Have you noticed the financial crisis developing right before our eyes - this country's worst since the Great Depression? Most of us know it exists but don't understand it to the extent we should. I randomly surveyed over 120 Penn students, and only 31 percent reported that they were "extremely confident" or "pretty confident" in their ability to understand the current financial dilemma.

Three-plus seasons of the unexpected (and the outright ridiculous) has made me hesitant to draw broad conclusions whenever Penn beats an unremarkable team like Dartmouth, especially in a game lowlighted by a 7-7 half. So I'll refrain from doing that. What, then, does one say about Saturday? The consensus in the pressbox and my inbox pegged the big developments as (a) Penn's inability to sustain drives, and (b) kicker Andrew Samson's three-for-three afternoon on field goals - notable only as a contrast to seasons past.

After his team wrapped up first-round play on Saturday, women's golf coach Mark Anderson knew the day was far from over. The Quakers had carded a 46-over 336 on day one of the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships, and he wasn't ready to let them head back to their Williamsburg, Va.

"If Botswana does not tackle its AIDS problem head on, then the country will not survive," announced then President of Botswana Festus Mogae in 2000. Now, at the end of Mogae's decade-long presidency earlier this year, Botswana is at the forefront of the continent's battle with AIDS.

The long road to a university presidency has been getting longer. According to a recent survey, the amount of time it takes to progress through the ranks of academia is increasing, resulting in older presidents, said Jacqueline King, the assistant vice president of the Center for Policy Analysis of the American Council on Education.

Sister Pauline Silver Acayo, a Catholic Relief Services' Peacebuilding Officer in Uganda, spoke at Leadership Hall on Friday to discuss the current peacebuilding efforts in Uganda. Acayo has been working as a Peacebuilding Officer in Uganda since 2002. She started her presentation with the background of Uganda.

The women's cross country team is used to being together, on and off the course. Senior Charlotte Lawson, for one, has lived with Kinjal Parikh and Leah Brogan since their freshman year. And at the Women's Brown Race on Friday, a large field of competitors allowed the three Quakers to run side by side.

On Saturday, sophomore running back Michael DiMaggio carried the Quakers on his bulky legs. Quarterback Robert Irvin had a very respectable first half against Dartmouth. But without any semblance of a running game, the Quakers could not get the offense going, forcing Kyle Olson to punt the ball away six times before halftime.

The scoreboard showed Cornell up, 2-1, and the clock was ticking down. Penn forward Omid Shokoufandeh "thought it would be easy" beating the Big Red; instead, he was watching the unthinkable unfold. A loss to Ivy bottom-feeder Cornell would not mean not only an embarrassing way to snap the men's soccer team's eight-match undefeated streak but also an 0-1 conference hole.

Sophomore Luke Grau crossed the finish line of his 8K race with a time of 24:51- and only one sneaker. Grau proved himself in more ways than one at the Paul Short Cross Country Invitational in Bethlehem, Pa., on Friday,where Penn finished 12th. Coming in 20 seconds -but 25 places overall - behind teammate and fellow sophomore Chris Baird, Grau opted to abandon his unstable sneaker after another runner had stepped on his heel about one mile into the race.

In the two games leading up to Saturday's showdown at Dartmouth, the Penn women's field hockey team had finally overcome the slow starts that had plagued its season. But within two minutes, Dartmouth scored and stopped Penn's progress. The Big Green added another before halftime en route to a 3-2 win.

Bruce Springsteen has spent his life writing music on the American dream. Now, he says, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama is the man who can make that dream a reality. On Saturday, Springsteen, the legendary singer and songwriter also known as "The Boss," performed in downtown Philly for a free public concert on behalf of Obama in the final push before today's voter registration deadline.

Ramifications from the troubled credit markets touched home last week as the University found $100,000 it had invested in a short-term fund managed by Wachovia Bank had been frozen, according to Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli. The money was held by Commonfund, a nonprofit management firm for educational investments.

If Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has her way, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) will be a shadow of its former self. Under Spellings's recently proposed plan, FAFSA would cut the number of questions it asks from over 100 to roughly 27.

Sophomore midfielder Sarah Friedman came into Saturday's match with Cornell knowing she could shatter Penn's single-season assist record. "Kristin [Kaiser] and Kaitlin [Campbell] and I were researching Cornell, and one of the Web sites had written something about it," she said.

As his campaign wraps up a vigorous voter registration drive in Pennsylvania, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama spoke on Friday in Montgomery County - a region closely divided between registered Republicans and Democrats. Yet nearly one-third of Obama's 6,000 audience members on Friday will not vote in November.

After sharing his tales of war-time reporting and primary-debate moderating, CNN host Anderson Cooper left Irvine Auditorium full of captivated students eager to learn more. With the same mission in mind, The Daily Pennsylvanian sat down with Cooper for a few minutes to discuss reporting, politics and his lack of culinary skills.