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Part of New York City’s 911 system broke down on Tuesday, preventing hundreds of callers from reaching an emergency operator, a spokesman for Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. The temporary breakdown of the system led to the failure of nearly 1,700 calls — about a third of the total made to a center in the Bronx — to reach emergency operators, the spokesman, Jeremy Edwards, said. Callers and call takers were unable to hear each other, he said. (Goldenberg, Cramer and Marcius, 8/18)

Harvard said Tuesday that it had agreed to pay $53 million to settle claims that body parts that had been donated for research were stolen and sold by a former manager of the morgue at the university’s medical school. The former manager, Cedric Lodge, 58, was sentenced to eight years in prison in December after pleading guilty to one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods. The university fired him in 2023. (Cerro, 8/18)

The revelation that a Liberian government official has been running Twin Cities group homes from thousands of miles away has led to bipartisan calls for reform in Minnesota and divided reactions in West Africa. Despite the outcry echoing on both sides of the Atlantic, the Walz administration has remained silent. The investigation, which was jointly reported by MPR News and its national investigative unit, APM Reports, found that the state of Minnesota paid $36 million dollars to group home companies linked to Sekou Dukuly over the past decade. But since the beginning of 2024, Dukuly has also served as the managing director of Liberia’s state-owned port system. (Peak, Roth and Lu, 8/18)

Wendy Brennan agreed to participate in a study examining how arsenic exposure can affect children’s cognitive development primarily because her young daughter wanted the free T-shirt. It was 2009, and the family had lived on their property in the small Kennebec County town of Mount Vernon for eight years. Brennan said she had no reason to fear the results. But when researchers came to test their drinking water, Brennan learned that her family’s well tested nearly six times above the Federal Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum exposure guidelines for arsenic. (Forbes, 8/18)

Meta is once again on trial over dangers its platforms may pose to children. It is once again arguing that it works tirelessly to keep them safe. A pivotal trial for the parent company of Instagram and Facebook kicked off in a California federal court Tuesday, with four states seeking billions of dollars in damages as well as fundamental changes to how Meta runs its platforms. (Ortutay and Huamani, 8/19)