This is a help box. Whenever you see the question mark you can move your mouse over it to get a box to show up like this. If you can't see all this box for some reason you can drag it to a new spot on the screen using the mouse. This box will go away when your mouse is no longer over the question mark that triggered it or the box itself.

This icon on the news page is used to bring up a calendar that you can use to select past news days. When you click on a new day the page will immediately load that day. The arrows to the left and right of the calendar move you backwards and forwards one day at a time.

The featured articles below have more text of course. You can open an article by clicking anywhere on the article box.