Two police cars crashed into a median while chasing a robbery suspect, sending five people to the hospital yesterday morning.

Three Tucson Police officers, a father and his son were hospitalized and later released after a police car hit a newly installed pedestrian median at 8:25 a.m. at North Euclid Avenue and East Second Street.

The intersection was blocked off until the early afternoon.

Officer Danny Peralta drove into the center turn lane while chasing an armed robbery suspect southbound on Euclid. He did not know that the concrete median had been installed. When he hit the median, his airbag deployed and his patrol car slammed into oncoming traffic, TPD spokesman Sgt. Marco Borboa said. [Read article]

Traditionally, it has been the job of the police to respond to neighbors' complaints of loud students whose parties disrupt peaceful nights.

But now ASUA senators want to play a role in mediating the conflict by bringing students and neighbors together.

Students will be surveyed tomorrow on whether or not they want ASUA to mediate the conflict between students and the surrounding community.

The results of the survey will determine if ASUA Sen. Sara Birnbaum will go ahead with plans to establish forums that will encourage neighbors and students to listen to one another. [Read article]

Program elimination part of ÎExcellence'

UA administrators announced yesterday that they will move ahead with plans to cut the Extended University.

Programs currently administered by the EU, including correspondence classes, will be operated through a streamlined and downsized Office of Continuing Education and Academic Outreach in an effort to eliminate wasteful administrative overhead costs. [Read article]

About 30 students, staff and members of the Tucson community protested outside the Student Union Memorial Center last night as a minister spoke against homosexuality to over 200 people.

Pride Alliance, an ASUA resource center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students, organized the protest against the appearance of Tim Wilkins, a North Carolina-based minister and director of Cross Ministry. [Read article]

Provost George Davis is asking faculty to weigh in on a focus group that could change the structure of UA programs.

The Earth Science and Environmental Programs focus group has invited the faculty of all related fields to a meeting next week to discuss how programs related to earth science and the environment are organized.

The ESEP group is one of four groups formed last year as a part of Focused Excellence. [Read article]

Freshman tries to speak Spanish, but hasn't been to biology class in the last four weeks

Wildcat: My name's Nathan. You're On the Spot. Your friend here tells me you're in Spanish. Say something in Spanish.

Yeager: What do you want me to say?

Wildcat: "My name's Nathan. You're On the Spot."

Yeager: I don't know how.

Wildcat: Try.

Yeager: Me llamo Nathan. Est‡s Spot? [Read article]

News from around campus

UA astronomy prof receives award for infrared instrument

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has awarded its 2003 Maria and Eric Muhlmann Award to UA astronomy professor Rodger I. Thompson and the team which developed the Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS instrument, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer.

NICMOS, which space shuttle astronauts installed in HST in 1997, was the first large-array infrared detector camera in space. [Read article]

Things you always never wanted to know

· Chocolate was once considered a temptation of the devil. In Central American mountain villages during the eighteenth century, no one under the age of 60 was permitted to drink it, and churchgoers who defied the rule were threatened with excommunication.

· Andrew Jackson, two weeks before the end of his second term as U.S. President, gave a public reception. An enormous cheese weighing 1,400 lbs. had been presented by the dairymen of New York, and the public was invited to help itself. In two hours, the gigantic cheese, four feet in diameter and two feet thick, was demolished. [Read article]