Ex-Presidents Call for More Ike Funds

(NEWSER) - All four living former presidents will attend Ted Kennedy’s invitation-only funeral, the Boston Herald reports. President Obama will also be there, breaking off his Martha’s Vineyard vacation to deliver a eulogy. Gordon Brown also plans to attend, as will Irish PM Brian Cowen. “Sen. Kennedy is being honored as though he were a former sitting president,” observed one political scientist. More»

Non-Bush ex-president has already made one

(NEWSER) - Obituaries are a newspaper standby, but the New York Times has removed the journalistic middleman with its series of video obits, Editor & Publisher reports. After starting 2 years ago with humorist Art Buchwald’s greeting of “Hi, I’m Art Buchwald and I just died,” the Times has added 30 more to its “Last Word” stockpile. More»

(NEWSER) - Officials in the coastal Texas town of Galveston are baffled by a series of arson fires targeting palm trees, the Houston Chronicle reports. “This is strange,” the town’s fire marshal says of the spree, which has hit 30 trees since May. “It’s the first case in my experience dealing with a tree arsonist.” More»

Stress causes grays and wrinkles, but nobody agrees whether presidents die early

(NEWSER) - Four to eight years as leader of the free world gave George W. plenty of wrinkles and gray hairs—but just what are the presidency’s long-term aging effects? One doctor found that presidents generally have shorter-than-average lifespans, the Boston Globe reports, while another pegs two years for every one spent in the Oval Office. "For eight years in office, they age 16 years,” he argues. More»

(AP) - Rats, raw sewage, and a no-excuses curfew await exiled residents who try to return to Texas' storm-wrecked Galveston Island when it reopens next week, officials warned today. But that didn't keep some of the 45,000 evacuated islanders from trying to get home. Some ignored orders to turn around outside the city, while others resorted to deception to sneak past police guarding a roadblock. More»