The Arizona Board of Regents unanimously approved yesterday three new research construction projects that will cost more than $170 million when coupled with improvements that would connect them to campus.

Regents also authorized the university to spend more than $250,000 to buy each of three properties lying on areas those buildings will occupy, and to use eminent domain to take over that land if tenants don't want to move. [Read article]

Regents reject $1,000 fee for nursing students

The Arizona Board of Regents approved yesterday a $500 fee for business undergraduates and denied a $1,000 fee for nursing undergraduates.

While this year's juniors and seniors will be exempt from the business fee, all other students in the Eller College of Business and Public Administration who advance to upper-division standing will have to pay the $500 on top of the $1,000 tuition increase for undergraduates. [Read article]

Summer classes will show professors how to use equipment

With a blue "No signal" sign looming on the screen behind her head, a nervous professor turns to a switchboard in the front of the class and clumsily tackles the buttons. As the lights in the room turn off and on, her students start to chuckle.

Eventually, a student comes to the front of the class, and with the touch of a few buttons, makes the intended image appear on the screen. Fifteen minutes later, the professor resumes her lecture. [Read article]

Fraternity auctions off dates with members to raise money for the Bobbi Olson Memorial Fund, which works to cure ovarian cancer

Losing his shirt and dancing onstage in front of more than 100 beautiful women is usually something that a guy will regret the next morning, but for members of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, it's just for a good cause.

Last night fraternity and sorority members raised about $3,500 at the Pike house for the fraternity's second Bobbi Olson Ovarian Cancer Foundation date auction. [Read article]

Slogans like "Animals feel fear and pain" and "The alternatives are more effective" confronted motorists on North Campbell Avenue in front of University Medical Center yesterday afternoon.

About 20 members of various local animal activist groups protested UMC's use of animals for medical research öö part of the "World Week for Animals in Laboratories."

"It's a time when animal rights groups nationwide bring into public focus the fact that animals are being abused through vivisection," said Gary Vella, Tucson chapter coordinator for the Animal Defense League of Arizona. [Read article]

Internet junkie always sticks up for the little guy, has his mind set on special ed

WILDCAT: Do you want to be a teacher?

HANSBROUGH: Yeah.

WILDCAT: What, like little kids or something?

HANSBROUGH: Yeah, more like special education at the middle school age.

WILDCAT: That's awesome. What got you into special education?

HANSBROUGH: Nothing really in particular. I just did a lot of reading. I guess I just found it interesting. [Read article]

· Alexander Graham was working to improve the telegraph when he invented the telephone.

· The first phone card ever issued in Japan sold for $52,430 at an auction in 1992.

· Half a billion people, about one of every eight, suffer chronic malnutrition.

· The largest box of chocolates in the world included 8,000 pieces of Disaronno Amaretto-filled chocolates. The box, assembled in New York City on Valentine's Day 2000, weighed 1,300 pounds. [Read article]

"If I was to die tomorrow, do I really want to be studying for my operating systems test tonight?"

÷ Stephen Thrush, computer science senior, who has decided to put off graduate school in order to travel to England.

"It seems we could do no less for the children of those slain in battle than we could for the sons and daughters of slain peace officers."

÷ UA spokeswoman Sharon Kha, on offering tuition waivers to slain soldiers' kin. [Read article]