After an unknown spammer from outside of Yale sent messages from “VIAGRA (c) Trusted Dealer” to and from the ASA Transit Panlist, some students received more than 100 returned e-mails in less than an hour. ITS disabled the panlist by 12:30 p.m. Morrow Long, Yale’s information security officer, said in an e-mail that ITS is taking steps to prevent similar occurrences.

A new chief of the New Haven Police Department will be chosen this month, Aldermanic Public Safety Committee Chair Alex Rhodeen told the News on Thursday evening. Rhodeen, the Ward 13 alderman, said the city will likely know its next chief before the current one, James Lewis, leaves. Until the new chief takes office, Assistant Chief Stephanie Redding will head the department.

Rhodeen also said only one candidate from within the NHPD applied to be chief, but that the candidate is no longer with the department. Asked if he was referring to Peter Reichard, who resigned as assistant chief Monday after being suspended for alleged misconduct, Rhodeen said that was “probably not a bad conclusion.”

Tickets for The (other) Game, Saturday’s men’s hockey match against Harvard, are all sold out. But a few student tickets remain for tonight’s game against Dartmouth. They can be picked up for free at the Yale Bookstore.

A recent poll conducted by Yale and George Mason University found that a majority of Americans support both political action to reduce carbon emissions and having schools teach children about the causes and effects of climate change.

A representative of Harry Walther, a self-described “Bible Code researcher,” sent an e-mail to Astronomy Department students and faculty on Thursday, urging them to search for a comet that Walther says will hit Utah on March 1, 2010, based on a code he deciphered from the Bible.

David Fein, who currently teaches a course on federal criminal prosecution as a visiting lecturer at the Law School, was nominated Thursday by President Barack Obama to be the U.S. Attorney for the state of Connecticut.

The officials formerly known as fire marshals, now called “code compliance officers,” are coming soon to a dorm room near you as another round of fire inspections begins across the residential colleges.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1980 Citing a decade of declining wages and benefits, junior faculty members discuss unionizing in order to bargain with the University for better compensation.