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☀️A foggy morning followed by a sunny day, with highs around 50. Sunset is at 5:37 p.m.

Like local Iranians in the Boston area who you heard from earlier this week, Guy Ben-Aharon, who was born in Israel and now lives in Massachusetts, has been anxiously following the news.

“I have two adorable nephews who are 8 and 10 years old who are sleeping in a bomb shelter. And that’s not something I’d wish on anybody,” he told GBH’s Esteban Bustillos.

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Ben-Aharon said he is critical of the war and believes that violence rarely helps people achieve peace. He’s the founder of a nonprofit called The Jar, which helps people from different backgrounds host and attend community conversations. This week a good friend of his, who lives in Tel Aviv, lost her apartment in an Iranian missile strike. She was not home.

“In a true turn of… strange to say it, luck, her 13-year-old cat survived,” Ben-Aharon told Bustillos. “She found her 13-year-old cat among the ruins. But her life will be forever changed.”

Four things to know:

1. The World Cup games start in about 100 days and still don’t have a license from the town of Foxborough. The town is waiting on $7.8 million in money for security they were promised from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security. The money still hasn’t come, in part because Congress has not funded the agency that also runs ICE and Customs and Border Patrol.

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Yesterday the local host committee for the games, called Boston Soccer 2026, told Foxborough’s Select Board they can offer to cover the costs. But Select Board Chair Bill Yukna said buying safety equipment the town needs should be up to the town’s police department. “I’m a little frustrated with the fact that you know a third party wants to be involved with the acquisition, implementation and deployment of this stuff,” he said. “That’s not at all what we intend and that’s not what we’re going to allow.”

2. People in the town of Holden, just north of Worcester, voted 520 to 257 to reject changing the town’s zoning laws to allow developers to build multi-family housing without getting special permission. Holden is one of a dozen Massachusetts communities near MBTA service that haven’t changed their zoning under the MBTA Communities Act, a law former Gov. Charlie Baker signed to encourage more dense housing near public transit. It’s also the second time Holden voters have rejected such zoning changes.

“I think they’re ideologically opposed to the concept no matter what,” Holden Town Manager Peter Lukes said. “At this point, it really doesn’t look like something would pass no matter how appealing it might be to some, or how much we think it would be effective.” The town now faces a lawsuit from state Attorney General Andrea Campbell.

3. Power is back for almost everyone on Cape Cod after last weekend’s blizzard. Now that the storm has passed, Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce CEO Paul Niedzwiecki said the Cape should try and prevent mass power outages in the future. One way to prevent power outages during storms is burying electrical cables underground, but utility company Eversource said that would cost $6 million per mile on the Cape.

“We need a plan and we don’t have one,” Niedzwiecki said. “You see the tree damage after these storms and it’s just incredible… the thought that we’ve got power lines above ground, and some of our internet accessibility is also above ground, just makes us an incredibly vulnerable community.”

4. Despite the consistent cold, there is less snow piled up on the streets of Greater Boston this week. If a snowbank near you vanished overnight, it was probably the work of public works employees in your community who loaded it onto a truck and took it to a snow farm — an empty lot where they haul snow, salt and whatever space-savers and debris get swept up in the process.

Snow farming replaced the old method of dumping snow into the harbor, a practice Massachusetts largely stopped in 1997 because the salt we use to de-ice roads is harmful to ocean ecosystems. But salt from snow farms can seep into groundwater and private wells, too. GBH’s Jeremy Siegel has a short video showing crews working at a snow farm in Cambridge. “You gotta have fun while you’re here,” said Steve Travers, a driver with Cambridge’s Department of Public Works, maneuvering through the snow farm on an overnight shift. “Because if you don’t you’re going to get miserable, you’re going to be tired and it’s gonna be a long night.”

Catching the Codfather: Defying expectations

By Ian Coss, host of The Big Dig and Catching the Codfather

Bill Blount is a fisherman people kept telling me about — someone who had been around for a long time, who would have stories upon stories to tell. He did not disappoint, but he also wasn’t what I was expecting.

We met at his house in New Bedford. It was in the evening, because Blount had recently taken up a warehouse job on land to help cover the bills, and when I arrived, he and his wife were just sitting down for dinner. Blount insisted I join them; he said grace over the meal and offered a special prayer for my podcast project. Afterwards, we sat in their living room looking through old photos of his boat the Ruthie B, which Blount had designed himself and named after his wife.

After spending hours with Carlos Rafael — smoking, swearing and disparaging his rivals — Blount offered a very different side of the New Bedford fishing industry. So imagine my surprise when I asked him about Carlos, and immediately Blount’s face lit up. Of all the fish dealers he knew, Carlos had been his favorite to work with. Carlos “had a heart.”

Blount had many stories about Carlos to share, and Episode Four of “Catching The Codfather” opens with one of them. That episode is out today; it’s called “Mosquitos on the Balls of an Elephant.”

Also this week, we revisit the Schoolhouse Rock classic “I’m Just a Bill.” Hopefully this one takes you back.

Next week I’ve got a photo essay from a day at the New Bedford fish auction, so stay tuned. And FYI, once the season wraps we’re going to do a Q&A with me and the production team for our HOV Lane members. So if you want to come meet the whole gang and get a behind the scenes look at how we make the show, sign up soon.

Listen to the latest episode of Catching the Codfather here. 

Dig deeper:

-Full podcast: Catching The Codfather

- Join the Codfather email list here.