A former Church of Scientology member has claimed she was held against her will aboard the Church's cruise ship, The Freewinds, for 12 years.

Valeska Paris, an Australian resident, said she was forced onto the ship by the Church's leader, David Miscavige, when she was 17 after her mother tried to dissociate her from the organisation.

Ms Paris, who was born in Switzerland, moved to the UK at age six, where she was placed in the church's youth wing, the cadet org. At 14, she joined the church's elite Sea Organisation and signed a contract which bound her for a billion years.

"I was woken up in the morning and I was sent to the ship for 'two weeks'," she told ABC TV.

"I did not want to be there. I made it clear I did not want to be there and that was considered bad ethics, meaning it was considered not right."

Ms Paris claimed she was not allowed to leave the ship without an escort during her first six years aboard and was asked to perform hard labour in the engine room.

Deflecting increasing criticism for his administration's role in the assassination of former Lebaneese prime minister Rafik Hariri, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed Saturday that Israel was responsible for the death of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yassir Arafat.

"Among the many assassinations that Israel has carried out in a systemic and organized manner, the most dangerous one was the assassination of Arafat," Assad said, addressing a conference of Arab lawyers.

Assad, speaking in Damascus, added that "this was done secretly, under the watching eyes of the world. But no country responded - as if nothing had happened at all."

The president, facing pressure from the United states and Europe, said that he fully supported the formation of an international investigation charged with examining the circumstances surrounding Arafat's death, similar to the committee currently charged with investigating Hariri's assassination.

Diplomatic officials in Jerusalem characterized Assad's comments as "ridiculous," and said that -more than anything else - they showed the level of his distress.

In addition, the officials said that Israel has on a number of occasions called on the Palestinians to make public the Arafat medical file.

Iran's Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani in a meeting with Syrian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Jihad al-Laham blasted the West's pressures and threats against Damascus, and ensured Iran's full and continued support for Syria.

"Iran feels no doubt about its support for Syria," Amoli Larijani said during the meeting in Tehran on Wednesday, and expressed deep regret over the western countries' oppressions against the friendly and brotherly country of Syria.

He further expressed pleasure in the progresses made in Syria, including the approval of a new Constitution and holding new elections, and said, "Given the abilities that it has the support that it receives from certain countries, we rest assured that Syria will move towards progress and excellence and will, God willing, go past these problems."

Amoli Larijani also viewed Syria's resistance against the Zionist regime of Israel as the root cause of the western countries' pressure on Damascus.

Many regional leaders have praised Syria for its long-term resistance against the arrogant powers and advocates of the Zionist regime.

Tom Cruise is 50 years old today. Actors and actresses who trade on their looks rarely enjoy passing this particular milestone, and Cruise has plenty of other reasons to feel miserable.

He's stuck in rainy Iceland, filming a thriller, while his third wife, Katie Holmes, files for divorce and sole custody of their six-year-old daughter, Suri. At the weekend, his spokesman asked the media to respect the couple's privacy. The tabloids thought about this for a split second before splashing with "TOM AND KATIE TO DIVORCE - more details pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, 21."

Why the hysteria? Cruise is one of Hollywood's most bankable stars, but he's in the twilight of his career as a leading man. There used to be rumours that he's gay, but no one has ever stood them up. If showbusiness reporters wanted to "out" A-list stars, which they don't, then there are more obvious candidates.

But here's another headline from yesterday: CULT STALKS KATIE. The "cult" is Scientology, to which Tom Cruise has belonged since his twenties. The headline comes from the Sun, whose owner, Rupert Murdoch, took to Twitter on Sunday to describe the religion as "something creepy, even evil".

Tom Cruise is not only the world's most famous Scientologist but also one of its most powerful operatives. Some sources claim he's Number Two to David Miscavige, the leader of the organisation and best man at his wedding to Holmes.

Iran and the six world powers ended two days of talks by technical experts who discussed the details of the two sides' proposals to end the nuclear standoff between Tehran and the sextet.

A statement issued by the European Union at the end of the talks in Istanbul said the discussions lasted a full day and ended early Wednesday.

The meeting was part of the agreement reached by Iran's top negotiator Saeed Jalili and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton at the end of their latest round of talks in Moscow.

After a 15-month hiatus, Iran and the Group 5+1 held several rounds of talks this year, with the latest one in Moscow on June 18-19. At the end of the Moscow talks, Jalili and Ashton announced that they would hold a meeting after talks between their deputies.

