Hollywood star Tom Cruise helped raise $1.2m (£657,000) to provide treatment for firefighters exposed to toxic gases during the 11 September attacks. The detox regime was designed by Ron L Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, to which Cruise belongs. "I worried about those who had survived and been exposed," said the actor at a recent fundraising dinner. "(I) knew immediately that not only would people be getting ill... but that it would be sooner rather than later." Alternative treatment ...

US movie star Tom Cruise has helped raise $US1.2 million to treat emergency workers exposed to toxic materials following the September 11 terrorist strikes in New York. Cruise, 41, pitched in to help raise cash for the alternative treatment for rescuers suffering debilitating effects from toxic exposure in the recovery and clean-up effort following the 2001 attacks in New York. The heart-throb actor, who is a keen member of the Church of Scientology, backed the drive to provide a detox regimen ...

A former member and longtime critic of the Church of Scientology has been ordered by a Marin County judge to pay the church $500,000 for speaking out against the controversial religious movement. Superior Court Judge Lynn Duryee issued that order in a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Scientology defector Gerald Armstrong. The Church of Scientology had sought $10 million from Armstrong, who joined the church in 1969, left the fold in 1981 and later became one of the movement's harshest critics. He was ...

What kind of special tax privileges are members of the Church of Scientology receiving that members of other religions are not? That is a question the Internal Revenue Service refuses to answer - even for a federal appeals court. The IRS claims it has a legal obligation to keep tax return information confidential, and for years it has extended that justification to the details of a 1993 agreement between the church and the IRS. Reportedly, in exchange for the church dropping ...

LOS ANGELES, March 21— A trial is to begin here on Wednesday morning to determine whether a Jewish couple can deduct the cost of religious education for their five children, a tax benefit they say the federal government has granted to members of just one religion, the Church of Scientology. The potential ramifications are huge, for a ruling in favor of the couple could affect the millions of Americans who send their children to religious schools of all types. At stake ...

I was absolutely horrified by Ozzie Robert's column this week, where he profiles a Volunteer Minister from the Scientology organization here in town ("Work and study mark the way," 3/2/04). To portray this group, identified as a destructive cult by scholars and governments, as a positive asset to our community is dangerous. It might encourage others to join. Their 50-year history is replete with horror stories. Anyone can, and should, do a Google search before getting involved. . . . Combinations ...

A DRUG counselling group linked to the controversial Church of Scientology has been banned from Edinburgh University's student union. The organisation called Narconon put up posters about its services on Edinburgh Student Association (EUSA) notice boards without permission. Now union officials have pulled the posters down and outlawed any further adverts being displayed. They are concerned Narconon may be used to recruit new members for Scientology, which has often targeted students in the Capital. The Narconon posters contain no references to ...

Cathy Mullins was, for a time, a hippie; a vintage 1960s model of a flower child. She knew all about peace protests and human rights marches. She knew, too, all the key ingredients of turning on, tuning in and dropping out. That's why, at 55, she says, with her characteristic straightforwardness, her generation is largely to blame for some of the greatest problems facing younger ones today. "Drugs," for example, says Mullins, "we glorified them and made it romantic to be ...

Not many medical clinics frame and display a filthy gym towel. But then, not many medical clinics are bankrolled by Tom Cruise, target ailing firefighters who worked at Ground Zero and follow the teachings of the Church of Scientology. "We're helping people," Jim Woodworth, director of Downtown Medical, said the other day as several firefighters sat in the clinic's 168-degree sauna. As for that soiled towel in the frame above his desk, Woodworth said its purple stains prove toxins still lurk ...

Dr. Margaret Singer, a leading expert on brainwashing who testified in several high-profile cases contending that various groups inappropriately manipulated their members to control their behavior, died on Nov. 23 in Berkeley, Calif. She was 82. The cause was respiratory failure, said her son, Sam. In her long career, Dr. Singer investigated and testified about techniques used by North Koreans against American soldiers in wartime and the Symbionese Liberation Army's influence over the kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst. In the 1950's, Dr. ...

A large insignia engraved on a dramatic backdrop stood in commanding fashion over a red-carpeted stage. In front rested a sculpted wooden podium flanked by a TelePrompTer. Politicians and celebrities sat among rows of filled white seats, as plainclothes security wearing earphones surveyed the crowd. Meanwhile, hundreds of red, white and blue balloons waited to be released. One could have been forgiven for thinking Vice President Cheney was in Buffalo a day early. Instead, it was the grand opening of the ...

