VISTA - The prosecution of a Solana Beach man accused of neglecting his elderly mother's declining health until she died concluded Wednesday with testimony that undercut the defendant's claims of how he treated the woman. Leo Dunckley is being tried for a second time on a charge of elder neglect for the Aug. 12, 2002, death of his 90-year-old mother, Eleanor, in the apartment the two shared for about nine years. A paramedic who responded to the apartment late that night ...

Allow me to correct a few errors in Nan Kappeler's article "The Rich vs. the Addicts" [Dec. 10]: a textual error says Narconon is Narcotics Anonymous. That is not true. Narconon means "Narcotics-None or No Drugs." Narcotics Anonymous is a separate, respected approach to recovery that shares a common purpose to ours—to restore drug-free, ethical, productive persons to their families and society. Since we have been part of the community in Newport Beach for nine years, we have consistently made ...

NEW YORK, Dec. 14 (UPI) – Tom Cruise apparently won't win any prizes for using last week's Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo as a platform to plug Scientology. The "Collateral" star and Oprah Winfrey co-hosted Saturday's event, which featured such performers as Cyndi Lauper, Patti Labelle and Diana Krall, MSNBC reported Tuesday. "One of the things that we believe in (as Scientologists) is peace, freedom," Cruise said in promoting the concert, which will be broadcast in the United States Dec. ...

Newports Balboa Peninsula has become the place to go when youve got no place else to go. Longtime residents say theyre fighting for their way of life. Addicts struggling to get clean say theyre fighting for their lives The "convicts" and "liars" don'tagree on much, but they seem to agree on this: the tension started early in 2003. That's when Narconon opened a second rehabilitation house for recovering substance abusers behind the oceanfront rehab house it already operated at 18th Street ...

Dec. 2—A Chattanooga company that once bragged its software would create a computer that could receive and implement oral commands in any of five languages has been charged with defrauding investors out of $12.4 million. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is suing the former E-Brain Solutions and its founder, Peter Warren, for making false claims and raising funds in violation of federal securities laws. The civil suit claims Mr. Warren and the company falsely claimed they had developed a prototype ...

Tax lawyers are watching a trial in Los Angeles that pits an orthodox Jewish family against the Internal Revenue Service over whether tuition for religious education is deductible – based in part on a "secret" settlement between the IRS and the Church of Scientology. "It's not clear that [plaintiffs] Michael and Marla Sklar will win, but if they do, it may well mean that millions of families will be able to deduct some portion of private religious school education," said professor ...

[...] Scientologists fuel up The Church of Scientology, advised by Tuckerman, will make the 31,000 sq ft former BP building at 146 Queen Victoria Street, EC4, its London HQ. HBA Investments bought the building from Daviot Investments for the church for [pounds sterling]10m. CWHB advised BP; CIC advised Daviot. [...]

By E. Scott Reckard November 17, 2004 in print edition C-2 Federal prosecutors announced tax-evasion charges Tuesday against former Grateful Dead road manager Ronald L. Rakow and his girlfriend in connection with a scheme to conceal Rakow’s income, much of which he earned working for convicted Ponzi scheme operator Reed Slatkin. Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael R. Wilner said Rakow diverted $5.2 million that he received from Slatkin and other sources to his girlfriend, Denise Del Bianco, from 1998 through 2001. At ...

Scientology: religion, sect, cult or scam? Whichever it is, its making big moves in Westville. From a car coasting up Whalley Avenue in Westville, it's easy to miss the yellow banner across the old Hallock's furniture store. Look closer: It announces the impending arrival of the Church of Scientology. The church is now housed in a small storefront a block away—but bigger things are coming. Since purchasing a small storefront from the adjacent Frame Shop 20 years ago, the Westville Scientologists ...

A poster being sold to mark the 100th anniversary of the subway has an underground message - and it has nothing to do with trains. The poster, which depicts a crowded Times Square subway station, contains what seems like an endless number of plugs for the controversial Church of Scientology. On the left side is a plug to visit Scientology's Purification Center on W. 46th St. and a promotion for a book by the late L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of ...

At last, audiences can discover the secrets of Scientology without being zapped by the fabled electropsychometer, writes Dan Glaister It is the show that has everything: music, dancing, children, celebrities. Hey, it even has threatening phone calls and the hint of divine retribution. A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant opened in Los Angeles last week after a successful run in New York at the end of last year. The play is pretty much what the title implies: an unauthorised pageant ...

In September 2002, the New York Rescue Workers Detox Project began to offer free "detoxification treatment" to firefighters, police officers, and others exposed to high levels of toxic debris in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse. The detox program—based on the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and detailed in his book Clear Body, Clear Mind—purports to "flush" poisons from the body's fat stores using an intensive regimen of jogging, oil ingestion, sauna, and high doses of vitamins, ...

