Five things you need to know, and the first woman's sub-4 mile
Good morning, Boston. Here are today's things you need to know: Boston homebuilding, Needham Bank profit drop, biotech bankruptcy and the first woman's sub-4 mile
Good morning, Boston. Today is National Take Your Children to Work Day, and here are the five things you need to know in local business news to start your busy Thursday.
1. Metro Boston homebuilding off to slowest start in 12 years
Homebuilding in Greater Boston is reaching lows not seen in more than a decade, Greg Ryan reports.
2. Thermo Fisher invests $2B in US to counter tariffs, funding cuts
Hannah Green reports that Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is taking steps — including a $2 billion R&D investment — to mitigate macroeconomic challenges such as the Trump administration's tariffs and government funding cuts.
3. Wound-care biotech seeks bankruptcy protection
Green also reports that Arch Therapeutics Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing 'capital market challenges' as a major factor leading up to the decision.
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4. Needham Bank profit drops as it navigates post-IPO growth
Little more than a year after going public, the parent company of Needham Bank posted a 19% drop in quarterly earnings, and William Hall reports that much of the drop is driven by economic uncertainty.
5. SBA ditches Biden-era loan-underwriting standards
The Small Business Administration is getting rid of Biden-era underwriting standards that let lenders use their own criteria to make SBA loans — the latest in a series of loan-program changes made by the agency under the Trump administration.
What else you need to know
Today in history
On this day in 1990, the 75th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Massachusetts Legislature officially designated April 24 as a Day of Remembrance for the million-and-a-half Armenians killed in the first genocide of the 20th century. (Read more at MassMoments.org)
What's good on WERS-FM
Little Talks, by Of Monsters and Men
What I'm reading
Erasure, by Percival Everett
What I'm watching
Andor, on Disney Plus
The first woman to break a sub-4 minute mile
While running is still on everyone's mind following this week's Boston Marathon, I'm just wondering if you saw the news that Faith Kipyegon, the world-record holder for the women's mile, will attempt to become the first woman to break the four-minute mile.
Kipyegon, 31, set the world record of 4:07.64 for the women's mile in July 2023, nearly five seconds faster than the prior record, which stood for four years, according to ESPN. She won the past three Olympic gold medals and holds the world record in the 1,500 meters and previously held the world record in the 5,000 meters. She plans to attempt a sub-four-minute mile on June 26 at Stade Charléty in Paris, the culmination of a yearlong Nike project dubbed "Breaking 4."
To pull it off, she will have to drop almost 8 seconds from her current world record — an amount of time that has taken women more than 30 years to accomplish. But if she does achieve it, the time will not be accepted by the sport as an official record because the race conditions will not meet the sport's official standards. It is akin to Eliud Kipchoge's 2019 marathon in under two hours, at 1:59:40.2, which was not recognized as a world record because his run included rotating pace-setters to help shield Kipchoge from wind, among other conditions.
Still, a sub-four-minute mile has never been done by a woman runner. Kipyegon had this to say about her reason why: "I'm a three-time Olympic champion. I've achieved world championship titles. I thought: What else? Why not dream outside the box?"
PARTING SHOT
If you don't follow GBH Archives on social media, you may have missed this one posted this week, from April 1987, in which passersby were asked why they weren't running the Boston Marathon:
"Why aren't you running in the Boston Marathon this year?" MOS interviews from @gbhnews in April, 1987. Reporter, Hope Kelly. pic.twitter.com/avhucr0Gf7 — GBH Archives (@GBHArchives) April 21, 2025
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