A memorial service full of laughter and tears was held on Tuesday for third-year law student Peter Santos, who passed away in March. About 75 students and faculty members gathered in the UCLA School of Law courtyard to remember a friend and student whom Professor Laura Gomez referred to as “the funniest guy in the law school.” Poster boards with pictures of Santos and his friends lined the courtyard, as well as a photograph of Santos with the words of Mother Teresa: “Sorrow is not forever … love is.” Santos, whom Gomez described as a “devoted son,” died of natural causes while visiting his mother in his hometown near Sacramento last month. Read more...

Steve Forbes, president and executive officer of Forbes, Inc., advocated democratization of the Middle East and a flat-tax plan for the United States in a speech he gave Tuesday at the Anderson School at UCLA. Read more...

Graduate students can log on to the MyUCLA Web site and start voting for next year’s Graduate Student Association officers today. The GSA election begins at noon, and students will be able to vote 24 hours a day for a week until noon on April 22. Read more...

The UCLA Office for Protection of Research Subjects determined on March 30 that UCLA researcher John Fahey “was engaged in human subjects research” for the controversial malariotherapy treatment going on in China. Read more...

Allowing defense allocations to increase dramatically while cutting education spending is a destructive and shortsighted policy. The United States spent nearly $400 billion on military expenditures this fiscal year while, at the same time, California faces a $34.6 billion budget shortfall, forcing cuts in a variety of areas, including education. Read more...

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When Bob Englund, UCLA professor of Assyriology, thinks about the looting of Iraq’s cultural sanctuaries, it saddens his heart. When American soldiers entered Baghdad this past week, their quest to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s regime immediately unbridled locals in an undesirable way ““ it gave them the freedom to loot and destroy thousands of years of Middle Eastern history, some of which Englund had personally worked with. Read more...