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Scientology and Nation of Islam figure picks worst week to rail against measles vaccine

 Rizza Islam picked the worst possible time to go on tour spreading misinformation about vaccines used to prevent the spread of []

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Report: Post-Danny Masterson, Netflix series ‘The Ranch’ will end with 4th season

[Ashton Kutcher’s friend T.J. Jefferson, right, announced the news]

In January, Sam Elliott seemed to indicate that the fourth season of the Netflix series The Ranch would be its last, but then he walked it back a bit.

Now, T.J. Jefferson, longtime personal assistant to actor Ashton Kutcher, has posted evidence confirming that season four’s final episode []

Media and authorities should focus on the real horrors of Scientology’s Freewinds

[Valeska Paris, on a ship going nowhere]

In 2011, we first told the story of Valeska Paris, who was sent to Scientology’s Freewinds cruise ship in 1996 at 18 in order to keep her away from her mother, who had criticized Scientology on French television. She served on the ship for 11 years without any choice []

Scientology measles ship back in Curaçao, which talks tough about quarantine

 Scientology’s floating cathedral the MV Freewinds arrived in Willemstad, Curaçao this morning after leaving St. Lucia Thursday, where the ship had been in quarantine because of a crew member with a confirmed case of measles. Officials in Curaçao said they would quarantine the vessel, board the ship, demand vaccination records of the crew and passengers, []

Scientology measles ship Freewinds ditches St. Lucia quarantine for Curaçao, its home port

[Marine tracking website shows the Freewinds sailing west from St. Lucia just after midnight]

St. Lucia officials quarantined Scientology’s floating cathedral, the Freewinds, on Monday morning, and word from health officials was that the measles case on board would require 21 days of no passengers disembarking. But they also admitted that they had no power to []

What it’s like on the Scientology measles ship right now, according to former crew

 We had a pretty exciting afternoon yesterday, helping to figure out that the measles ship quarantined in the Caribbean country of St. Lucia was, in fact, Scientology’s floating cathedral, the 440-foot []

CONFIRMED: Scientology’s ‘Freewinds’ is the ship quarantined for measles in St. Lucia

 [UPDATE: Please see our follow up with interviews of former Freewinds crew members about what conditions aboard the ship are probably like right now.]

[NOTE: When we posted this story at 2 pm Eastern on Wednesday, we strongly suspected but couldn’t confirm that the measles ship was the Freewinds. Now, NBC is reporting that St. Lucia’s []

Scientology staffers: Putting up with chaos and hardships as they hope for promised OT powers

 David Miscavige announced recently that the new “Advanced Org” in South Africa has been deemed “Saint Hill Size.” That made us think of a piece Sunny Pereira wrote for us about her stint in the “Universe Corps,” the special troops that were the promised reward for taking your org to that mythic level. We thought []

Questions for Scientologist Elisabeth Moss — from former Scientologists

[Elisabeth Moss and L. Ron Hubbard]

Recently, Daily Beast reporter Marlow Stern interviewed actress and Scientologist Elisabeth Moss. Marlow has written some good Scientology stories over the years, and he’s no pushover. So we were glad to see that he took the opportunity to ask Moss not one but three questions about []

Scientology stepping up its promotion of chiropractic, demonizing of the AMA

 There’s a new article by the Scientology front group Citizens Commission on Human Rights. CCHR blog posts and press releases are generally intended for an internal Scientologist audience rather than the public. This article is aimed at members of Scientology who are chiropractors, and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Many Scientologists will see []