Comey may get chance to publicly defend name

Comey may get chance to publicly defend name

WASHINGTON

James Comey cut an unorthodox path as FBI director, time and again compelled by what he described as strongly held convictions to speak with unusual candor and eloquence about the bureau’s work.

It’s a combination of qualities that may come back to haunt the president who fired him.

Comey’s ouster Tuesday, while his FBI led an investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, raises the potential that a man long defined by his independent streak, willingness to buck protocol and even a flair for the dramatic could resurface to publicly rebut White House efforts to smear his reputation.

Pope makes Fatima children saints on centenary of visions

FATIMA, Portugal

Pope Francis added two Portuguese shepherd children to the roster of Catholic saints Saturday, honoring young siblings whose reported visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the Portuguese farm town of Fatima into one of the world’s most important Catholic shrines.

Francis proclaimed Francisco and Jacinta Marto saints at the start of Mass marking the centennial of their visions. A half-million people watched in the vast square in front of the shrine’s basilica, the Vatican said, citing Portuguese authorities. Many had spent days at Fatima in prayer, reciting rosaries before a statue of the Madonna. They clapped as soon as Francis read the proclamation aloud.

“It is amazing. It’s like an answer to prayer, because I felt that always they would be canonized,” said Agnes Walsh from Killarney, Ireland. She said she prayed to Francisco Marto for 20 years, hoping her four daughters would meet “nice boys like Francisco.”

“The four of them have met boys that are just beautiful. I couldn’t ask for better, so he has answered all my prayers,” she said.

Appeal in boy’s burp arrest case relies on Gorsuch dissent

WASHINGTON

One of Neil Gorsuch’s sharpest dissents as an appeals court judge came just six months before he was nominated for the Supreme Court.

That’s when he sided with a New Mexico seventh-grader who was handcuffed and arrested after his teacher said the student had disrupted gym class with fake burps.

Nearly a year later, Gorsuch sits on the nation’s highest court, and the boy’s mother is asking the justices to take up her appeal. She’s using Gorsuch’s words to argue that she has a right to sue the officer who arrested her son.

The court could act as early as Monday, either to deny the case or take more time to decide.

Sting operation leads to recovery of stolen bees

GREAT FALLS, Mont.

A Montana beekeeper has recovered hives that were stolen from him in California, thanks to an agricultural sting operation.

Lloyd Cunniff of Choteau reported 488 hives stolen in January, after he had transported them to California for the almond pollination season.

A tip led Fresno County authorities to find stolen hives worth $170,000 in a rented bee-nursery space, a cow pasture and hidden in a drainage ditch along a freeway.

Fresno County Detective Anders Solis, member of the county’s agriculture crimes task force, says there were 10 victims in seven California counties in all.

Associated Press