iStockphoto.com

Earlier this week, Passport brought you the inaugural flight of the Vatican's new airline, which will ferry eager Catholics to holy sites across Europe.

But so far, it hasn't been all smooth sailing for the heavenly voyagers. Pilgrims returning home from the shrine at Lourdes in the south of France were told by airport security officials that they couldn't take more than 100 ml of holy water on board with them.

Sorry folks, even the big guy upstairs can't get you out of anti-terror security regulations. You'll have to take off your shoes just like the rest of us.

DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images

The discount airline craze that dominates Europe's airways took a leap of faith on Monday. In hopes of getting more Catholic pilgrims out to religious sites, the Vatican is now providing low-cost charter flights from seven Italian airports to places like the shrine of Fátima in Portugal, Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and the Jasna Gora monastery in Czestochowa, Poland. Signing a five-year agreement with Mistral Air, a parcel transport company founded by Italian movie star Bud Spencer, the airline is hoping to transport 150,000 passengers a year to their divine destinations (and hopefully make a worldly profit in the meantime). 

But not even God's nod of approval can shield you from the cut-throat competition on the runway these days. Here is what Ryanair, another bargain carrier, said of its new rival:

Ryanair already performs miracles that even the Pope's boss can't rival, by delivering pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela for the heavenly price of €10.

But is the Ryanair flight crew "specialized in voyages of a sacred nature"? Didn't think so. Nor do they have "I'm Searching for Your Face, Lord," imprinted on headrest covers throughout the cabin. And for those tired of the same old, mainstream in-flight entertainment, the Vatican's flights will be broadcasting religious videos instead. No word yet on whether Pope Benedict XVI, who usually charters a private plane for his voyages, might be next to you at the check-in.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty

Anyone who has lived in a big city knows what it's like when those inconsiderate neighbors decide to crank up their stereo at two in the morning. Or when rush hour traffic fills your apartment with jarring sounds of honking and cursing. But what we shrug off as the price of living in a cosmopolitan town may be deadlier than we thought.

A new study of European cities by the WHO has found that the emotional distress caused by noise pollution is responsible for three out of every 100 deaths typically blamed on heart disease. This could translate to as many as 210,000 deaths in Europe each year due to lack of peace and quiet. The unwanted raucous increases levels of stress hormones, even while we sleep, which can then lead to heart failure, strokes, high blood pressure, and immune problems if present in the bloodstream for extended periods of time. 

EU regulators have already sprung into action: By the end of this year, cities with populations exceeding 250,000 will be required by law to produce digitized noise maps marking the noise hotspots (which would really come in handy while apartment hunting). Over on this side of the Atlantic, residents of the "city that never sleeps" might finally be getting some beauty rest thanks to Major Bloomberg's recent hardening of the city's noise pollution codes. Under the new rules, music polluters in New York City will be slapped with heavier fines and cars whose alarms go off for more than three minutes at night will be towed.

The WHO study looked only at European cities, so I shudder to think what researchers would find in Cairo, Mumbai, or Beijing. But perhaps those cities can work on clearing the air first before they start going after horn-happy drivers. The air pollution in those place will probably kill you before the noise does.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/Getty Images News

With all the media attention focused on Mattel's recent toy recalls, homegrown health threats can slip under the radar. In a fascinating piece for Slate, Dr. Darshak Sanghavi says to forget about tainted Batman action figures from China—there's already way too much lead in the United States.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintain that blood lead amounts under 10 mcg/dl (micrograms per deciliter) are well below the "level of concern." But recent medical evidence has shown that even with lead levels less than 10 mcg/dl, a child can lose roughly seven IQ points. And once these points vanish, they don't come back. A population-wide average loss of seven points, Sanghavi observes, would place tens of thousands of kids below the general threshold for mental retardation. As a solution, Sanghavi proposes "zero-tolerance lead policies, which would mean nationwide de-leading of unsafe homes."

It sounds like a no-brainer. So why the stall in taking action? Well, first there is the lead lobby. Then there is cost of de-leading paint in older houses nationwide, which works out to an estimated $58 billion, or about $8,000 for each IQ point saved. Apparently this is too much for Washington, since no progress has been made towards lowering allowable lead limits since 2000. But if we ignore the problem, it'll go away, right?

MUSTAFA OZER/AFP/Getty

Everyone is trying to predict when Turkey will invade Northern Iraq for harboring PKK terrorists. But many are overlooking Iraqi Kurdistan's eastern neighbor, Iran, which is home to an estimated 4 million Kurds. Reuters reported on Tuesday that leaflets were mysteriously appearing throughout Kurdish villages in Northern Iraq, warning inhabitants of an imminent Iranian military offensive. While the authenticity of these leaflets is still in question—it's not that hard to type "The Islamic Republic of Iran" across the top of the page and press "print"—the Iran-Iraq border is definitely heating up. An Iranian helicopter crash last Friday sparked speculation over Iran's military intentions and since then, Iran's shelling of Kurdish villages in Iraq's mountainous northeast (a strong base for Kurdish insurgency groups like the PKK and its Iranian offshoot, the PJAK) has only added to the unease. It's no surprise, then, that hundreds of Kurdish villagers obviously found the leaflets credible enough to flee their homes.

