The flu season has arrived once again, and many Penn students are expected to line up outside Student Health Services for their flu shots. This year, Student Health officials say they are much better prepared to fight the flu virus than they were last year.

Students at some schools are saying they need to bring their pets into school dorms - for their mental well-being.

Prosecutors can count on racking up more bills if they retry Wharton undergraduate Irina Malinovskaya for murder, but not on a better chance of a conviction, law experts say. Malinovskaya's first-degree murder trial was declared a mistrial for the second time last Thursday after the jury announced a 6-6 deadlock.

It's all about the name game in Pennsylvania. In the past weeks, with the Nov. 7 election approaching, a number of big-name politicians - some of whom are running for office themselves - have dropped in on Philadelphia and other cities in the state to throw their weight behind local candidates.

In the often cruel world of big business, some minority students are finding that getting a job is not so scary after all. In increasing numbers, many businesses are finding their way to Penn's campus to recruit minority students and help calm their job-hunting fears.

Boripat Donmon, of Thailand, couldn't believe AIDS would ever appear in his country - and that he would become infected. "Twenty years ago, I associated AIDS with Europe and Africa. I never thought it would appear on the Asian continent," he said. "About 10 years later, I realized I had it.

Penn was founded in 1740. Benjamin Franklin founded Penn. Therefore, Benjamin Franklin founded Penn in 1740. Not quite, according to Wikipedia. Dan Smith, a 60-year-old software engineer from outside Boston, wrote on the site that a group led by evangelist George Whitefield tried to start the school that would become Penn in 1740, even putting up the first building.

For Wangari Maathai, trees and peace go hand in hand, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner told an audience that filled Irvine Auditorium Monday night. "Peace is not an abstract concept," Maathai said. "It is impossible to enjoy peace in a world where limited resources on our planet are not managed responsibly and shared equitably.

Negative campaigning is rampant in U.S. politics, and Joe Klein blames pollsters and consultants. "The consultant class believes the essence of politics is taking a two-by-four and whacking your opponent with it," he said. Klein, a columnist for Time magazine and the formerly anonymous author of the novel Primary Colors, came to Penn yesterday to talk to professor John DiIulio's American politics class about his new book, Politics Lost, which laments the rise of the consultant-pollster complex.

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.