Hometown chance sparks coach's exit Men's basketball assistant coach Chris Sparks is leaving Penn to return to his alma mater. Sparks will coach at Wilbraham & Monson Academy, a Massachussetts prep school, after two years under Glen Miller in Philadelphia, and another at Brown.

I kind of felt like I'd been there before. Maybe it was the shameless opportunists selling Obama '08 buttons - one for $2, three for $5 (how could I pass one up?) I guess they did sort of remind me of those annoying venders hawking foam fingers and pennants along Yawkey Way and Lansdowne Street.

Leslie King is looking for "city bragging rights." Even though the Quakers' Ivy League Championship hopes have come and gone, they still have plenty for which to play. Penn (21-19) will face city rival Drexel (21-16) at home today in a doubleheader at Warren Field.

After six long weeks of campaigning, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has won the Pennsylvania primary. According to exit polls, undecided voters - many of them white and concerned with the economy - were crucial in Clinton's win, handing her a much-needed victory over Sen.

Saving someone's life may start with something as simple as a cheek swab. Wharton freshman Andrew Brodsky is living proof. Diagnosed with leukemia at the age of 16, Brodsky received a bone marrow transplant that saved his life. His donor - a close to perfect genetic match - was a male living in New York who had his cheek swabbed at a bone marrow registry drive that his fraternity organized at Northwestern University.

Nanotechnology - a field that involves manipulating matter on the atomic scale - is helping scientists reshape the technological world by making things smaller and smaller. At Penn, though, the attention being paid to nanotechnology has never been bigger. So when the state announced earlier this month it was giving a $3.

There are over 250 races at this year's Penn Relays, but you ought to focus on a two-foot pool of water. The crowd starts forming when they pour the first drop. It'll balloon into the thousands. (Get there early. There're only so many seats around a puddle.

A few years ago, Penn men's track coach Charlie Powell was ushering Arkansas track coach John McDonnell through Weightman Hall to the press room. A security guard stopped them and said that McDonnell wasn't allowed past. "His team just won the distance medley, and I'm taking him to the press room," Powell explained.

It's time to give this city some control over its own gun laws. Mayor Nutter and the City Council recently passed tougher firearms restrictions designed to fight Philadelphia's homicide problem. But thanks to a 1974 state law, Nutter's new gun law policies are probably unconstitutional, because only the state legislature has the right to regulate firearms.

Robbery April 12 - A female unaffiliated with the University reported that while walking within a building on the 3400 block of Market St., an unknown suspect forcibly removed her pocketbook and fled the scene, at about 6:30 p.m. Assault April 12 - Jason China, 26, of the 1700 block of 19th St.

"Vote today!" So shouted a student in a "Barack the Vote" shirt outside Hill College House yesterday, reminding students to vote in the highly-anticipated Pennsylvania primary. But despite the Illinois senator's strong grassroots campaign in Philadelphia and enthusiasm from young voters - 72 percent of voting Penn students chose Obama - that widespread activism wasn't enough yesterday, as New York Sen.

Penn students turned out in record numbers to vote in the Pennsylvania primary yesterday, in order to cast ballots in the pivotal contest between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. Altogether, about 2,500 students, more than one-fifth of Penn's student body, voted in this year's election - a significant jump from the 2006 midterm elections, when about 1,500 students voted in the general election.

The overall growth of applications from international graduate students has steadily declined over the last three years, according to a report released April 18 by the Council of Graduate Schools. Despite overall national decrease, 62 percent of the schools surveyed - including Penn - reported an average increase of 9 percent.

While many Penn students juggle academics, extracurricular activities and a social life, there is still one thing left for many to learn to balance - a checkbook. With the importance of financial literacy - knowledge of how to manage a credit-card to how to create a budget, for example - growing each and every year, trend-setting colleges all over the nation are reaching out to their students and expanding the financial advising resources available to them.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's victory in the Pennsylvania primary election last night came as little surprise to many on campus. Still, supporters of her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, said they don't feel defeated. In fact, many said they anticipate that Obama will still win the Democratic presidential nomination and expressed plans to campaign for Obama leading up to next month's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Trailing first-place Columbia by 4.5 games with five Ivy contests to go, Penn knows that this weekend's two doubleheaders against the Lions represent the team's final chance to repeat as Gehrig Division champs. "Season's not over," coach John Cole said. "We've got to put together a good week here and hopefully make a run.

It may have slipped under the radar, what with all the election news dominating the headlines - but at a little school to the north of here, a very different sort of controversy has been brewing. My friends at Yale haven't been talking Barack vs. Hillary.