roache, 31, to 4 3/4 years in prison for selling at least six guns he'd obtained from a pal who bought them at gun shops in South Carolina. Read more.
The city of Quincy today moved its battle against a new Long Island Bridge into court, asking a judge to overturn the state's approval of Boston's proposed bridge reconstruction, which would let Boston rebuild the addiction-treatment facilities it used to run on the island. Read more.
The Daily Free Press reports on an effort by Warm Up Boston to stop DCR from clearing out the encampment and tossing whatever belongings people there couldn't take with them when told to move.
The president yesterday signed one of his executive orders, this time to ban transgender athletes. Our Charlie Baker, now head of the NCAA, immediately complied, expressing gratitude for "a clear, national standard" he can get behind. Read more
Nora Nelson, 24, is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow on charges she killed Joseph Donohue, 65, on his Charlestown houseboat by stabbing him repeatedly, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. Read more.
Butternugz enjoyed the sunrise this morning from the tip of the Black Falcon Pier before the snow started.
APB captured the scene outside the State House today, part of a 50-state protest. Read more.
Greg Hunt spotted this plein-air trolley moseying up the B Line yesterday.
OK, OK, it's really a Green Line power-department catenary-checking vehicle, but still. Imagine if they had summer drink service on that.
The Boston City Council today voted unanimously to prohibit councilors from requiring their employees to sign NDAs or similar documents as a condition of employment. Read more.
I think I've fixed the problems with the text box on the commenting form (but let me know if I'm wrong), at least for folks with accounts on the system. 😃 Read more.
The Zoning Board of Appeal yesterday approved plans by the Boch Center and a billboard company for an electronic billboard on Stuart Street that the center's CEO says will provide enough lease income to help it continue its programs in the community. Read more.
Unions representing more than 800,000 federal workers yesterday asked a federal judge in Boston to order Co-President Musk to stop pretending his "fork in the road" directive telling federal employees to quit now is anything but a blatant violation of federal law. Read more.
Three former members of the University of Pennsylvania women's swim team today formally charged Harvard and other Ivy League schools with what they call a brazen conspiracy to force trans rights down American collegiate throats by letting a trans athlete compete in and win a women's race in a 2022 championship at Harvard's Blodgett Pool. Read more.
WBUR reports on Josh Kraft's first day as an announced candidate for mayor, in which he said one answer to the city's housing crisis would be giving landlords tax breaks if they agreed not to raise rents. He also called for a pause on construction of new bike and bus lanes, but said he would support the city's "Trust Act" sanctuary-city status for immigrants.
You may have heard about the barely pubescent kids currently trying to run rampant through government computer systems that handle trillions of dollars in transactions and data on millions of Americans. Read more.
The Zoning Board of Appeal voted today to hold off any vote for at least three weeks on a proposed building that would house a birthing center and offices for five other non-profit groups at 14 Winthrop St. in Roxbury, so that organizers can hold more meetings with neighbors and a Roxbury community group to try to address neighbor concerns. Read more.
The Dorchester Reporter reports Boston homicide detectives are investigating the death of a woman found dead of stab wounds inside 43 Claybourne St. in Dorchester around 2:45 p.m. on Monday.
Two city councilors want BPS to start installing cameras on school buses to help police track down and fine people who ignore stopped buses and any kids who might be getting off or on them. Read more.
Mayor Wu this morning announced a plan that would require food-delivery companies to obtain city permits, buy insurance for their delivery people and hand over data to the city on where all those people are going with their food - and how fast. Read more.
Update: Police say Joseph Donohue, 65, was stabbed repeatedly.
Boston Police report they are investigating the suspicious death of a man on a houseboat at the Charlestown Marina off Shipway Place in Charlestown. Read more.
Update: Of course, he got played like a fiddle, so no tariffs for now, at least not on Canadian, Mexican goods.
Irving Oil, based in New Brunswick, is alerting its New England heating-oil customers their bills are going up 10% Tuesday, when 47's new tariffs take effect (although the 25% figure is more widely known, it's actually 10% for energy products). And the Globe reports that 80% of all of New England's gasoline and diesel fuel comes from Canada - mainly from an Irving refinery in New Brunswick - along with 90% of Logan's jet fuel.
The Huntington News reports on e-mail from the Northeastern sociology and anthropology department that urges readers not to interact with any ICE agents, but instead send them to the school's legal office: "Even if they say they have a warrant, do not assume the warrant is valid."
Come on in! Kick the tires, click some thumbs and tell me everything that needs fixing! Read more.
Boston firefighters responded to 205 Boylston St. in Jamaica Plain for what turned into a three-alarm fire, around 11:10 p.m. on Saturday. Read more.
