For the next couple of years, The University of Memphis will receive $2 million of a $4 million grant by the Department of Homeland Security. Vanderbilt University will be receiving the remaining $2 million. DHS provided the grant to improve cyber defense training.

While a demolition company works to tear down The University Center, an engineering firm is designing a way to keep the Theatre and Communications building from sinking. As reported in November, dirt under the almost 50-year-old building settled causing a hallway floor to sink.

Cheaters beware. One of The University of Memphis' newest tools in combating plagiarism is growing in popularity. "We have experimented with it, and some of our teachers are using it," said Stephen Tabachnick, chairman of the English department, remarking on Turnitin - new plagiarism software at The U of M.

Left of the entrance at the McWherter Library used to be the former TigerLAN lab. Now the room that housed 53 operating desktops for students has unplugged cables lying on long stretches of empty computer desks and is buried in the shadows behind the glass doors.

WASHINGTON (AP) -Sen. Barack Obama launched a presidential campaign Tuesday that would make him the first black to occupy the White House, and immediately tried to turn his political inexperience into an asset with voters seeking change. The freshman Illinois senator - and top contender for the Democratic nomination - said the past six years have left the country in a precarious place and he promoted himself as the standard-bearer for a new kind of politics.

It seems as if The University of Memphis' main campus isn't the only area getting a facelift. South Campus may also see construction. The Loewenberg School of Nursing and The School of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology proposed a plan to the state on Friday and received the seal of approval from Governor Phil Bredesen.

COVINGTON, La. (AP) -Rescued from a great flood while he was just a frozen embryo in liquid nitrogen, a baby boy entered the world Tuesday and was named after the most famous flood survivor of them all, Noah. Noah Benton Markham - 8 pounds, 6 1/2 ounces - was born to 32-year-old Rebekah Markham by Caesarean section after growing from an embryo that nearly defrosted in a sweltering hospital during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Twin car bombs tore through a leading Baghdad university as students left classes Tuesday in the deadliest attack in Iraq in nearly two months, and the United Nations reported 34,452 civilians were slain last year, nearly three times more than the government reported.

The University of Memphis has all the amenities of a normal college. There are over-priced books, 8 a.m. classes, dorms, construction and rising tuition. Although it is an accredited institution, there are students and alumni who regard The University as little more than "Tiger High" - a term some administrators find maddening.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A suicide car bomber killed 17 Shiites at a teeming Sadr City market Wednesday, while gunmen in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad shot up a convoy of democracy workers in an ambush that took the lives of an American woman and three bodyguards.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House voted to raise the federal minimum wage Wednesday for the first time in a decade, to $7.25 an hour, as majority Democrats marched briskly through their 100-hour agenda at the dawn of a new Congress. Ebullient Democrats stood and cheered as the final vote - 315-116 - was announced.