COOPER: Well today Tom Cruise's new film "War of the Worlds" hits theaters. And for the actor, a lot is riding on the success of this film. In recent days, Cruise has stunned audiences by lecturing "Today Show" Host Matt Lauer, as well as Actress Brooke Shields, on what he believes are the evils of psychiatry and antidepressant medication. Now this week the reaction from the medical community has been swift and strong. In the next half hour, we're focusing not ...

April 8, 2005 – A former civilian FDNY official raised money for a questionable 9/11 charity with a smokescreen of lies and phony props, including a fake link to former mayor Rudy Giuliani, a bogus uniform and fraudulent valor medals, fire officials are charging. Stephan Hittmann was never entitled to wear a uniform in his civilian job as a director of fire training, but that didn't stop him from buttoning up the dress blues and pinning on bogus medals of valor ...

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, ...

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 ...

School district officials in Los Angeles have ordered a review of an anti-drug program whose teachings are linked with the Church of Scientology and are warning teachers that its instruction "is not based on science." Los Angeles is the second district in the state to scrutinize Narconon Drug Prevention and Education, which reaches thousands of students in at least 20 California districts and has provided lectures in schools across the country for two decades. Earlier this month, San Francisco schools Superintendent ...

Tom Cruise, the well-known actor, has consistently pledged his support to the many rescue workers who are suffering the effects of the toxic assault on the nervous system, and lungs associated with the cleanup of Ground Zero as a result of the aftermath of the terrorist attack on September 11 on the World Trade Center. Cruise, working with many of the doctors involved in the project, and along with firefigher Joe Higgins, opened a facility in New York that utilizes one ...

Narconon responds Editor – Your article on the Narconon drug rehabilitation and prevention program correctly describes certain components of this mainstream social-educational model ("Scientology linked to public schools," June 9). However, your interpretation and oversimplification of the science behind this program does addiction medicine a disservice. I was asked to be Narconon International Science Advisory Board medical director as a result of having personally treated thousands of people with the Hubbard body detoxification protocol. Literally thousands of enrolling Narconon clients have ...

Tom Cruise inaugurated a Scientology-based detoxification program on Long Island, N.Y., on Wednesday aimed at treating rescue workers exposed to caustic materials after 9/11, according to published reports. "It's been almost three years since the attacks, and thousands are still suffering," Cruise, who co-founded the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, is quoted as saying by Britain's BBC and France's Agence France-Presse. "That's unacceptable to me, to these heroes, and to their families." The center is the second to be sponsored ...

A popular anti-drug program with ties to the Church of Scientology will be ousted after 13 years in the San Francisco schools unless it agrees to stop teaching what the district calls inaccurate and misleading information, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said Wednesday. The district's ultimatum means that Narconon Drug Prevention & Education has until June 24 to revise parts of its curriculum, said Ackerman, whose health education staff no longer wants the program to make sweeping generalizations about all drugs or claim ...

As early as the third grade, students in S.F. and elsewhere are subtly introduced to church's concepts via anti-drug teachings A popular anti-drug program provided free to schools in San Francisco and elsewhere teaches concepts straight out of the Church of Scientology, including medical theories that some addiction experts described as "irresponsible" and "pseudoscience." As a result, students are being introduced to somebeliefs and methods of Scientology without their knowledge. Anyone listening to a classroom talk by Narconon Drug Prevention & ...

Narconon's school program sends students a strong anti-drug message about alcohol, tobacco and marijuana in grades three to 12 and about harder drugs in the upper grades. The program's instructors tell kids that drugs are poison. But here are some other things they tell kids about addiction, which the medical experts interviewed by The Chronicle rejected as not scientifically based: – Drugs – including ecstasy, LSD and marijuana – accumulate indefinitely in body fat, where they cause recurring drug cravings for ...

(CBS/AP) An organization co-founded by actor Tom Cruise has raised $1.2 million to expand a treatment program for rescue workers exposed to potentially hazardous materials after the collapse of the World Trade Center. The New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project said it has treated more than 200 workers who say they were suffering effects from breathing the air filled with smoke, dust and debris after the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the trade center. The money raised by Cruise and others ...

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 ...

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 ...

The church is buying property, increasing staff and raising its profile with TV ads and special offers. TAMPA — A group of high-ranking Scientologists, concerned the church's Tampa facilities aren't up to snuff, is investing more than $2.5-million to buy a second cigar factory in West Tampa and to lease and renovate a two-story building on one of the hottest corners in Ybor City. The church's three properties, staffed by nearly 100 people, will be the base for Scientology's most aggressive ...

Narconon, a drug treatment program with Scientology backing, now wants taxpayer assistance. CLEARWATER – At Tampa Bay's newest alternative to mainstream drug treatment, the license issued by the state hangs next to commendations from the Church of Scientology. Narconon, a controversial drug treatment program based on techniques developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, has opened its first Florida facility in Clearwater in a commercial park off U.S. 19. Past the meticulously clean lobby are classrooms where recovering addicts take a ...

France has become the first country in the world to introduce specific legislation aimed at controlling the activities of cults. The objective is to combat the 175-odd movements of a quasi-religious nature considered a danger to society. The Scientology movement and the Unification Church of the Rev Sun Myung Moon immediately denounced the bill - endorsed almost unanimously on Wednesday by national assembly deputies - as anti-democratic and in breach of human rights laws. Roman Catholic and Protestant leaders have expressed ...

In another blow to the controversial Church of Scientology's battle to be recognised as a religion rather than a sect, a French court yesterday found one of its former leaders guilty of fraud and sentenced him to six months in prison. Xavier Delamare, a former regional Scientology leader in south-east France, was given a further 18 month suspended sentence by the Marseille court while four other members accused of fraud, violence and illegally practising medicine were given suspended sentences of six ...

A court in the French city of Marseilles has found five members of the Church of Scientology guilty on fraud charges over courses offered by the organisation. The former leader of the church in southern France, Xavier Delamare, was sentenced to two years in jail, including 18 months suspended, and fined 16,000 dollars for manipulating people into giving money to the church. He will not return to jail because he has spent 17 weeks in pre-trial detention. Four more people were ...

Scientology leaders say they want peace. They say they want to stay out of court. But with both foes at home and foes abroad, that goal may be elusive. The spiritual home of the Church of Scientology is in Clearwater, but for many years now its leaders have had worldwide ambitions. But as disciples have carried L. Ron Hubbard's teachings away from America's shore, the reception has been almost universally chilly at best – and at times openly hostile. At one ...

NEW PORT RICHEY – Two members of the state physician's board are questioning whether a health-food store with ties to Scientology is practicing medicine illegally by offering a church-sanctioned vitamin regimen. The treatment, called "purification rundown," is one of the first steps Scientologists take upon joining the church. Church members tout the rundown as a purifying routine that enables people to kick drug abuse and "think more clearly and have more energy." Some physicians, and a former Scientologist interviewed by the ...

An organization with ties to the Church of Scientology is recruiting New England schoolchildren for what critics say is an unproven — and possibly dangerous — anti-drug program. And the group — Narconon Inc. of Everett — is being paid with taxpayer dollars without disclosing its Scientology connections. Narconon was paid at least $942,853 over an eight-year period for delivering anti-drug lectures at public and parochial schools throughout the region, according to federal income tax documents. The money came from fees ...