Axios Boston

February 24, 2026
Hello, Tuesday.
- Let's catch you up on snow totals, EdVestors' grant-funded expansion and some good news in the restaurant world.
๐ค๏ธ Today's weather: Mostly sunny, with a high of 31 and a low of 13.
๐ Happy birthday to Axios Boston member A. E. Anderson!
๐ก Help us keep your home news coverage strong by becoming a member.
Today's newsletter is 1,090 words โ a 4-minute read.
1 big thing: Rebounding from the blizzard
The blizzard is over, and now comes the hard part: digging out, getting power back and resuming the work week.
Why it matters: Flight cancellations, power outages and other storm-related disruptions may take several days to fully resolve, state officials say.
Catch up quick: The blizzard dumped more than 2 feet across eastern Massachusetts and the Cape, including at least 14 inches in East Boston.
- The storm battered the Cape so severely that Gov. Maura Healey imposed a travel ban in southeastern Massachusetts.
- More than 236,000 Eversource customers in eastern Massachusetts lost power at one point, with most of those outages affecting Cape residents.
State of play: Several school districts remain closed today, including Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Newton and Somerville.
- Logan Airport might not fully resume flights until tomorrow, per CBS Boston.
What they're saying: "We're going to have to be patient," Healey said yesterday.
Zoom in: The Boston Globe announced last night that it would not print an edition for delivery this morning.
- The newspaper called the "unprecedented" decision "the first time that management has called off production of a daily paper since the organization's founding in 1872."
What's next: Watertown and Waltham plan to lift their parking bans this morning.
2. ๐ค A Boston-bred tool for cancer risk
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center last week rolled out an AI-driven technology that detects the risk of developing breast cancer in the next five years.
Why it matters: The Clairity Breast platform, which obtained FDA de novo authorization last year, can detect breast cancer risk for a broader swath of people, says Connie Lehman, Clairity's founder and CEO.
How it works: Clairity uses an AI risk model that was trained on over 421,000 images of mammograms belonging to both patients who did and did not eventually develop cancer.
- That taught the model to detect subtle patterns in breast tissue that later develop cancer โ patterns that doctors can't see themselves.
- The model was trained on images of patients of various ages, races and ethnicities, Lehman tells Axios.
What they're saying: "We're actually showing an application of AI for good," says Lehman, who is also a breast imaging specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School.
- "We're addressing some of the biggest problems in breast cancer prevention."
Threat level: While early detection and treatment of breast cancer has improved, especially for those with a genetic risk, the disease is on the rise.
- Breast cancer incident rates are growing faster among women under 50.
- Women under 40 are now more likely to develop more aggressive forms of breast cancer.
Yes, but: The technology isn't covered by any insurance yet.
- The test costs roughly a couple hundred dollars, Lehman says.
3. ๐ Back That Mass Up: Plow truck vs. sinkhole
๐ One casualty of yesterday's blizzard was a plow truck that fell into a sinkhole in Winthrop as the town battled with several water main breaks. (CBS Boston)
- Crews worked for hours to get the truck out before removing it yesterday afternoon.
๐ฆ Expect to see more signs for Beacon Bank & Trust now with the merger of two major financial companies. (BBJ)
- The merger means name changes for Berkshire Bank, Brookline Bancorp, Brookline Bank, Bank Rhode Island and PCSB Bank.
๐ Panda Fest, the Asian street food festival that packed City Hall last spring, will return to Boston from May 15-17 โ this time at Harvard University's Ohiri Field. (Press Release)
4. First look โ EdVestors gets $1.5M grant
Boston-based nonprofit EdVestors is getting $1.5 million award to scale up its career pathways program that helps students prepare for the workforce.
The big picture: EdVestors is one of five organizations getting $7.5 million from the Washington, D.C.,-based Pathways Impact Fund to help Gen Z students prepare for in-demand careers.
Driving the news: EdVestors, which has worked with Boston Public Schools for over two decades, plans to use the funding to expand its programming to serve thousands more students.
- The nonprofit plans to beef up its New Skills Boston program, launched in 2020 to offer career-based learning, accelerated coursework and advising for students interested in engineering, health care and other careers..
Zoom in: New Skills Boston has grown to enroll more than 3,300 BPS students โ about 25% of students in grades 9 through 12 โ in pathways dedicated to engineering, health care, biotech and, recently, computer science.
- EdVestors helped ensure that more than 1,600 BPS students, or 47% of the Class of 2025, completed an internship by graduation.
- With the new funding, Rousmaniere said she hopes to reach 50% of students in the next three years and teach more students how to their harness networking skills.
5. ๐ฝ๏ธ Restaurant roundup
February has been packed with new restaurant openings across the Boston area.
- Eastern Edge Food Hall opened in Kendall Square with Clover, Viแปt Citron and Chatty Patty among the tenants.
- Tiffani Faison opened Tigerbaby at High Street Place, offering fast-casual dishes reminiscent of her last concept, Tiger Mama.
- Copley Place is replacing Neiman Marcus, its anchor tenant that declared bankruptcy, with an Italian food marketplace and the Greek seafood restaurant Estiatorio Milos, as well as luxury boutiques.
Yes, and: It's not just in the food halls and malls.
- 212 Kitchen opened in Cambridge's Riverside neighborhood after a nearly five-year wait.
- Oregon-based ice cream brand Salt & Straw will open a shop at Commonwealth Pier in the Seaport later this year.
- There's even new life in the corner of Downtown Crossing that long housed the shuttered robot-operated salad bar Spyce: The Halal Guys opened there to a line of fans Saturday morning.
6. ๐ Where's Townie? Castle Island Brewing
Yesterday, we asked you to guess where Townie was. She had gone to Castle Island Brewing in Southie.
Kudos to reader Zach B., who guessed it first.
Deehan is struggling to explain to the dog why he has to poop in a 3-foot snowdrift.
Steph got their cardio for the day shoveling out the car.
This newsletter was edited by Jeff Weiner.
Editor's note: A story in yesterday's newsletter incorrectly referenced Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo, who is not running for Congress.
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