A year ago, seven names were in the mix for Philadelphia's next mayor. Now, it's down to the "Fab Five." Union leader John Dougherty bowed out of the race yesterday, while U.S. Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.) said he will officially declare his candidacy tomorrow.

It's annoying, it's always in your inbox - and it's getting worse. According to new reports by two anti-spam companies, the number of spam messages has doubled this year - up to 62 billion every day - and Penn students are beginning to feel the impact. "In the past few months, spam has increased in volume greatly," said Duncan Findlay, a member of the Project Management Committee for SpamAssassin, the filter Penn uses.

Former Penn coach Fran Dunphy may be roaming the sidelines across the Schuylkill nowadays, but when he returns to the Palestra tonight with his Temple squad, it's unlikely his former players will have forgotten about him - or his famous mustache.

In 1874, Harvard hosted, and defeated, McGill University in the first known rugby match in the United States. Now, 133 years later, English football could some day be returning to the Ivy League -- as a women's varsity sport. While developments are in the extreme preliminary stages, the Penn women's club rugby team is one of many following the lead of USA Rugby - the sport's governing body - by looking into NCAA varsity status.

The messages proclaimed by two versions of anti-Penn posters currently plastered across West Philadelphia are anything but passive or forgotten.

Eduardo Glandt will chair the 14-person consultative committee that is charged with replacing Wharton Dean Patrick Harker, University President Amy Gutmann announced in a press statement yesterday.

For some Philadelphia residents, fighting injustice is a daily routine. Last night, before a group of 15 students seated in comfy couches and chairs at the Greenfield Intercultural Center, local Asian Americans spoke about dedicating their lives to remedying social injustices in their community.

Amira Fawcett is an Engineering sophomore from Houston, Texas. Her e-mail address is fawcett@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Discussions about Philadelphia politics are usually conducted in English, but Harris Sokoloff began one with a "ni-hao." Sokoloff, director of Penn's Project on Civic Engagement, was greeting the members of a bilingual citizens' forum last weekend in Chinatown - part of a citywide initiative called Great Expectations, which aims to increase dialogue about local issues as the mayoral election approaches this fall.

By Andrew Scurria Senior Sports Editor scurria@sas.upenn.edu According to one local source, an in-season basketball tournament to be played over Thanksgiving weekend should be coming to the Palestra in the near future. The Philadelphia Daily News reported on Friday that such an exempt tournament - so-called because the events include several games but only count as one towards each team's limit of 29 - is in the works and would consist of four games.

Despite her uncle's advice not to write about other books, Rita Barnard found that the best way to talk about South Africa's period of apartheid was through examining the literature that described the phenomenon. Last evening, the Penn English professor introduced her new book, Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place, to a small - but devoted - crowd at the Penn Bookstore.

Penn Student reactions were mixed the week of President Bill Clinton's inauguration on Jan. 21. "This is the first presidential election in which I participated, and I felt like a part of something which will be historically significant," said then-College junior Josh Penn.

After nearly upsetting No. 3 seed Rutgers in last year's NCAA tournament, the Dartmouth women entered this season with some major question marks.

Four-hundred-six is the number on the minds of most Philadelphians, but only the number two concerns Penn Division of Public Safety officials. Philadelphia saw 406 homicides in 2006, an increase of 27 from last year and the city's highest murder rate since 1997.

Engineering junior Mari Oishi was shot in the left thigh last January as she walked near the intersection of 38th and Walnut streets - the stray bullet came from a robbery that was occurring down the block. Partly as a result, President Amy Gutmann pledged an additional $5 million to the Division of Public Safety to create Operation Safe, through which the security presence, technology and lighting were all increased on campus.

Harvard basketball coach Frank Sullivan should be fired. Despite what the Harvard Athletics Web site calls "its most successful era in history," Harvard has achieved little over the past 15 years. They have not won an Ivy title, they have not made the NCAA tournament, and have never garnered a bid to the National Invitational Tournament.

Peterson rescinds his commitment to Tigers Jeff Peterson, a 6-foot point guard out of Hyattsville, Md., has withdrawn his commitment to play basketball at Princeton next year and reopened his recruitment, according to the highly regarded recruiting Web site scout.