Provost Ron Daniels may have just completed his first year at Penn, but his projects reach as far away as Botswana. The initiative in the landlocked south African nation was part of what Daniels hopes will become a much larger presence for the University on the international stage.

Irene Queju was trying to make sense of the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Stan when duty called. Among the ruins of her village in Guatemala, Queju, who is a doctor, noticed a woman going into labor and was able to deliver the child. The mother "named him Moses because that means 'saved by the water,'" Queju said.

After walking 24 miles in the cold rain, Stouffer College House Dean Michele Grab rested for the night on the floor of a local high school, only to wake up and walk 19.5 more miles the next day. But she did it for a cause - as part of the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk, sponsored by the Susan G.

It's Monday night at 11, and a group of friends is taking a break from their books to grab a bite at Philly Diner. College and Wharton senior Varun Jalan says the group has been at the 3925 Walnut St. restaurant many times in the last four years, even when their studies kept them up until 3 or 4 a.

Top colleges are increasingly pushing students to learn about foreign cultures, become religion connoisseurs and even study abroad. These changes mark efforts to revamp requirements to incorporate more diversity in curricula of top-tier universities, academic experts say.

Thirty-five years ago, 43 people were killed in a prison uprising in upstate New York, the bloodiest in United States history. Ironically, the upshot of the incident was an "assault on the idea that prisoners had civil liberties," Heather Thompson told a crowd of about 40 at Penn's Silverman Hall Monday.

It's no secret that Penn boasts a thriving community of Jewish undergraduates. But more and more, the University is becoming a hub for a different group of Jewish students - senior citizens. The Senior Associates Program, administered by the College of General Studies, allows senior citizens and retirees living in the Philadelphia area to audit Penn courses for a nominal fee.

College sophomore Dean Tye can be seen on the Internet, engaging in a "dance-off" with street performers in New York. Tye is one a large number of students and millions across the country who use YouTube.com, a video-sharing Web site - but its recent purchase by Google Inc.

Smack in the middle of midterms and job recruitment season, School of Arts and Sciences Webmail crashed yesterday. Webmail went down in the late afternoon and appeared to have come back online in the early morning hours today. Officials have not yet disclosed the problem that led to the downtime.

Hold that cab fare - fine dining for the next generation of Penn students is about to move a whole lot closer to campus.

Where members of a tiny religious sect once stood singing hymns, students will soon rest in tanning beds and watch plasma-screen TVs. The former Divine Tracy Hotel at 20 S. 36th St. has been sold for $9 million to Trammell Crow Co., which plans to transform the building into a student-friendly apartment complex with strikingly dorm-like amenities - including residential advisers, activities and even a dining hall and a meal plan.

While the typical art history professor might give a lecture on Picasso's "Guernica," Richard Meyer says he would rather discuss "Picasso's dirty drawings on napkins." "I'm interested in the stories that get left out of art history," Meyer said. A visiting professor from the University of Southern California, Meyer has done extensive work on censorship and the role of sexuality and gender in contemporary art.

Women enter Penn in greater numbers than men. They graduate in greater numbers, too. But in elected student government in recent years, women are sorely lacking. The last time a woman was president of any class board was over three years ago, when Meredith Seidel led the Class of 2004.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Driving east on Interstate 40 out of the city, all that meets the eye are the staples of the American countryside: trees, cows and barns.

The neighborhood still faces problems with vagrancy, but something good is happening in Cedar Park, according to Cedar Park Neighbors president, Carol Walker. About 45 residents of University City's Cedar Park neighborhood braved the rain to attend the meeting in the Calvary Community Center at 48th Street and Baltimore Avenue, which focused on discussing ongoing and potential improvements to the area, especially on Baltimore between 45th and 50th streets.

Mariangela Bernardi is in her office at the David Rittenhouse Laboratory when a student enters, complaining about the scoring of a question on a test for a class not taught by Bernardi. She looks at the question and briefly sketches out an answer, explaining which variables and which equations are necessary to solve it.

When Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and his Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. met last week, viewers saw a lot of mud slung.