Bells peal and the chant begins. Their soft voices wash over the ancient stones, replacing the empty clatter of the day. Except, that is, for the clicks of a camera held by a photographer lurking behind a stone pillar.
It has been like this since
last spring, when word got out that the Cistercian monks of the Stift Heiligenkreuz, deep in the Vienna woods, had been signed by Universal Music to record an album of Gregorian chants.
When the album, Chant: Music For Paradise, was released in Europe in May – and shot to No 7 in the British pop charts, at one point outselling releases from Amy Winehouse and Madonna — the trickle of press attention turned into a torrent.
Now this monastery, where the daily rituals of prayer and work have guided life for 875 years, finds itself in a media whirligig at once exhilarating and unsettling for its 77 brothers. "We're monks," said Johannes Paul Chavanne, 25, who entered the monastery after studying law and is training to be a priest. "We're not pop stars, and we don't want to be pop stars."
BRAZILA sharp increase in drugs and cellphones found inside a Brazilian prison mystified officials – until guards spotted some distressed pigeons struggling to stay airborne.
Inmates at the prison in Marilia, Sao Paulo state, had been training carrier pigeons to smuggle in goods using cellphone-sized pouches on their backs, a low-tech but ingenious way of skipping the hi-tech security that visitors face.
"We have sophisticated equipment to search people when they go in, but they avoided this by finding another way to bring in cellphones and drugs," said prison director Luciano Gamateli.
Officials said the pigeons, bred and trained inside the prison, lived on the jail's roof, where prisoners would take their deliveries before smuggling the birds out through friends and family.
INDIAScary but true. Around 50 pilots each year in India are being grounded because they have consumed alcohol before taking a flight.
The sober fact has been revealed by the country's Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), a body controlling airline operations in India, who said dozens of pilots are found to have consumed alcohol during routine pre-medical tests.
It's all a result of India becoming one of the fastest growing aviation markets, with dozens of new airlines competing, often resulting in pilots forced to fly at short notice. Civil aviation rules specify that pilots and cabin crew cannot consume alcohol 12 hours before taking a flight.
AUSTRALIAWe don't like re-enforcing stereotypes but… three drinkers at an outback watering hole found a crocodile at the door and brought it inside for their drinking session.
The saltwater croc in question was just 24 inches long and more a curiosity than a threat to drinkers at the Noonamah Tavern last week, though the species can grow to more than 16 feet.
Barmaid Sarah Sparre said: "You could say we were a bit surprised. He was pretty complacent, easygoing. But we weren't going to test him out."
The three men taped up the crocodile's mouth, took some photos of them holding it, then put it in a box near the bar. Sparre said the croc may have escaped from a farm for the animals that was several miles away and wildlife officials took him back later.
Noonamah, in Northern Territory, comprises little more than a gas station and a bar on the main north-south highway through Australia. Saltwater crocodiles, once hunted to near extinction by skinners, have flourished in Australia's tropical north since they became a protected species in the 1970s.
The full article contains 668 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
