Pontificating

Where there’s smoke: A Catholic organization has set up a website, www.popealarm.com, that promises to deliver smartphone texts or emails to subscribers when white smoke emerges from the Sistine Chapel chimney in Vatican City, announcing a new pope.

We hope you remembered last weekend when you set your clocks ahead an hour to also change the batteries in your popealarm.

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We have a new Ho Ho: Hostess says it has dropped its plans to auction off the rights to its Twinkies and other snack cakes and, instead, is preparing to sell the company to an investment firm that intends to resume Twinkie sales this summer.

When the purchase is formally adopted and a final deal has been struck, creme filling will ooze from the smokestack of the Twinkie factory to cheers of Americans everywhere.

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Can we get that with vinyl seats instead of fabric? Ireland’s RyanAir, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, has agreed to buy 200 737s from Boeing for a cost-conscious $9 billion. RyanAir, so notoriously cheap that it charges passengers a British pound to use the bathroom, opted for the older 737NG rather than the updated 737Max.

Still looking for bargains as it concluded its 737 deal, RyanAir asked Boeing if it had any plans for that stack of 787 lithium-ion batteries in the back.

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