Q. Is there any branch of the service that would allow a person who has committed a felony to join their ranks?
A. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps all allow potential members with felonies on their records to request waivers to allow them to enlist. Approval is by no means guaranteed, but the difficulties of recruiting new members after years of war has made the odds better than they used to be. The Associated Press reported last year that both the Army and Marine Corps brought in significantly more recruits with felony convictions in 2007 than in 2006.
Q. What is the race or races of Hota Kotb and Soledad O'Brien?
A. Kotb's parents were both Egyptian. O'Brien's mother is from Cuba, and her father, who came from Australia, has an Irish and Scottish background.
Q. How can I write to Mark Tatulli of the comic strip "Heart of the City"?
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A. E-mail him at heartofthecity@hotmail.com, or try sending him mail in care of Universal Press Syndicate, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106-2109.
Q. Is it true Michelle Obama has 23 assistants?
A. Mrs. Obama's press secretary has reported the first lady has 23 people on staff. That's in line with other recent first ladies. In 2008, Laura Bush had 18 people on staff, down from 24 at one point. Hillary Clinton had a 19-person staff in 2000.
Q. I have small round glassed-in Ferris wheel paperweight that says Chicago, 1893. Is that the same event as what they were having in Chicago that year? When did the World's Fair start?
A. Your paperweight certainly could be from the Chicago fair held that year. It was officially called the World's Columbian Exposition and was meant to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New World. The first world's fair took place at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, in 1851. The next one is set for 2010 in Shanghai, China.
Q. Is the major source of funding for the Taliban from the drug trade in Afghanistan, or how is the Taliban financed?
A. The Taliban does get a lot of its income from the heroin and opium trade; it taxes farmers, chemists who process the drug and truckers who transport it and receives payments from drug traffickers. But the Taliban also received donations from all over the Mideast, according to the New York Times report. The CIA estimates as much as $106 million a year may be donated.
Q. On a veterans tribute I heard a poem that had a line close to "Age shall not weary them." But I didn't get the name. Do you know what poem that was?
A. It sounds like a line from "For the Fallen," written in 1914 by Laurence Binyon, an Englishman who served with the Red Cross during World War I.
The poem is too long to print in full here, but that line is from one stanza that is often quoted:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