Turkey and Iran haven't always seen eye-to-eye on the Kurdish issue. During the 1990s, Turkey accused Iran of providing a safe haven for the same PKK militants it was trying to fight. But since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran has been cracking down on the PJAK and sending out stern messages to insurgents. And Kurdish fighters have stepped up their resistance accordingly: The Guardian reports that the PJAK is the fastest growing armed resistance group in Iran, with tens of thousands of followers in secret cells in Iranian Kurdistan.

Relations between Iran and Turkey have been warming of late, and a shared interest in wiping out the Kurdish insurgency might just nudge the two even closer together. Much to Washington's dismay, Iran and Turkey recently pressed forward with an energy cooperation deal, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad triumphantly claiming that there were no limits to where Tehran's relationship with Ankara could go. Let's hope this doesn't mean the two countries will go, hand in hand, straight into Northern Iraq.

AFP/Getty Images

While the experience must have undoubtedly been terrifying for the passengers aboard the Atlas Jet flight headed from Northern Cyprus to Istanbul on Saturday, the attempted hijacking of the 136-passenger airliner provides a pretty great lesson in how NOT to hijack a plane. Herewith, a brief rundown of lessons learned from this botched job.

Step 1: Break into the cockpit. After an unsuccessful attempt to karate-kick the door down, the two hijackers ended up having to voice their demands to the pilots using the phone outside the door.

Step 2: State your demands and don't compromise. The hijackers ordered the pilots to divert the plane to either Iran or Syria, but quickly buckled when the pilots convinced them that they needed a quick detour to refuel and landed the plane in the Turkish city of Antalya.

Step 3: Keep hostages in your control. After landing in Antalya, the hijackers announced that all women and children could go. But once a couple resourceful passengers forced open a door at the back of the plane, the remaining hostages quickly flooded out. In the meantime, the pilots broke through the cockpit window and booked it outta there as well, leading some to label them as cowardly, even going as far as to say the two should never be assigned to another flight again.

And it turns out that the alleged "bomb" was nothing more than a lump of modeling clay adorned with wines (to make it look a bit more realistic of course).

The latest reports say that the hijackers were a 25-yr old Turk and a 33-yr old Egyptian holding a Palestinian passport, who is said to have had some past connection with al Qaeda (if staying in the same prison with an al Qaeda member in Saudi Arabia can really count). Their motive? To protest the policies of the United States. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone in Washington was paying all that much attention.

FINDLAY KEMBER/AFP/Getty Images

Kishore Biyani, a self-made businessman whose company, Pantaloon Retail Ltd., is India's largest retailer, recently spent $50,000 to improve his Mumbai store. The wide aisles and neatly-stocked shelves modeled after Western supermarkets just weren't doing the trick.

Now thanks to Biyani's remodeling, the store is messier, noisier and cramped—a more familiar environment for customers accustomed to fighting their way through chaotic street markets. Narrow, winding aisles were added to create traffic jams and force people to stop and look at the products. Wheat, rice, and lentils are sold in large buckets so that consumers can feel and smell them to ensure their quality. Biyani even discourages his staff from straightening up after shoppers, believing that his customers are less likely to check out a product if it is in neat stacks. He even throws imperfect produce into the mix:

For the average Indian, dusty and dirty produce means fresh from the farm, he says...[H]aving damaged as well as good quality produce in the same box gives customers a chance to choose and think they are getting a better deal. 'They should get a sense of victory,' he says. 

But not everything from the street made it into his stores. Haggling is still not allowed.

Biyani's experience is just a vignette in a much larger story. India's retail market is now $370 billion a year, but is expected to grow more than 55 percent in the next four years. According to the consulting group McKinsey, 97 percent of Indian retailing is currently "unorganized" in the form of 15 million small, family-run stores. And so far, the experience for foreign companies on the subcontinent has been less than pleasant: Retail giants Tesco and Carrefour have been deterred from entering the market and have pulled out of negotiations to launch joint ventures; others like Germany's Metro have been plagued by uncertainty and troublesome government regulations. And now Wal-Mart wants to give it a shot.

But Wal-Mart is going to face a steep learning curve, as Biyani's remodeling strategy suggests. Cracking India's retail market is going to require something different than the usual smiley faces and "always low prices."

What could possibly prompt someone to compare private equity to sex? It must be because leveraged buyouts are so exciting and scandalous, right?

Actually, it's because "there is nothing new about it" says Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone (pictured at left).

Although he's a staunch proponent of private-equity deals, Langone views these lucrative ventures as little more than a way for investors to "get more juice out of a lemon" and believes we shouldn't try to find complicated explanations for what is just "simple math."

But for Harvard economist Michael Jensen, who debated Langone at a conference earlier this week, it's a bit more complex. For Jensen, private equity represents a new model of corporate governance that has an advantage over that of public companies. Free from the shareholders and quarterly reports that can hold public companies hostage, privately owned companies can focus on the long term. And private-equity funds usually run businesses more efficiently than do public companies, Jensen argues. That's because private-equity ownership that under-performs can easily be kicked to the curb, whereas "shareholders of a public company can be stuck for years with inefficient management and poor performance." 

Why should we care about this rather arcane discussion? Because billions of dollars may be at stake. Private equity is under the spotlight these days because of recent turbulence in the credit markets and predictions that the days of multibillion-dollar private-equity deals are a thing of the past. And the U.S. Congress is taking a hard look at private-equity managers like Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, who has become the poster boy for what some are calling "the new gilded age."

So what should we make of the private-equity craze? FP recently spoke with Steve Forbes, editor in chief of Forbes magazine, to get his take. He doesn't quite compare private equity to sex, but he does have interesting things to say. Check it out.