Attention Richmond, the mother ship is landing – assuming it doesn't get shot down by city building inspectors. The Church of Scientology, a self-help New Age religion created by best-selling science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, is opening a mission in Richmond — Carytown, to be exact. Right across the parking lot from Richmond's own defenders of the faith and purveyors of produce, Ukrop's Super Markets. The city issued building permits Aug. 8 for the property at 3600 W. Cary St., ...

Last month, the School Board sent a warning to parents about the “harmful effects” of drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Much of the flier’s information was taken from the Internet, including from a Web site run by a group founded by the Church of Scientology. This week, six national organizations and eight local groups sent a letter requesting that the School Board retract the flier and send a new one stating that ADHD is a disease that requires ...

RICHMOND — The Virginia Board of Dentistry ruled Friday that a Harrisonburg dentist broke state regulations by allowing unlicensed assistants to sedate patients. The board put Dr. Kathryn Biery on indefinite probation, for at least two years, ordered her to take continuing education classes and fined her $24,000, according to Leigh Kiczales, of the Virginia Department of Health Professions Administrative Proceedings Division. The decision followed Biery’s admission on Thursday that she told unlicensed assistants to sedate children, sometimes calling the order ...

They're ubiquitous at almost every disaster zone, assisting the wounded and consoling grieving families, from Ground Zero to Indonesia to New Orleans and now Minneapolis. The Church of Scientology and its globetrotting team of volunteer ministers have been active over the last several years, arousing the ire of critics who read unholy motives into the group's charitable works. Soon after Wednesday's bridge collapse, at least 20 Scientology volunteers in Minneapolis and surrounding areas headed to the disaster zone, according to a ...

BY his own admission, Lafayette Ron Hubbard, whose impenetrably obscure writings about thetans would evolve over a half-century into the multi-billon-dollar celebrity-speckled commercial business known as the Church of Scientology, was mad. "There is an interview I have where they ask Ron Hubbard, 'Are you mad?', and he says: 'Yes, I am,"' says Raphael Aron, director of Australia's Cult Counselling Centre. "He saw his madness as a quality and as thinking outside the square." In 1999, when Aron wrote Cults: Too ...