A Somerville appointed official who boasted on social media of taking part in Wednesday’s attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol is now under political fire, with two members of the Somerville City Council saying Saturday that they had already taken up the issue with Mayor Joe Curtatone and city staff.

A temporary, dawn-to-dusk off-leash dog park opens Monday at 174 Binney St. at Third Street in Kendall Square.

People in a mental health crisis, especially children and teens, are waiting as long as a month in Massachusetts hospital emergency rooms for a bed in a psychiatric unit – including 30 just in Cambridge and Everett.

The Broad Institute is helping the state Public Health Lab look for the unusually transmissible Covid-19 variant that has exploded through Britain to at least 30 other countries – and has now been found in Colorado, California, Connecticut, Florida, New York, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Cambridge reported 63 new Covid-19 cases Thursday, another post-spring high, bringing new orders for managers and employees; and a look at the rollout of vaccines citywide and how to measure infection rates.

The December death of school district staff member James “Jimmy” Ravanis moved the risk of Covid-19 transmission from an abstraction to reality for some this week, adding weight to passage of a new method of deciding in-person classes versus remote learning as the pandemic continues.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts has added Omari Jahi Aarons of Cambridge to a two-year term on its board of directors.

An 18-member task force will look into how the city could move some police functions to other departments, but the City Council cannot decide – or limit – what weapons the department uses, according to an opinion from the city’s Law Department.

Preliminary crime numbers for the past year became available Monday, showing an overall increase in incidents of 8 percent over 2019, with violent crimes down but property crimes up – tempered by the fact that 2019 saw the lowest rate of crime in the city in more than 60 years.

Ten more Cambridge residents died of Covid-19 since mid-December, three of them living in public housing developments for elderly and younger disabled tenants, while the city’s testing capacity is strained to the point of needing correction, officials say.