MATT CASHORE / University of Notre Dame Notre Dame students attended the first pep rally of the football season last night at the Joyce Center, which serves as the school's basketball arena.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Fran Leedy would love to stop and chat, but the guy in the Notre Dame windbreaker and matching pants can't decide if the adidas tennis shoes with the leprechaun logo are exactly what he has in mind. Leedy would love to stop and chat, but there are cash registers to open and an army of employees to organize and the woman in the wide-brim Notre Dame hat is struggling with the idea of actually buying a pink Notre Dame sweatshirt. What is the world coming to?

WASHINGTON – Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve yesterday informed top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that the government was preparing to seize the two mortgage finance giants and place them in a conservatorship, officials and company executives briefed on the discussions said.

SACRAMENTO – The last three Republican governors all signed major tax increases, but history does not seem to be repeating itself for the current Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. His inability to get Republican legislators to vote for a tax increase, which the governor hopes would get votes from Democrats for long-term budget “reform,” is the main sticking point in a record state budget deadlock.

2008 VOTE: PRESIDENT

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. – Fresh off back-to-back conventions, the two presidential campaigns took off on a 60-day dash to the White House in a political landscape reshaped by the candidacy of Gov. Sarah Palin and Republican efforts to seize the mantle of change.

Eucalyptuses are nothing more than multistory matchsticks ready to burst into flames when Santa Ana winds strike. The neighbor's pine? Pretty. Pretty dangerous, that is. And that sycamore sucks up a zillion gallons of costly water.