TAMPA, Fla., Nov. 7 — A Federal immigration court judge has granted asylum to a German member of the Church of Scientology who claimed that she would be subjected to religious persecution had she been required to return to her homeland, the woman's lawyer and a Scientology official said today. While few details of the case were available, it is believed to be the first time the United States has given asylum protection to a Scientologist. The Church of Scientology has ...

Producers of the 20th Century Fox TV series "Millennium" have been fielding calls from people in and around the Church of Scientology over an upcoming episode of the Fox drama series. The episode, written by Darren Morgan, centers on Jose Chung, a novelist character that Morgan originally created for "The X-Files." Chung tags along with Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) throughout the comedic episode, which centers on an unusual murder of a member of a New Age following called "Selfosophy." Execs on ...

The business-minded Scientology strategists are conquering Russia with psycho-programs and management courses — and they seek access to politics and the military Oh, what a wonderful day, Marina thinks it's great to write up her sins. Anna has learned that aspirin ruins her brain. And Vladimir, an old man with thick glasses, can explain what ethics is by using building blocks. That's how it is with Scientologists, everybody has a little bit of success every day in the evening at 5:30 ...

Lisa McPherson turned to the Church of Scientology in her 20s as she tried to shed the emotional baggage of a rocky youth. By age 36, with a high school education, she was earning a handsome salary as a sales representative in Clearwater. Today, as the church tries to rebut assertions that it caused her sudden death, it also credits Scientology for her successes in life. But McPherson's turnaround came at a financial price. From 1991 until she died in December ...

BERLIN — A day after thousands of Scientologists demanded religious freedom in Germany, the Church of Scientology was trying to convince a German court today that it is a religion. A favorable decision by Germany's highest administrative court would entitle the group to benefits such as tax-exempt status and the freedom to recruit followers. The Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology won a legal battle in July when a court in the Baden-Wuerttemberg state capital, Stuttgart, ruled that Scientology was a religious ...

BERLIN — Speaking from a vast video screen, actor John Travolta told a mass rally of Scientologists here Monday that there is no excuse for government discrimination against religious bodies. Singing and chanting, adherents from Germany, the United States and across Europe joined the L.A.-based Church of Scientology's largest demonstration in Germany against what it said is official discrimination against religious minorities. "Scientology is our religion," Travolta said in the video message, taped in Los Angeles. "It has helped us a ...

About two-thousand members of the Scientology movement have protested in the German capital, Berlin, against what they described as discrimination against religious minorities in Germany. Correspondents say the protest drew far fewer people than had been expected. The German authorities say scientology is not a religion but a dangerous profit-making extremist group. Its members are barred from political office in some parts of Germany and have been under surveillance by the German intelligence services. The group, which is recognised as a ...

EVANSTON, Ill. — This week the president finally got together with Congress on a plan to reshape the Internal Revenue Service. Washington's aim is to treat the symptoms of antitax fever. Out here in the rest of the country, though, the Republican leadership is trying to find a way to go after the underlying disease. They're hosting a series of debates to give the public a chance to consider fundamental tax change that would go far beyond the destructive tweaking of ...

EDUCATION: Organizer of a conference being held today is a Scientologist, and that worries' some in the school-reform group. ORANGE — Leaders of Orange County's "back to basics" education movement are split over attending a conference tonight because the chief organizer belongs to the Church of Scientology. Orange County Department of Education board member Ken Williams said he withdrew from the "Back to Basics Education Crusade" because of discomfort with its organizers, not because of disagreement over the crusade's goals. "I ...

Feldman Equities, a medium-sized midtown real estate management firm is set for a $290 million stock offering in late September, with heavyhitting investors that includes G.E. Capital and Morgan Stanley. This flotation may be marred by an impending religious and employment discrimination lawsuit charging that company CEO Lawrence Feldman forced employees at the firm to take Scientology courses and fired those who refused. According to papers filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April, Karen Schwartz, a 38-old former property ...

Several months after she went to work at a Manhattan real estate firm, Karen Schwartz says her boss, developer Lawrence Feldman, ordered her to take an unusual series of night classes. Ms. Schwartz says he informed her they were simply "business courses." But when she arrived at the classroom, Ms. Schwartz couldn't have been more astonished. According to a complaint Ms. Schwartz has filed with the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she was subjected to something close to an indoctrination into ...

Every email sent via the Internet, every Netnews article and everything typed on Internet Relay Chat has a header message attached which enables the whereabouts of the message's author to be traced. As soon as you write something your Internet Identity added. If for some reason you should not want your name to appear anywhere, you either apply your technical wizardry knowledge to fake your true ID, or in case you are no wizard you can simply use the service of ...

(To be included in OSA US DR re RVY) INCOMM was created to be the computer data base for Scientology. Foster Thompkins was put in charge of the setup. It was to serve as a repository for all LRH writings so they could be word searched. (That was "SIR" or Source Information Retrieval). Routing forms were to go into the computer base. Time machine programs were to run the programs, automatically ordering the person to do the step. And there was ...

Rena Weinberg's column ("Education Is the Real Issue," Aug. 3) about L. Ron Hubbard's textbooks had a serious error. The materials which Weinberg refers to were reviewed in July 1996 and did not pass legal compliance. Therefore the books should not be in use in any California public school. During the past year, Bridge Publications has submitted proposed revisions to address the legal compliance concerns. However, until completely corrected versions of the books are reviewed, there is no final consideration ...

After more than seventeen years of litigation, Lawrence Wollersheim knows that talk isn't cheap–not when you're talking to lawyers and your life's work happens to involve badmouthing the Church of Scientology. But the price of silence is even higher. Too high, in Wollersheim's estimation, which is why he says he walked away from an alleged settlement offer by the church that would have netted him and a few colleagues $12 million in exchange for abandoning their crusade against Scientology. Wollersheim is ...

ON JULY 28, an appeal court in Lyon reduced the sentences of six members of the Scientology movement charged with responsibility for the suicide of one of their followers. The court also ruled that the "Church of Scientology" was entitled to call itself a religion. In so doing, the appeal court gave the movement created by the science-fiction writer Lafayette Ron Hubbard in 1954 a seal of approval it probably did not expect. The court justified its decision by invoking an ...

[...] New experiments included the use of a dream machine, invented by Gysin, and Scientology, which Burroughs discussed in a book-length interview with Daniel Odier, The Job (1970). [...]

The problems facing schools are too great to ignore the methods of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. RENA WEINBERG, Rena Weinberg is president of the Assn. for Better Living and Education (ABLE), an organization formed to coordinate the use of L. Ron Hubbard's social betterment methods in society The proposal by a teacher to open a charter school in the Sunland-Tujunga area, one which will include among its textbooks some written by L. Ron Hubbard, has become something of a controversy—which ...

* Robert A. Jones' column, "Saved by a Rumor" (July 27) was filled with generalities, slurs (including one that equates the religion of Scientology with colonics) and inferences that the Church of Scientology somehow attempted to sneakily get some "gambit" past the Board of Education in an attempt to "catechize its students." It was also inaccurate in the extreme. The fact of the matter is that L. Ron Hubbard wrote prodigiously in numerous fields. His books on the subject of ...

LYONS, France — A French appeals court reduced the sentence Monday for a Church of Scientology leader convicted of involuntary homicide in the suicide of a member. The case centered on the March 1988 suicide of Patrice Vic, 31, who jumped out a window. Prosecutors said Vic was under pressure from the church to take a $5,000 "purification treatment," including daily saunas and a diet low in sugar and high in vitamins. The lower court said in November that Jean-Jacques Mazier ...