Mary Ellen spotted this red-tailed hawk looking for some breakfast this morning at Millennium Park in West Roxbury.
Roman the roving UHub photographer spotted fighter jets sitting on the tarmac by Terminal E this morning. WBZ reports the jets are here to honor Capt. Richard Stratton, a Vietnam War Navy veteran and Quincy native who died last week at 93.
GBH reports on yet another dying gasp from the dying Steward Health Care. The chain had promised $100,000 to the Allston Brighton Health Collaborative to provide farmers-market vouchers for poor people, then never paid, then paid after GBH reported on that and now it wants the money back.
Boston Police report Leroy S. Ryner, 18, of Roxbury, was fatally shot at at Morton and West Selden streets in Mattapan around 10:30 p.m. on Thursday. Read more.
From Gov. Healey on impending tariffs on stuff imported from Canada, Mexico and China: Read more.
CommonWealth Beacon reports (second item) that Team Kraft has been approaching former Marty Walsh apparatchiks about working on his campaign. Read more.
A judge in US District Court in Boston yesterday sentenced Devante "D-Lopes" Lopes, 31, of Quincy to five years in prison and James "Bummy" Rodrigues, 34, of Boston to 3 1/2 years in prison for their roles in Dorchester's Cameron Street gang, the US Attorney's office reports. Read more.
The state Housing Appeals Committee recently ruled that Weston, a town far from meeting its minimum state requirement of having 10% of its housing units be affordable, has to allow construction of an apartment building that locals have been fighting for years as the "Weston whopper." Read more.
The Dorchester Reporter introduces us to the people who have come a step closer to running for one of the four at-large seats on the City Council this fall, by filing paperwork with the state.
Jaha "Jay" Hughes of Hyde Park this week filed paperwork with the state that will let him begin raising funds to run for mayor this fall against incumbent Michelle Wu and, likely, Josh Kraft. Read more.
A Malden man who followed a woman to her South End home then tried to rob her at her door stabbed her husband repeatedly, only to get stabbed himself before he fled yesterday afternoon, police say. Read more.
The Crimson reports on the Wednesday night crash on JFK Street. No injuries reported.
CBS News reports on the death of two skaters, their mothers and their coaches, all affiliated with the Boston Skating Club of Norwood, in yesterday's crash between an American Airlines plane and a military helicopter over the Potomac.
Boston Restaurant Talk reports Rebecca Roth Gullo is looking to reopen the Gallows in 2026, although she didn't say where - the spot on Washington Street in the South End where it used to be has since been torn down for condos.
A federal appeals court today upheld a lower-court judge's decision to toss a suit by a cardiac ICU nurse who claimed the way Boston Medical Center fired her in 2021 rather than let her keep working, unvaccinated, with the sort of intensely sick patients who would wind up in an ICU. Read more.
The Huntington News reports Northeastern University is going down without a fight: It's "replaced or dismantled nearly all of its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, messaging and websites. "
It's normally good advice, anyway, but takes on added urgency due to bird flu. Read more.
A developer and two music impresarios this week filed detailed plans with the Boston Planning Department for a nine-story building at the corner of Harvard Avenue and Cambridge Street in Allston that will feature a return of Great Scott from the other end of Harvard as well as the continued existence of O'Brien's Pub, all topped by 139 apartments. Read more.
HorizonMass reports on a company gloating about its FAA approval without really specifying just why it wants to have drones zipping and hovering right over your head, although a month or so ago, it announced it had successfully finished using drones to deliver medications in a pilot with Mass. General, but in a city and state with few guardrails on what surveillance-eager authorities could also use them for.
The Zoning Board of Appeal today rejected plans by the venerable Hatoff's on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain to add more gas pumps, after nearby residents fumed over what they said would be more pollution and noise from motorists filling their tanks with the cheap gas. Read more.
The Zoning Board of Appeal today approved plans by City Realty to add four stories and 14 apartments to the building where the Glenville Stops bar used to be at 85-93 Glenville Ave. in Allston. Read more.
Boston.com posts a copy of the genial invite from House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, who is now heavily invested in sniffing out immigrants under all the beds now that he can no longer continue his crusade against Hunter Biden, given Biden's pardon and the fact that Comer's star witness against him has pleaded guilty to making up shit about the Bidens (and also evading taxes). Read more.
The Dorchester Reporter reports Josh Kraft has filed papers with the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance, which will let him begin to raise money to run for mayor in the fall elections.
A school psychologist for Newton Public Schools today sued over her 2022 firing for refusing Covid-19 shots, saying she had a legitimate religious reason to avoid the shots: Her Greek Orthodox church is against the use of substances derived from aborted babies, which she claims Covid-19 vaccines are from. Read more.
