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Mayor Michael Nutter's budget proposal - which faces criticism from the City's unions - will be scrutinized in City Council public hearings until mid-May. Proposed last week, the budget contains a "number of difficult choices," said Luke Butler, deputy press secretary to the Mayor, but the level of public engagement demonstrated that citizens will support the decisions.

The bacteria isolated from the campus' fourth reported case of meningitis is "genetically similar" to the bacteria that infected three students last month. All four cases are part of the same outbreak, a City health official said. Despite this, Student Health Service director Evelyn Wiener said the fourth case, reported during spring break, is distinct from the first three and that there is no common source linking the two groups of incidents.

In an increasingly competitive job market, young professionals are turning to the resources of networking, and Career Services is showing them how to do it. Yesterday afternoon, a small crowd gathered in the living room of Civic House in order to discuss the art of networking, in an event sponsored by Career Services entitled "Networking - Launching a Career in the Public Interest Sector.

College senior Eric Karlan came to Penn knowing that he wanted to study nonfiction and creative writing. And when he found out that the University does not offer a specific writing major, Karlan decided to create his own. With nearly 60 departments to choose from, it is hard to imagine that the College of Arts and Sciences doesn't offer a major for everyone.

This Hey Day, the Class of 2009 will greet the current juniors not with condiments but with a raised glass. The Senior and Junior Class Boards have established what they hope will become a new tradition with the "Final Toast," an event that aims to welcome the outgoing seniors into the alumni community while at the same time celebrating the incoming seniors.

Wharton-style dodgeball is back - but this time it's called Hostile Takeover. Hosted by the Wharton Council for the sixth year, the event is a version of the game Assassins. Registration ended Tuesday, and the game began yesterday. Those who signed up received a small green ball and the name of a target.

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Yesterday, students learned about a beverage that is perhaps not as common on college campuses as Natty Light. The Philomathean Society kicked off its ninth annual wine class last night. An instructor from the Wine School of Philadelphia spoke about North American wines as part of this year's "Wines Around the World" course, which features six weekly two-hour classes highlighting wines from each continent.

Last week, a group of 14 students traveled halfway across the world to address global water issues at the the fifth World Water Forum. Attendance at the event - which took place in Istanbul, Turkey - was required for the students, all taking Earth and Environmental Science professor Stanley Laskowski's course, "Global Water Issues," which specifically centers around the Forum for the semester.

Though work-study jobs at Penn are facing a potential budget decrease next year, funds from President Obama's stimulus package are expected to help keep the number of available jobs steady. There has been no significant change this academic year in the number of work-study jobs or students employed, according to Student Employment Office manager John Rudolph.

Phillies baseball fans crammed into Houston Hall yesterday to behold the trophy that, after 28 years, they could finally claim as their own. The Phillies brought the World Series Trophy to the Houston Hall Bistro yesterday at 3 p.m. The event, hosted by the Student Planning and Events Committee, was a part of the Phillies' World Series Trophy Tour, which has made stops at cities all over the country.

Former Penn student Diexia Wang pleaded guilty on Monday to five separate counts of defiant trespassing in the dormitories of female residents at Penn. Under a negotiated agreement, Common Pleas Judge Rayford Means sentenced Wang to five consecutive years of probation that includes mental-health counseling and restitution payment to the victims.

During spring break, a dozen graduate students in the School of Design went to China to preserve history. Currently in its second year, professor Randall Mason's HSPV 621 - Seminar in International Conservation - is a semester-long course in Penn's graduate program in historic preservation.

G. Edward DeSeve, senior lecturer at Penn's Fels School of Government, will manage the distribution of the $787 billion in federal stimulus funds in a new high-level advisory role. The White House announced his appointment yesterday as senior advisor to the Office of Management and Budget for Recovery Act Implementation, special advisor to President Barack Obama and assistant to Vice President Joe Biden.

The gloves came off between Penn and Temple University last night in a college stand-up comedy competition. A few minutes after 8 p.m., RooftopComedy - a company that records, produces and distributes live comedy performances - presented comedian David Scott to host their second annual college tour at Helium Comedy Club.