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Church of Scientology #fundie metro.co.uk

Nora Crest, 39, alleges she was subjected to a hard labour punishment in the Rehabilitation Project Force, which former members say is the equivalent to a Scientology prison.

Nora says she spent three years in RPF, and claims she suffered multiple injuries, including three broken ribs while she lived in poor conditions.

She tried to escape several times, and even attempted suicide.

She told MailOnline: ‘It was the most horrific time of my life. I was battered and bruised, pushed around and nearly died trying to leave the Church and all because I had the audacity to desire another woman.

‘I was brainwashed into believing I’d done wrong and had to live in horrific conditions for three years before I was finally allowed to leave.’

Nora felt she had to speak out so others wouldn’t be treated the same way. Before she was sent to RHP in Southern Carolina, Nora was a member of the Sea Org, a branch of dedicated Scientology.

She worked as a teacher at a Scientology school and then started working as a church recruiter. Nora was given a position at the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles, where a lot of Scientology’s high profile members attend.

While in the Sea Org, Nora dated a few guys, but because of the church’s strict rules, she was prevented from having sex before marriage.

But then she fell for a female roommate. She kept the relationship a secret, and even staged relationships with boyfriends to cover it up.

When other Sea Org members realised what was going on, Nora claims she was sent for interrogation.

Both Nora and her girlfriend were put on cleaning and construction work before being sent to RPF in March 2000.

Nora claims the place was hell and she was made to feel she’d done something wrong and was always being watched.

She tried to escape several times, and even tried to drink bleach to kill herself, her entire body started convulsing and her throat swelled up.

She was taken to hospital to recover. When Nora was released from hospital she claims she was requested to sign a nondisclosure agreement that prevented her taking legal action against or publicly criticising the church.

The 39-year-old is now happily married to husband Cameron, also a former Scientologist, and the couple have two children.

Metro.co.uk have contacted the Church of Scientology about Nora’s allegations, although they are yet to comment.

Alipio Acosta #fundie metro.co.uk

Farmer Alipio Acosta climbed up the statue of Jesus in Ocaca, Columbia in front of a crowd of onlookers – and TV cameras – in an attempt to be cured of his epilepsy. Once at the top of the statue, he prayed for a few moments, then started to climb back down.

Unfortunately, he hadn't planned his descent route terribly well. To add to the problems, it had been raining, which made Jesus quite slippery.

Zhao Yang #racist metro.co.uk

A Chinese restaurant owner could go to jail after setting up a ‘no black Africans’ establishment in Africa.

Darker skinned people are not allowed to go to the restaurant in Nairobi, Kenya, after 5pm because, the owners say, they might be terrorists and Chinese patrons may be scared of them.

‘We don’t admit Africans that we don’t know because you never know who is al-Shabaab (a Somali terror group) and who isn’t,’ Esther Zhao, co-owner of the restaurant, told Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.

She added: ‘It is not like it is written on somebody’s face that they are a thug armed with a gun.’

An exemption is made for several Africans who are ‘loyal customers’, but this is not enough for most people who say the rule is racist.

The hashtag #noblacksallowed has been started on Twitter in protest at the restaurant.

‘How woud the Chinese feel if a #Kenyan goes to China & opens a “No Chinese” restaurant that allows ONLY Blacks, Whites Etc? #noblacksallowed,’ wrote @Barsawad.

Officials have today charged co-owner Zhao Yang with not having a licence, which is widely seen as a way of punishing him for the no Africans rule.

Yang could be jailed for 18 months and be fined a minimum of $1,000 (£670).

Ethiopian Imam #fundie metro.co.uk

An Imam in Zurich has been arrested after allegedly calling for non-practicing Muslims to be burned and killed.

The Ethiopian Imam, who was charged on August 2 of a number of other offences, including posting violent images of killings on Facebook and sharing them with people, and of working as an imam without authorisation.

Swiss prosecutors have now demanded the Imam is expelled from the country, with a 15-year ban on returning. They also want him to face an 18-month suspended sentence.

Complaints about the alleged hate speech reportedly go back to November 2016, when police raided the An-Nur mosque in Winterthur after being sent evidence of his radical speeches. Four people were arrested, including the Imam.

The mosque was then shut down in June this year.

