NEW YORK, June 19 (Reuters) - Matt Feshbach, one of the most famed short-sellers of the 1980s, is liquidating his latest fund after months of stock losses. Feshbach said on Thursday he was liquidating Largo, Florida-based MLF Investments, which peaked at more than $200 million in 2006, by distributing holdings in its two remaining stocks to his investors. "I believe it was in the best interests of my investors to distribute the underlying securities that the fund held," Feshbach told Reuters ...

SHOCK and grief turned to horror when Joe Higgins helped pull the body of his brother and fellow firefighter, Tim, from the rubble of the World Trade Center. "We found him about three weeks after Sept. 11, and later, there was a bunch of us on the pile one night and I looked up," Joe was saying. "I saw this haze of dust was like a rainbow - red, blue, yellow tiny particles - and I said to the guys, 'You ...

Great scoop in The New York Post today: Tom Cruise is hosting a Scientology benefit on April 19 in New York for the group’s controversial detox program for 9/11 survivors. But here’s a flash. I wrote this story on December 22, 2006: The New York Fire Department does not support the program, and there is much hostile feeling toward Cruise. The latest public endorsement of Scientology and its programs — decried by experts as pure "hooey" — may be the last ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Clearwater picket 1997–Xenu picketing with sign saying “L. Ron Hubbard: Psychotic CON MAN”, other picketers with signs saying “www.scientology-kills.net” “Xenu Crossing (inside a yellow sign on picket sign)”; Deana Holmes with sign saying “Did Standard Tech kill Lisa?”; lecture at Scientology church VO: While church administration is busy dealing with a steady stream of conflict, individual Scientologists are out among the people, spreading Hubbard’s word at every opportunity. MIKE RINDER: Well, you know, the aims of Scientology are a civilization without ...

A Sydney Scientologist has sought a restraining order against one of two American "consultants" who visited WA to counsel a woman out of the ET Earth Mission sect. The order was sought in a Sydney court by Sarah Harrison, 19, who said she feared Patrick Ryan, of Philadelphia would try to "deprogram" her against her will. Mr Ryan, who went to Sydney from Perth, received the summons at his hotel room at 4.30pm on Tuesday last week. He was booked to ...

Some of Cocolat's ex-workers claim that the company's newest ingredient is Scientology by Erin McCormick of the Examiner Staff It was once the sweetheart of the Bay Area business world - a woman-run chocolate company that grew from a single storefront to a national success. Now, two years since an employee's embezzlement forced the sale of Cocolat Chocolate Co., an unlikely mix is brewing at the company's Hayward plant: Scientology and chocolate. The mixture has been volatile. Cocolat is the latest ...

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has been sued for supporting and funding a campaign of bigotry and prejudice against minority religions, spearheaded by one of its own faculty members, psychiatrist Dr. Louis Jolyn West. UCLA's Board of Regents, UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young and West are named in the suit as information in documents obtained from the University through the Freedom of Information Act showed West has been using UCLA's authority and funding to help run a hate campaign ...

By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa., had been a normal, happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On the day last June when his parents drove to New York City to claim his body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-studies scholar had jumped from a 10th-floor window of the Milford Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limousine. When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in ...

Investing: The Feshbach brothers of Palo Alto have made a fortune betting that stocks will go down. But some critics question their short-selling methods. PALO ALTO — One quick glance around the Palo Alto offices of Feshbach Bros. suffices to show that this is no typical bullish investment firm. First, there are the bears: stuffed Teddy bears, bronze bears, ceramic bears, crystal bears, paintings of bears. Then there is the bust of the late L. Ron Hubbard, self-styled management guru and ...

Joseph Yanny represented the movement until a falling out. Now he says lengthy litigation and mysterious harassment indicate he's become 'Public Enemy No. 1.' Los Angeles attorney Joseph Yanny was driving through rural Ohio in the pre-dawn hours in 1988 when he was pulled over by police, who had received a tip that he was carrying a cache of cocaine and guns in his rental car. A telephone caller had supplied authorities in Ohio with Yanny's name, the car's description and ...

"Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars." —L. Ron Hubbard The Church of Scientology does not turn the other cheek. Ministers mingle with private detectives. "Sacred scriptures" counsel the virtues of combativeness. Parishioners double as paralegals for litigious church attorneys. Consider the passage that a prominent Scientology minister selected from the religion's scriptures, authored by the late L. Ron Hubbard, to inspire the faithful during a gala church event. "People attack Scientology," the minister quoted Hubbard ...

The church has adopted the terminology and trappings of traditional theologies. But the IRS is not convinced. Since its founding some 35 years ago by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology has worked hard to shore up its religious profile for the public, the courts and the Internal Revenue Service. In the old days, for example, those who purchased Hubbard's Scientology courses were called "students." Today, they are "parishioners." The group's "franchises" have become "missions." And Hubbard's teachings, ...

In the lingo of Wall Street, the Feshbachs are "short sellers," stock traders who make money betting that inflated share prices will drop. "Shorts" borrow stock and sell it on the open market. They make money by repaying their borrowings with stock that has cost them less to buy. A visit to Matt's office makes the Feshbachs' involvement in Scientology pretty clear. Along with statuary of triumphant bears - symbols of a declining stock market - his office is decorated with ...

(FORTUNE Magazine) — YOU MIGHT THINK that the great American bull market of the past five years must have been tough on shortsellers. A shortseller, after all, makes money on a stock only when it goes down — and stocks have gone up by 230% on the Dow since the bull market began on August 13, 1982. But in fact, the professionals whose principal business is selling short have done quite well. Interviews with shortsellers, their brokers, and knowing observers indicate ...