HOLLYWOOD - Outspoken actor Tom Cruise has been criticized by firefighters suffering the effects of smoke inhalation from the World Trade Center terrorist attacks for his controversial views on their treatment. The Scientology devotee has urged emergency services victims to give up their medication and inhalers as part of a 'purification rundown,’ which favors sauna sessions, ingestion of cooking oil and large doses of niacin as cures instead. As co-founder of the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, Cruise has also ...

Just when Tom Cruise was starting to look good again, we hear from the New York Daily News that Cruise's pregnant fiance, Katie Holmes, is supposed to sign on for a "silent birth," without screams or painkillers. Ouch. But is "Quit yellin', it's only childbirth," as the News headline so succinctly put it, the true position of the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a member? Not according to Greg LaClaire, vice president of the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre ...

A FORMER Scientology staffer is breaking her silence about being sexually assaulted 100 times at ages 16 and 17 by the church supervisor she was "ordered" to live with, and then receiving threats and intimidating phone calls when she reported the abuse. Five years ago, Gabriel Williams, then a 27-year-old chief supervisor at the Church of Scientology in Mountain View, Calif., forced then-16-year-old Jennifer Stewart to have intercourse with him on the first evening she moved in, according to her statements ...

A HIGHER PROFILE ; CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OPENING MORE VISIBLE FACILITIES, INCLUDING ONE IN NEW HAVEN FRANCES GRANDY TAYLOR; Courant Staff Writer Hartford Courant 09-09-2005 A HIGHER PROFILE ; CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OPENING MORE VISIBLE FACILITIES, INCLUDING ONE IN NEW HAVEN Byline: FRANCES GRANDY TAYLOR; Courant Staff Writer Edition: STATEWIDE Section: LIFE Despite such high-profile adherents as Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Chick Corea and Kirstie Alley, the Church of Scientology can seem as mysterious to outsiders as its reclusive founder, science-fiction ...

Margarita Lopez is under fire for taking contributions from Scientology while giving funds to the group’s Downtown detox center, and is also at risk of losing public matching funds because of unresolved problems with her 2001 funds. Yet, the East Side councilmember, in a lengthy telephone interview on Monday, claimed she has done no wrong and expressed confidence in her campaign for borough president. Lopez blasted back at the New York Post — which broke the story of her Scientology contributions ...

TOM CRUISE's leap of faith into Scientology is a visible example of the religion's hold on its followers — but the Church of Scientology already has a multimillion-dollar grip on Manhattan. The controversial group, now blitzing the media after Cruise became its most outspoken advocate, has a massive city empire used by tens of thousands of devotees. And New York's church president the Rev. John Carmichael said, "Interest is increasing markedly." Its huge seven-story city headquarters was opened last year at ...

I WAS hoping it wouldn't come to this, but after Tom Cruise's interview with Matt Lauer on the NBC show "Today" last week, I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression. While Mr. Cruise says that Mr. Lauer and I do not "understand the history of psychiatry," I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression. ...

Just months into his tenure as chairman of Paramount, Brad Grey is facing the sort of decision that makes Hollywood executives quiver: whether to proceed with production of the hugely expensive "Mission: Impossible III," even as its star, Tom Cruise, is puzzling associates and members of the public with his behavior while promoting another Paramount venture, "War of the Worlds." An executive for Viacom, Paramount's parent company, said the studio had not yet decided whether to push ahead with production of ...

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 ...

John Travolta and Tom Cruise have forcefully denied allegations that they turned to Scientology to "cure" them of their supposedly gay urges. But critics continue to claim the religion is rife with homophobia. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote in his 1950 best seller, "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health," that gays were "sexual perverts" and "very ill physically." That apparently went for Hubbard's son, Quentin, who was said to have been confused about his own sexual orientation. "[Ron] thought ...

[Picture / Caption: Richard Perry/The New York Times Subway riders have become used to Scientologists' offer to gauge their stress level. But the city has ejected the group for selling books.] A corridor of the Times Square subway station may not seem to be the ideal spot to conduct a carefully controlled psychological experiment. For one thing, the soundproofing is entirely inadequate. The confluence of a dozen subway lines creates constantly shifting sonic interference, ranging from mild to deafening, that an ...