Before applying to college, many high-school seniors consult the U.S. News and World Report's annual ranking of American colleges and universities. Now, however, they have another consideration: how their top choice stacks up against universities around the world.

Theft: Oct. 23 - Someone reported that GPS devices, left in plain sight, were stolen from an automobile and ambulance on the 4200 block of Sansom Street at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 23 - Two male students, 18 and 20, reported that their unattended wallets were stolen from an unsecured room at the Iron Gate Theatre, located on the corner of 37th and Chestnut streets, a little before 5 p.

Even CEOs have to silence their BlackBerrys sometimes. In the Advanced Management Program, part of Wharton's Executive Education department, high-level executives and government officials leave their busy lives at work and return to taking notes in the classroom.

Six-hundred-and-thirty days ago, Senator Barack Obama began an improbable, historic and grueling journey proving to the American people that he is fit to be our next commander in chief. Through this journey we have come to know his strengths and weaknesses, his policy stances and political philosophy, his campaign style and, above all else, how truly qualified he is to be the next leader of the United States of America.

We've all seen the celebrity-ridden awareness campaign that's been recently circulating online. "Don't vote," Ashton Kutcher and Courtney Cox tell us gravely. "It's not like it's the most important election we've ever had." In case we didn't get the message, Penn Leads the Vote made its own version of the clip featuring campus bigwigs.

It's no secret that college students are some of the most sleep-deprived people in the nation - but the extent to which they are may be surprising. Only 11 percent of Penn students report feeling rested seven days a week when they wake up in the morning, according to this year's Health and Wellness survey of undergraduate, graduate and professional students.

The anticipation of the upcoming presidential election can be felt everywhere on campus, including Sunday night's Undergraduate Proxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 sembly meeting which featured two proposals on the topic. The UA considered a $1,400 budget request by Penn Leads the Vote to help cover the costs of "getting out the vote" on Election Day, including balloons, food for volunteers, pamphlets%2

The Next Great City of the 21st century has a 19th-century municipal park system. In 1867, state law established the Fairmount Park Commission to deal with the maintenance and preservation of the 9,200-acre Fairmount Park. But the City also has a Recreation Department, which helps manage public recreation facilities.

My refrigerator's not working. It's more like the outlet next to the refrigerator; for some reason it only works two days a week (seriously) and keeps blowing some circuit. The refrigerator before this made a lake on my floor every day for a month until it was replaced.

The juniors who are abroad this semester might be missing out on campus election hype, but that doesn't mean they aren't voting. College junior George Donnelly, who is studying in Scotland this semester, got an absentee ballot because he "wanted to make sure Barack Obama lays the smack down in New Jersey.

Engineering senior Ryan Goldstein's avoidance of child pornography charges was not unusual, experts say, since many people can escape some criminal charges by cooperating with authorities. Goldstein was sentenced last week on computer-hacking charges, but does not face charges for the several thousand images of child pornography found on his computer because he helped the FBI catch others involved in the hacking scheme.

The average College of General Studies class at Penn attracts a mixed bag of students. The College kid who's too lazy to take the 10 a.m. version. The stay-at-home mom who's finally getting her degree. And the senior citizen who has nothing better to do on a Tuesday evening.

Based on a celebrity-studded public service announcement of the same name, "Don't Vote / 5 Friends" is a viral video produced and distributed by Penn Leads the Vote - a nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing voter turnout.

Domus, the eight-story, $71-million luxury apartment complex located on 34th and Chestnut streets, is up for sale - barely a year after its completion in the fall of 2007. Domus was intended to be built and then put on the market shortly after, according to a spokeswoman for the building's developer.

Matthew Krentz's experiences growing up in St. Louis and playing basketball at junior college led him to craft a fictional account of his experiences. He wrote, directed and starred in Streetballers - the Philadelphia Daily News lauded his "chutzpah" - but he still couldn't get Hollywood to take note of the relatively low-budget Irish Urban drama.

The long-term future of government policies on abortion, the death penalty, use of torture and a number of other issues are at stake in the 2008 presidential election. Experts believe this year's election is significant because the president's power to appoint justices to the Supreme Court has the potential to substantially alter policies in the long run.

This is the last semester that students will use a Scantron sheet and No. 2 pencil to evaluate their professors. Starting in Spring 2009, the course evaluation system will be completely electronic. With this shift, the Student Committee for Undergraduate Education hopes to make the qualitative comments - which students currently handwrite at the bottom of the evaluation form but are not published online - accessible to everyone.