LDS, Heaven's Gate, Scientology, Covid-19, Domestic Abuse
Markets Insider: The Mormon Church's secretive $100 billion fund slashed its Exxon, Marriott, and Wells Fargo stakes last quarter
Oxygen: 'It's The Cult of Cults!': Parents Lose Their Daughter To Infamous Heaven's Gate Mass Suicide
Tampa Bay Times: Clearwater council struggles to address Scientology's impact on downtown
Markets Insider: The Mormon Church's secretive $100 billion fund slashed its Exxon, Marriott, and Wells Fargo stakes last quarter
"The Mormon Church's secretive $100 billion investment fund slashed its stakes in Exxon Mobil, Wells Fargo, and Marriott International in the first quarter, according to a SEC filing released this week.
Ensign Peak Advisors, the investing arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, reported a 21% plunge in the value of its stock portfolio to just below $30 billion. The decline reflected the painful impact of the coronavirus pandemic on share prices, plus the fund trimmed some positions and slightly reduced its total number of holdings to around 1,620.
Ensign's big moves included cutting its Exxon stake by 44%, its Wells Fargo position by 30%, and its Marriott holding by 26%. The fund's managers may have wanted to cut their exposure to the coronavirus crisis, which has hit energy and hotel companies especially hard, and spurred banks to set aside billions in anticipation of a surge in defaults."
" ... Ensign made many other tweaks to its portfolio. For instance, it more than quadrupled its stake in Zoom Video Communications, added small stakes in Tiffany & Co and Planet Fitness, and exited its Slack and Box positions."
Oxygen: 'It's The Cult of Cults!': Parents Lose Their Daughter To Infamous Heaven's Gate Mass Suicide
"Alice Maeder lived for years in hope that her daughter would come back home.
Gail Maeder left Sag Harbor, New York at age 21 for California, and after one visit with her parents in her new home, she seemingly disappeared off the map. She had taken up with a strange, cult-like group of UFO enthusiasts called Heaven's Gate sometime in 1993.
"Every day we were wondering about her," Alice told Oxygen's "Deadly Cults." "Every day I was praying, 'Dear God, don't let anything happen to her.'"
In a postcard, Gail told her family that she was doing "really great" and had "found a way to make a difference in the world," but they were concerned and began looking into the Heaven's Gate cult, which had been active since the mid-1970s.
At a Queens, New York convention in 1994, Alice met cult expert Janja Lalich. She knew that the group traveled the country picking up new members and understood a little bit about its leaders, Marshall Applewhite and the late Bonnie Nettles.
Nettles met Applewhite, a man in his 40s struggling with his homosexuality, while they were both briefly institutionalized in the early 1970s, according to Rolling Stone. Nettles convinced Applewhite that they were both descended from a higher species of aliens. They began traveling the country, introducing newcomers to their science fiction-seasoned ideology.
Lalich gave Alice a cult-produced videotape in which Applewhite explained that the planet Earth was "about to be recycled." As Alice and her family watched Applewhite explain that cult followers needed to "evacuate" the dying planet, she said, they felt sick to their stomachs.
'Is this guy crazy?" Applewhite asks rhetorically in one of the videos, staring into the camera. "Is this a cult? Yes, it is – it's the cult of cults!'"
Tampa Bay Times: Clearwater council struggles to address Scientology's impact on downtown
"The new City Council on Monday conducted its first public discussion on an issue voters raised as a top concern in the recent election: The Church of Scientology's impact on downtown.The topic, added to Monday's work session agenda by council member Mark Bunker, produced a candid and in-depth airing of views rarely spoken at City Hall over the course of Clearwater's strained history with the church.But other than a general desire for a downtown rebirth, the council concluded its hour-long dialogue with no plan to seek answers on Scientology's involvement in significant amounts of property acquired over the past three years by companies tied to the church. Bunker received no support for his proposal that the city ask the FBI to investigate Scientology for alleged racketeering related to the real estate purchases.Council members talked briefly about their shared reluctance to involve the FBI, dwelling more on their opposition to Bunker's secondary proposal: that the city hold hearings for the public to air concerns about alleged fraud and abuse in the church."I don't know why we couldn't reach to the FBI and say 'Look at what is happening here, look at these red flags," Bunker said."
Seeing a "disturbing" decrease in clients and callers amid COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, some domestic violence shelters in rural counties worry this is just the "calm before the storm."
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.
CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.
Cults101.org resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics.
Selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view in order to promote dialogue.
No comments:
Post a Comment