The commotion around the Commons yesterday was not a last-minute rush to mail tax returns. Instead, the small crowd of activists that assembled on the corner of E. State Street and Seneca Street had gathered to protest federal government taxation policies that, according to the organizer’s event invitations, constitute “willful, deliberate and recklessly irresponsible fiscal behavior.”

The centrality of Pakistan was first revealed to me two summers ago. I was visiting Cornell friends in Islamabad and Lahore. During a dinner conversation I had with the Turkish ambassador — a diplomat who impressed me by his particularly refined vision of the global dynamics — the topic of Pakistan’s role in the world came up. The ambassador emphasized the strategic role of Pakistan, which sits at the juncture of the broader Middle-East and South Asia.

After the American citizenry ushered in a new reign of the Democratic Party in the recent elections, Cornell Law School graduates are taking on leadership roles in our nation’s policies.

President Barack Obama announced more members to the Office of the White House Counsel last Thursday. Among the newly appointed counsels, Alison J. Nathan ’94 will be an Associate Counsel to the President. Nathan received her bachelor’s degree and J.D. from Cornell. During her time at the Law School, Nathan served as editor-in-chief of the Cornell Law Review.

HAVERHILL, N.H. (AP) — A county treasurer who lost her bid for a fourth term last week to a 20-year-old Dartmouth College student from Montana blames her failed candidacy on "brainwashed college kids."

Republican Carol Elliott said students just voted for the Democratic ticket, which included Dartmouth junior Vanessa Sievers. Sievers won by nearly 600 votes out of 42,000 cast after targeting voters at Dartmouth and Plymouth State University through a $42 ad on the Web site Facebook.

"It was the brainwashed college kids that made the difference," Elliott, 66, told the Valley News of Lebanon. She said she had little faith that Sievers will fulfill her duties adequately.

The Cornell Population Program’s progress toward its goal of becoming a leading center for national and international demographic research has been significantly boosted by a $1.15 million grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health.

Each year, the NIH’s Demographic and Behavioral Science Branch awards one such grant to a new program showing the greatest promise of becoming a top population research center. The grant money, which began to flow on August 15 of this year, will be spread over a five-year period.

It will be used to support the development of the CPP’s infrastructure as well as its research, which focuses on three main areas: families and children, health behaviors and disparities, and poverty and inequality.

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said Monday he would lead the dominant party's ticket in December parliamentary elections and suggested he could become prime minister, the strongest indication yet that he will seek to retain power after he steps down as president early next year.

Putin is barred from seeking a third consecutive term in the March presidential election, but has strongly indicated he would seek to keep a hand on Russia's reins.

He agreed to head the United Russia party's candidate list in December, which could open the door for him to become a powerful prime minister — leading in tandem with a weakened president.

Putin called a proposal that he become prime minister "entirely realistic," but added that it was still "too early to think about it."