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The City of Philadelphia will face a budget deficit of at least $650 to 850 million over the next five years, Mayor Michael Nutter said yesterday. Nutter had warned in mid-September that Philadelphia would face a deficit of at least $450 million due to fall off in business-privilege taxes and increases in pension costs.

Jennifer Lesser is a College junior from Minneapolis, Minn. Her e-mail address is lesser@dailypennsylvanian.com.

I never thought I'd see the day when a top Republican publicly decried "greed and corruption" on Wall Street. In last week's debate, Sarah Palin let loose a stream of words you'd normally associate with the left: "Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money.

The Daily Pennsylvanian incorrectly reported Tuesday that the Social Planning and Events Committee had incurred a $50,000 debt at the end of the 2007-08 school year. "SPEC as an organization is not in debt," said SPEC president and College senior Michelle Jacobson.

The veterans of the women's soccer team may be feeling a little lopsided these days. Their current record of 6-3-1 is nearly identical to last year's mark at this point in the schedule. But unlike 2007 - the Ivy Championship season - when Penn began 3-1-1, the Quakers stumbled out of the gates in 2008, losing three of their first five, but now they're finding a winning rhythm.

Men's basketball coach Glen Miller can sleep a little bit easier these days. Carson Sullivan, a 6-foot-2, 170-pound left-handed combination guard who plays for Charlotte Christian School in Charlotte, N.C., gave his verbal commitment to Penn last week, according to multiple college basketball recruiting sources.

Plastic is on its way out. Recently, White Dog Cafe on 34th and Sansom streets decided to stop selling bottled water because of environmental concerns. While it's not a widespread movement, crusaders against Aquafina have a point - bottled water does carry high transportation and disposal costs.

Just because the voter-registration deadline has passed, don't expect the Locust Walk tables that were previously covered with registration forms to disappear. Now that they have done their best to make sure students have registered, political and civic-engagement groups on campus want to make sure those students vote on election day.

As I awkwardly balanced the clipboard on my knee, I scribbled my information onto a voter registration form. While I walked away from the Obama campaign worker who assured me that my registration was now all set, I commented to my friend that the whole voter registration system seemed remarkably inefficient.

It's not just about the numbers. A new tool called CollegeSpeak aims to encourage students to value personal criteria over rankings and reputation when picking a school - and some elite colleges are signing on to the idea. The Web site - which is being developed by the Education Conservancy - uses a questionnaire to help students find colleges that best match their priorities.

While the majority of the graduating senior class was looking for jobs last spring, Dean Merrill was in search of something a little different: a golf coach. After captaining the Quakers last season, the former college standout is pursuing a pro career, choosing the picturesque conditions of the Sunshine State as ground zero for his training.

Slept through a 9 a.m. lecture? Penn tech gurus want to help you catch up. Exactly a year after the inception of iTunesU as a resource for the Penn community, administrators are looking for the best way to put classroom content online. One option is iTunesU, an online digital media database located in the iTunes Store that allows department administrators and Information Technology workers to upload audio and video files to the system.

When University of the Arts president Sean Buffington began speaking about being an openly gay man, he chose to begin with a disclaimer on his own biases. "I am not a gay or lesbian studies expert. This is based on my own experiences, insights [and] prejudices," said Buffington as he addressed an audience at Steinhardt Hall, sponsored by the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center.

While violent crime on Penn's campus has largely decreased this year, some property crimes, like burglary and bike theft, have risen significantly in 2008. Violent crimes, such as robberies and assaults, are down 42 percent for the year. This trend held for September, with six violent offenses reported this year, down from 12 in the same month in 2007.

Meeting the presidents of College Republicans and Penn Democrats together for coffee, it's hard to ignore the elephant - or donkey - in the room. However, the way College juniors Zac Byer and Lauren Burdette, the respective presidents of the most prominent politically right and left groups on campus tell it, theirs is a friendship based on similarities, not difference.

As Lehigh forward Kyle Evans took his overtime shot from 30 yards out, Penn keeper Drew Healy lost his footing on the dewey turf. The ball ricocheted off the left post and into the net for the game-winning goal. "That's a save [Healy] makes 99 percent of the time," Penn coach Rudy Fuller said.