Religious Pilgrims Perish in Bus Crash

Hoax strikes on Feast of the Assumption

(NEWSER) - Some 30,000 Catholic pilgrims, many of them disabled or ailing, had to flee the Lourdes pilgrimage site in France yesterday because of a bomb scare on the Feast of the Assumption, one of the site's busiest days of the year. A phone call to police warning that four bombs planted on the site would go off at 3pm turned out to be a hoax, and the pilgrims, who were evacuated around noon, were allowed to return later in the afternoon, BBC reports. More»

Obama, Jay-Z, Steve Jobs help win crown

(NEWSER) - When it comes to foreign policy, perhaps Americans aren’t the world’s favorite nationality. But the US has clearly cornered the market on coolness. Just ask the 30,000 people from 15 different countries polled by social networking site Badoo.com. When asked to choose the coolest country, America came first, Reuters reports. “We hear a lot in the media about anti-Americanism,” says a rep for the site. “But we sometimes forget how many people across the world consider Americans seriously cool.” More»

Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland call for citizens' savings

(NEWSER) - As European governments seek new sources of revenue, private retirement plans are taking a hit. Since most are organized by the state, "European ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for their own ends," writes Jan Iwanik for the Christian Science Monitor . Iwanick highlights five such schemes:

• Hungarians last month had to choose between handing the government their retirement savings or giving up their state pensions.
• In Bulgaria, the government called for $300 million of private early retirement savings to be moved to state pensions; trade union protests weakened the plan.

Father Ksawery Knotz takes on human sexuality

(NEWSER) - When you think "sex advice," chances are you don't think "celibate Catholic priest" in the same nanosecond. Meet Father Ksawery Knotz , the church's answer to Dan Savage—sort of. Author of tomes like Sex Is Divine, the Polish priest is making waves by taking a decidedly modern approach on the finer points of human sexuality, in a way, trying to marry it with God. "It seems to people that God and sex have nothing to do with each other," Knotz tells GlobalPost. More»

Calls for director's release dropped as public backlash grows

(NEWSER) - The governments of France and Poland are beginning to distance themselves from Roman Polanski amid a public backlash against earlier support for the film director, who holds passports from both countries. In France—where the foreign minister called for Polanski's release earlier this week—a government spokesman said yesterday that the director "is neither above nor beneath the law. There is a legal process underway for a serious affair—the rape of a minor," he added. More»