Ali Baqeri, who is Jalili's deputy in both negotiations with the world powers and in Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), and deputy head of EU's foreign policy affairs Helga Schmid will meet after the expert meeting which ended in Istanbul today.

After a meeting between Baqeri and Schmid, Jalili and Ashton will meet again. The talks followed three rounds of negotiations between Iran and six world powers that have failed to produce a breakthrough.

It was agreed in Istanbul that Baqeri and Schmid would meet but no date has yet been set, an official who could not be named under EU rules told AP.

The meeting in Istanbul was led by nuclear expert Stephan Klement on behalf of EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

The statement said experts from the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) had met with the Iranian team, and "provided further detail of the 5+1 proposal given to Iran in Baghdad (while) Iran shared further detail of their proposal; and the experts explored positions on a number of technical subjects."



• 700-acre compound 90 miles from Los Angeles is HQ of Sea Org
• Centre, dubbed Gold Base, was kept a secret to even Scientologists for decades
• It's claimed Cruise planned to send Suri to Sea Org
• Organisation is being investigated by FBI over human trafficking

This is Gold Base, the secret desert HQ of the Scientology Church and the controversial Sea Org group, reportedly central to Katie Holmes's marital split from Tom Cruise.

Ominously for those inside, the razor-sharp fences surrounding the 700-acre compound of Gold Base have spikes pointing in both directions.

With motion sensors along the perimeter and a camouflaged sniper bunker hidden in the hillside above, it is unclear whether the prison-style security is to keep people out or to keep them in - or both. The base, surrounded by hills near the town of Hemet in southern California, was for decades a secret even to most Scientologists.

But now it has been thrust into the spotlight amid claims that Holmes ended her six-year-marriage to the Mission Impossible star over fears that he wanted to send their daughter Suri to join Sea Org.

As the separation of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes brings scientology into the limelight once again, the Telegraph attempts to separate fact from fiction.

What is scientology?

According to their official literature: "Scientology is a religion that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one's true spiritual nature and one's relationship to self, family, groups, Mankind, all life forms, the material universe, the spiritual universe and the Supreme Being."

What are the origins of scientology?

It claims to have roots in the beliefs of "all great religions" and thus encompasses "a religious heritage as old and as varied as Man himself" and could be considered 50,000 years old.

What are the actual origins?

It was founded by a man named L. Ron Hubbard, from New Jersey, US, who wrote a book on "dianetics" in 1950. Four fans, described as an attorney, a publisher, a doctor and an engineer, then formed a Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation.

The first Church of Scientology was established in February 1954, with more than a dozen new churches springing up over the next decade.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force started massive missile wargames by firing tens of short, mid and long-range missiles from bases across the country at a single target in central Iran.

The IRGC Aerospace Force missile units started the main phase of the wargames codenamed the Great Prophet 7 on Tuesday morning with the simultaneous firing of various types of missiles.

The IRGC units fired tens of Shahab 1, 2 and 3, Fateh, Qiyam, Persian Gulf and Zelzal missiles at a hypothetical enemy air base - which IRGC officials had earlier said is a replica of the air bases of the trans-regional powers (the US) - in Iran's Lut Desert simultaneously.

IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh announced on Sunday that his forces would fire ballistic and other missiles at desert targets during three days of war games.

In fall 2009, I found myself in a Tanzanian hotel lobby, sitting across from Suleiman Abdallah, a lanky man with a goofy smile and a broken tooth. Over the next few days, he would describe in excruciating detail how he had been captured in Mogadishu in 2003 by a Somali warlord and handed over to American officials, who had him rendered via Kenya and Djibouti to Afghanistan for five years of detention and torture. Imprisoned in three different US facilities, Suleiman had been unceremoniously released from Bagram Air Force Base the year before, with a piece of paper confirming his detention as well as his innocence. By the time I met him, he was a free man, living with his mother and attempting to rebuild his life.

... But Receive Only a Light Slap on the Wrist

We noted Friday:

Barclays and other large banks - including Citigroup, HSBC, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lloyds, Bank of America, UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland - manipulated the world's primary interest rate (Libor) which virtually every adjustable-rate investment globally is pegged to.

***

That means they manipulated a good chunk of the world economy.

We actually understated the impact of the Libor scandal.

Specifically, according to the CIA's World Factbook, the global economy - as measured by the world's gross domestic product - is less than $80 trillion.

In contrast, over $800 trillion dollars worth of investments are pegged to the Libor rate. In other words, a market more than 10 times the size of the entire real world economy is effected by Libor.