From financial crises to city-flattening natural disasters, the United States is a nation at risk. It is the management of that risk that is important, argues Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who spoke at Penn yesterday about these issues at the federal level.

With more people registered as Democrats than as Republicans in both Philadelphia and the state, Pennsylvania is looking a lot less like a swing state. But experts say more registered Democrats won't necessarily result in a victory for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

YouTube-addicts beware - more distractions are on their way. The video-streaming Web site is in the process of loading several full-length episodes of TV shows such as Star Trek, Beverly Hills 90210 and MacGyver onto the site. This is a test run of YouTube's new "theater format," which features higher video quality and longer selections than the usual YouTube clips, and the player dims the rest of the applications open on screen.

Fraternity houses are not known for being spotless - especially when some of the inhabitants shed all over the carpet. But that's a price the brothers of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house are willing to pay for the company of Brando and Callie. Brando, a yellow Labrador Retriever, and his sister Callie, a Chocolate Lab, can often be found at house parties and late night get-togethers stealing all the ladies and lapping up the attention.

You know her as president, but now Amy Gutmann is taking on the role of professor, too. School of Arts and Sciences Dean Rebecca Bushnell announced last week that Penn President Amy Gutmann has been named the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Political Science.

Walking into Steinberg-Dietrich Hall last night, political analyst and Fox News commentator Dick Morris made it a point to introduce himself by shaking every attendee's hand, whether liberal or conservative. The College Republicans hosted Morris to speak to students about the upcoming presidential election and the looming fascist Islamic threat.

The United States could be feeling the costs of the Iraq War for years to come, according to 2001 Nobel Prize winner and Columbia economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz addressed those costs - which total $3 trillion - in a lecture to students at College Hall yesterday.

With economic turmoil in the headlines, panelists at the Fiscal Wake-Up tour in Houston Hall on Tuesday told the tale of a potential greater crisis in the near future - one in which the entire American standard of living could be at stake. Panelists included Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition; Stuart Butler, vice-president of domestic and economic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation; Alice Rivlin, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution and David Walker, president and CEO of the Peter G.

Last night, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama debated the issues one last time before this year's highly anticipated presidential election comes to a close on Nov. 4. And like any debate, the candidates' performances generated discussion across campus, some more organized than others.

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For Graduate School of Education student Kathy Schultz, the allegations being leveled against University of Illinois at Chicago education professor Bill Ayers are "charges of McCarthysim." That's what caused her to join the more than 3,200 people - including eight others affiliated with Penn - in signing a recent national petition in support of Ayers.

"We need to get beyond" gender stereotypes, said Penn President Amy Gutmann at the "Women Who Rule" panel last night at the Annenberg School for Communication. Five female leaders in academia formed the panel on gender consciousness and solidarity among women in present day society.

"Why can't I get sex more than every four months?" "The government does not believe in global warming." "Nobody listens to me." Apparently, Philadelphians had a lot to complain about last month. But that last grievance won't be true for much longer - those words are now in the chorus of a song that the city's first complaint choir will perform publicly in Center City on Nov.

Next week, Penn will rock to the music of Led Zeppelin when Bustle in Your Hedgerow performs in the Social Planning and Events Committee Jazz & Grooves' annual Fall concert. The band is scheduled to perform on Oct. 21 at the Rotunda, located at 4012 Walnut St.

Officials in academia at Penn and beyond have decided to take a stand in light of last month's detention of Iranian scholar Mehdi Zakerian, who was scheduled to teach at Penn Law this year. Penn President Amy Gutmann recently sent a letter directly to the president of Iran expressing her concerns on behalf of the academic community and urging the Iranian government to release Zakerian.

The devil's advocate may know best in cancer research. Contrary to scientific dogma, Penn researchers have found that certain proteins long thought to suppress tumor growth may actually facilitate it. Complement proteins - a family of 30 proteins that are part of the immune system - had been thought to slow tumor growth, much in the same way they fight bacteria.