City Councilor Ed Flynn will ask the council tomorrow to approve a hearing on whether more can be done to keep workers and people walking by construction sites safer, following last week's deaths of two workers pushed into a trench by a truck on High Street. Read more.

The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports Core Cannabis Dispensary, in the Hyde Square basement where the Bella Luna bowling alley used to be, is planning a soft opening March 6 of both its dispensary and its marijuana social-justice museum.

Update: Request granted by the board.

The owner of Marino's Market on VFW Parkway, next to Al Wadi on VFW Parkway, finds out tomorrow if the Boston Licensing Board will let him expand his current beer and wine offerings to harder beverages. Read more.

The Zoning Board of Appeal today approved marijuana shops proposed for what is now the Little Steve's pizza place on Boylston Street and the basement of the Cask 'n Flagon at Brookline Avenue and Lansdowne Street. Read more.

East Boston’s apartment rental market has undergone quite a transformation even before 2020 and the market turbulence that came with it. Over the previous 10 years, rising rent prices in neighborhoods close to Downtown were quickly gentrifying East Boston, as renters began looking outward for relief in rent prices. Just a year ago, East Boston was experiencing record low vacancy rates thanks to a steadily growing metro population and a shortage of affordable housing in Boston.

The Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, the Greater Boston Latino Network and Amplify Latinx today asked the Justice Department to look into why the city of Boston awarded only 1.2% of $2.1 billion in procurement contracts in recent years went to Black and Latino businesses. Read more.

The City Council agreed today with a request from Councilor Ed Flynn to look at ways to give neighborhoods a say in the construction of life-sciences labs that might be doing research on potentially dangerous diseases right next to residential buildings. Read more.

Cambridge Police report a man who objected to being told to put back items he was trying to shoplift from the Porter Square CVS early Saturday responded by punching "an elderly employee in the face and head multiple times with a closed fist." Read more.

WGBH reports on a city-commissioned study that shows Black-owned businesses got just 1/2 of 1% of major city contracts during the first five years under Mayor Walsh.