A church group is recruiting members in a downtown park, but some are concerned about the religious tent being set up on city property. The Church of Scientology has placed a large, yellow tent at Beaver Hills Park, blocking most of the Jasper Street entrance. There are no signs alerting people to what the tent is for until they get inside. "Everybody has their own opinon about religion. I won't push mine in your face, you don't push yours in mind," ...

The Church of Scientology is 50 years old this year, having survived its skeptics and detractors, an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and John Travolta's box-office flop, "Battlefield Earth," based on a science fiction novel by the church's founder L. Ron Hubbard. The church's 50th anniversary makes it a young religion as far as religions go but also attests to its staying power. According to Scientology headquarters in Los Angeles, the church now claims more than 8 million members in ...

In the media business, small- and medium-size processors are changing with the times. Requirements of these smaller firms differ from those of major optical-media players such as Technicolor, Cinram, Ritek, Sonopress and Sony. Suppliers see a trend for the smaller firms to invest in faster systems for disc replication and, in some cases, a transition away from tape duplication. Some have selected Toyo, Netstal or Sumitomo machines for the molding aspect of an advanced optical-media manufacturing line. Production system supplier M2 ...

After a lifetime playing wholesome, all-American heroes, Tom Cruise has finally discovered his dark side. He's also ditched his publicist, moved in with his sisters and is looking for the third Mrs Cruise. So is Hollywood's leading man having a middle-youth crisis? Interview by Neil Strauss [Picture: "What sinister ambitions lie concealed behind that smile? ... Tom Cruise. Photograph: Domenico Stinellis / AP"] Want to meet my mom?' Tom Cruise asks as we walk through the halls of the Celebrity Center, ...

For obvious reasons, the lauding of religious leaders isn’t supposed to be practiced in U.S. public schools, at least not as a class activity. Yet one widely used school program concludes by having students applaud Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The program is called Narconon, and it has notable Scientology links. The state of California is now in the midst of a three-month investigation of the Narconon Drug Prevention and Education program with an eye to possibly barring it from the ...

The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing a British national and his Chattanooga company, claiming he defrauded investors out of $12.4 million. According to the SEC, Peter Warren of ExoBrain LLC (formerly E-Brain Solutions) in 2000 through 2001 falsely claimed to have developed multilanguage voice-activation technology to make computers easier to use, the agency says in a lawsuit filed Aug. 18 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. Through the Internet and other media, the lawsuit says, Warren solicited money from inexperienced ...

An anti-drug program with ties to the Church of Scientology will be barred from San Francisco classrooms because of concerns about its scientific accuracy, city schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said Tuesday. Ackerman's decision followed a review of the Narconon Drug Prevention & Education Program by school health officials, who found that some of its teachings were not "100 percent accurate." "We are going to withhold the opportunity for Narconon to be in our schools," Ackerman said as thousands of students prepared ...

He's been a child star, cult film director and bestselling peddler of Hollywood scandal. Now in his seventies, Kenneth Anger is back with three new films, an exhibition presented by that 'bitch' Anita Pallenberg and plans to publish the last in his Hollywood Babylon trilogy, a book that threatens to unleash an avalanche of litigation. Sanjiv Bhattacharya coaxes him out from behind his chicken-wire fence Auteur, occultist and Hollywood scandal-spreader Kenneth Anger is a famously irascible old man. Within minutes of ...

Ben Shaw, 53, is the church's lead spokesman in Clearwater. The son of a career Army officer, Shaw graduated from high school in India, where he played in a rock band and studied Indian religions. After reading Dianetics while working on a shrimp boat in Key West in 1971, he joined the church staff. He became a minister in 1978 and has held church positions throughout Europe and in Miami, Boston and Los Angeles. He has directed external affairs in Clearwater ...

A local lawyer and political consultant are hired to help break down barriers for Scientology. It was a sticky decision and everyone in the room knew it. Bennetta Slaughter, the charismatic businesswoman whose tireless committee work had impressed so many, was being nominated to the Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce board of directors. "Do we really want one on the board?" several asked. By "one" they meant: a Scientologist. Board members worried that the chamber's rank and file might quit in ...

[Picture / Caption: After Alicia and Jason Regensburg married, the location of their first home was a no-brainer: Clearwater. Alicia grew up in Clearwater’s Scientology circles. Now, the second-generation church member likes living close to the church's spiritual headquarters downtown, where she takes Scientology courses “pretty much constantly.” Also nearby is Clearwater Academy International, the Hubbard-flavored school where the couple’s 3-year-old son, Hudson, is in pre-school.] [Picture / Caption: The Church of Scientology gets credit for bringing Starbucks downtown. Church officials ...