... I froze. I wasn't moving much to begin with, but I froze solid. I didn't want to breathe. I forgot all about our immediate problems. My CO had just said he was going to murder Julie Titchbourne. He was absolutely serious. I was in shock. Sure, she deserved to die — all SPs did. But you can't actually do that that sort of thing. My thoughts raced. Please, I thought, please, somebody say something that will make this stop. I ...

I am relieved to see that others are also acknowledging what I've known since I first started using drugs 26 years ago. I haven't used illicit drugs for 19 years, but I still regret using any, especially pot. Drugs are the strongest undertow in the world. In the late summer of 1999, I decided to do something about the tides of young people flowing into the Downtown Eastside looking for dope. I saw them getting younger and younger but looking older ...

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He's not a Scientologist, OK? Ignatius "Naish" Piazza, founder of Front Sight Resort, the gun farm/resort/weapons training ground near Pahrump, has comped a local Mormon group $3.6 million in "Family Safe Forever" personal defense classes—and promptly fired off press announcements. What better way to prove he's not in bed with another religious group, like, say, the Scientologists? Last year about this time, Piazza was busy fielding inquiries like this one—from a pro-gun University of Colorado at Boulder philosophy grad student Diana ...

For the past year, more than 140 New York City firefighters, some ailing from their work in the ruins of the World Trade Center, have walked into a seventh-floor medical clinic just two blocks from the former disaster site. Once inside, some have abandoned the medical care and emotional counseling provided to them by their own department's doctors, and all have taken up a treatment regimen devised by L. Ron Hubbard, the late science fiction writer and founder of the Church ...

"We’re considering several sites in Greater New Haven," said President John L. Fast. "We’d like to stay in the city of New Haven." Fast said the principles of the H.P. Hallock Co., who are members of the Fast family, decided to sell the three-story building and find a one-story facility, for the convenience of customers. The 20 employees know about the pending move, Fast said. The company employs another 30 people at its branch stores in Branford and West Haven. Hallock’s, ...

IT WAS WITH some astonishment that I read this week that a Dutch court ruled on September 4 that writer Karin Spaink could keep the Scientology materials on her Web site. The original case, in which this is the third ruling, began in the Pleistocene era in Internet terms — nine years ago. I had no idea it was still doing the Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce thing. I spent much of 1994 — when the Web was Usenet, the king was CompuServe, ...

The Church of Scientology has lost a courtroom battle to compel a Dutch writer and her Internet service provider to remove postings from a Web site, in a ruling that keeps hyperlinks to copyrighted material legal. On Friday, the Dutch Court of Appeal in The Hague, Netherlands, denied the Scientologists' latest appeal in an online copyright dispute that dates back to 1995. The Church of Scientology has repeatedly pursued legal action in the Netherlands against the writer, Karin Spaink, and her ...

The Court of Appeal in The Hague last week rejected all of the Church of Scientology's claims its action against the Dutch ISP Xs4all, writer Karin Spaink and ten other internet providers for publishing copyrighted material on the web. As a result, Spaink's website which Scientologists had sought to remove, is entirely legal. The court also overturned two lower court rulings, one of which stated that linking to material that infringed a copyright was itself actionable. The victory for Xs4all represents ...

The Church of Scientology has lost a courtroom battle to compel a Dutch writer and her Internet service provider to remove postings from a Web site, in a ruling that keeps hyperlinks to copyrighted material legal. On Friday, the Dutch Court of Appeal in The Hague, Netherlands, denied the Scientologists' latest appeal in an online copyright dispute that dates back to 1995. The Church of Scientology has repeatedly pursued legal action in the Netherlands against the writer, Karin Spaink, and her ...

Tom Cruise claims to have been dyslexic before he was saved by Scientology. Let's hope that he can read the fine print in a new agreement the religious organization is demanding its members sign. The contract — called the "Agreement and General Release Regarding Spiritual Assistance" — makes it clear that the signee does not believe in psychiatry and does not want to be treated for any kind of psychiatric ailment should one befall him. Instead, once the paper is signed, ...