Royal: The Duchess of York, the former...

Royal: The Duchess of York, the former Sarah Ferguson, in New York cradled a baby born to a drug-addicted mother and urged other toddlers at a Harlem shelter to eat their spinach. “I came because it’s so important,” said Fergie while touring Hale House. A children’s marching band and gospel choir greeted her and the street filled with residents trying to catch of glimpse of the wife of Britain’s Prince Andrew.

Not So Royal: A group of Britons trying to raise money for charity has lashed out at Princess Anne for refusing--literally--to give them a penny. The group wanted the coin from Queen Elizabeth’s daughter to publicize its bid to lay a three-mile trail of pennies to raise $5,000 for charities, but Anne’s spokesperson said Anne could not “single out one worthy cause and not another.” “I couldn’t believe it. You would think she could spare a penny,” said a charity organizer.

A Little Taxing: The Internal Revenue Service has gotten in touch with the nation’s poet laureate, Joseph Brodsky, and all is well. The former Soviet dissident who won the 1987 Nobel Prize in literature was in Europe in July when IRS agents queried his neighbors about him, his work and his whereabouts. “It’s all fixed,” said his secretary in South Hadley, Mass. “It was a minor thing. It’s all wrapped up.” Neither the secretary nor an IRS spokeswoman would reveal what the IRS had wanted or what was resolved.

Curbed: For years, Army recruiters in Schenectady, N.Y., racked up more than $6,000 in parking tickets near the county courthouse and their recruiting station. Recently they sent the stack back to the city, accompanied by the text of a 1958 ruling that gave the federal government immunity from parking fines. But a city official curbed their action because the immunity decision had been overruled in 1967, he said: “We don’t want anyone to feel they are above the law.”