In one speech, the unnamed Imam is said to have called on worshippers to expel Muslims who did not pray regularly.

In a statement, Swiss prosecutors said: ‘In his homily of Oct. 21, 2016, in the An’Nur Mosque, he is accused among other things of calling for expelling Muslims who do not pray in the community, and even burning them and killing them in their homes if they still refuse.’

He then apparently said that those who refused to practice Islam even after being expelled should be burned and killed in their homes.

Police reportedly arrested 10 people in connection to a brutal attack on two Muslims suspected of being whistleblowers in the Imam’s case.

Dinner ladies #fundie metro.co.uk

[Virgin Mary appears on pizza pan]

Devout churchgoers have begun worshipping a pizza pan - after claiming the Virgin Mary has appeared amid the melted cheese, tomato and pepperoni.

Dinner ladies at a school in Texas discovered what they took to be Mary's image on the base of a cooking tray.

Sceptics may say it looks like little more than a random, formless stain.

But after fevered scrubbing failed to shift it, rumour spread of a divine apparation - and now pilgrims have been flocking to a makeshift shrine in the tray's honour.

One woman came to the school in Houston seeking healing for her disabled grandson.

School canteen worker Guadalupe Rodriguez, who first spotted the mark on Ash Wednesday, said: 'On the third rinse I started watching it, trying to discover what it was. 'It showed to me like it is the Virgin Mary.' Pupil Anel Villareal said: 'They said, "The Virgin is in the cafeteria" and I ran over there to see. 'My God, it was the Virgin. I cried when I see her with my own eyes.'

Pugh Elementary School principal Lyda Guerrero said: 'I think someone was watching over us.

'I think someone is watching over this community and this school district and this school."

A shrine, with the tray at its centre, has now been set up outside the home of a parent teacher association member, but others are claiming they should have custody.

In the past, the Virgin Mary has been said to appear on a toasted cheese sandwich in Florida, a Chicago underpass and a blob of dried chocolate at a Californian factory.

The Haredi #fundie metro.co.uk

Women in Israel are fighting a Rosa Parks-style campaign for the right to sit where they want on buses.

They claim men are forcing them to sit at the back because their clothes are too revealing.

The campaign against 'voluntary' segregation comes after the Haredi, or ultra- Orthodox community, increased 'modesty police' patrols of neighbourhoods and chastised women whose clothes were deemed inappropriate.

Protesters have compared their situation to that of Rosa Parks, a black seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, who refused to give her seat to a white passenger on a bus in 1955.

Her arrest triggered protests which began the US civil rights movement.

Naomi Ragen, an ultra-Orthodox novelist, was told to go to the back of the bus by a group of men.

She explained that there were no signs on the bus regulating where passengers sat and no religious reason why there had to be segregation.

'For the entire ride I was subjected to this insulting and physically imposing presence,' she said.

'There was one man who was sweating over me, shouting, threatening me. I felt like Rosa Parks.'

She rang the bus firm but was told it was free seating, effectively meaning Haredi men could demand women sit at the back.

Ms Ragen and four other women have petitioned the country's Supreme Court over 'voluntary' segregation on buses.

One of the group's lawyers, said: 'It's like the Wild West. An American woman was beaten and spat upon a few weeks ago.'

The Supreme Court has given the government 45 days to respond to the petition.

Jan David Clark #fundie metro.co.uk

A man accused of killing his wife told police that he was trying to exorcise a demon from her, when the devil entered his body and caused her to die.

Authorities had found her body at their home, wrapped in a bed sheet with a cross and sword on top of it.

60-year-old Jan David Clark, of Odessa, Texas, was arrested over the death.

Matthew McLaughlin #homophobia #fundie #psycho metro.co.uk

[News story from 2015]

A Christian Californian lawyer has proposed a bill which would make it legal to murder gay people using ‘bullets in the head or any other convenient method’. Anyone who ‘touches another person of the same gender for sexual gratification’ would get the death penalty – administered either by state executioners, or members of the public. Attorney Matthew McLaughlin’s Sodomite Suppression Act would also make it an offence to campaign for gay rights, with penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. Gay rights groups have called for McLaughlin to be disbarred after he filed his proposal, paying £135 for the privilege.

The bill says, ‘Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating-wickedness in our midst, the People of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.’