Washington

Fur farm recaptures most of missing mink

An animal-rights group has claimed responsibility for releasing about 10,000 mink from a fur farm near Seattle.

The animals — prized for their silky coats — escaped early Monday; all but about 1,000 were captured later in the day, farm owner Brad Roesler said.

Activists claiming to be part of the Animal Liberation Front, a radical animal-rights group, took credit for the release in Sultan in an e-mail sent to Seattle newspapers.

Sultan Police Chief Fred Walser said it appeared the intruder cut through a fence and opened the mink coops. The cat-sized animals ran “out the back fence and down a ravine and every direction you can think of,” he said.

Colorado

Cadets reprimanded in drinking incident

The entire cadet corps will get a dressing down because of a weekend underage drinking incident that embarrassed an Air Force Academy still struggling to overcome a sexual assault scandal, the new superintendent said Tuesday.

All 4,000 students at the academy outside Colorado Springs will be lectured Thursday about the consequences to their military careers and to the institution, Lt. Gen. John W. Rosa said.

Seven 20- and 21-year-old cadets were caught Saturday in a hotel room off-campus with two young women, 16 and 18 years old. All were ticketed by police for drinking alcohol.

Rosa said any cadet found to have supplied alcohol to a minor would most likely be expelled from the academy under a zero-tolerance drinking policy that is part of the “agenda of change” ordered by the Air Force.

New Hampshire

Priest reinstated; sex allegation dropped

Nearly nine months after he was removed from his parish, a Roman Catholic priest was reinstated because an investigation found insufficient evidence to support a 30-year-old sex abuse allegation.

The Rev. Paul Gregoire, who served at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Dover since 1993, was suspended in December after a woman reported that Gregoire had molested her as a child while he served in the 1970s in Seattle.

On Monday, Manchester Bishop John B. McCormack lifted the restrictions against Gregoire, 74.

The evidence “is insufficient to support an accusation of sexual abuse of a minor,” said the Rev. Edward J. Arsenault, the bishop’s delegate for sexual misconduct. “The investigation was very thorough and involved statements from the woman who made the accusation, from Father Gregoire and certain witnesses.”