A leading civil servant who was sacked after she claimed hundreds of pounds on expenses to pay for a meditation course is suing the Government for £1m.

Dr Angelika Hibbett said she endured ‘workplace stress and bullying’ from bosses while working at the Home Office in London after she suffered from mental health problems.

She was fired for gross misconduct after it emerged she had put in a claim for £390 to pay for a ‘relaxation and meditation’ training course to combat her depression.

The Government has refuted the allegations and claims that Dr Hibbett who earned a salary of £63,000 was ‘defensive …

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Charles Haviland, BBC: A Sri Lankan court has given suspended jail terms to three French tourists for wounding the religious feelings of Buddhists by taking pictures deemed insulting.

Two women and one man were detained in the southern town of Galle after a photographic laboratory alerted police.

The pictures show the travellers posing with Buddha statues and pretending to kiss one of them.

Most of Sri Lanka’s majority ethnic Sinhalese are Theravada Buddhist.

Mistreatment of Buddhist images and artefacts is strictly taboo in the country. The incident is alleged to have taken place at a temple in central Sri Lanka.

Website posting
Police spokesman …

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Deena DiBacco: Wednesday night, Collingswood [New Jersey] Zoning Board members unanimously denied a borough man’s use variance application, aimed at using his detached garage as a gathering place for group meditation.

Applicant Stephen Tumolo, who owns the said property at the unit block of Coulter Ave., holds a master’s degree in Theology and currently teaches religion at Camden Catholic High School.

Tumolo has lived at the 2-and-a-half story Coulter Ave. property for the past two years, which features a detached garage.

Wednesday night, Tumolo testified that 10 months after purchasing his home, he began making improvements to the garage space without building permits.

“A …

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Jeff Eckhoff: A nonprofit Iowa-based educational foundation tied to the calming meditation teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has injected new stress into the life of a competitor.

Maharishi Foundation USA Inc. of Fairfield this week sued the Meditation House LLC, accusing it of infringing on the foundation’s trademark covering the teaching of “Transcendental Meditation.”

Paperwork filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Des Moines accuses the Meditation House of lying in its advertising about the benefits of “Vedic Meditation.” Claims about the studied health value of those techniques are “false on their face,” according to the lawsuit, and designed to confuse the public with …

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Marin County officials continued to wrestle with proposed plans for the Spirit Rock Meditation Center — even though the county staff says doing nothing would be worse for the environment than approving the Buddhist retreat’s newest plan.

County planning commissioners decided Monday they need more time to reflect on a new master plan for the complex and told planning staff to outline specifics of regulations limiting attendance at special events. Another session will be scheduled later.

“I’m wondering if we are moving ahead with this before we have the program written out,” said Commissioner Randy Greenberg of attendance regulations. “We don’t know the magnitude of the issue,” added colleague Wade Holland. …

A former RAF officer who was ‘brainwashed’ into signing over his £800,000 home to a religious guru has won his property back.

Military intelligence specialist Richard Curtis, 53, and his wife joined the controversial Self Realization Meditation Healing Centre after he retired from the services.

Mr Curtis and wife Fiananda, 48, also a former RAF officer, gave their luxury country home to the cult and self-styled guru leader Rena Denton.

But a court heard Mr Curtis left the Somerset-based religious group after discovering his wife was having an affair with another man.

He sued the healing centre to get his house back – claiming he was ‘brainwashed’ into handing over the £800,000 farmhouse in the …

A plan to build a Thai Buddhist temple in Columbus, Ohio, is far from dead. In fact, construction on the temple could begin in the spring.

Representatives of the Columbus Buddhism Center have submitted paperwork to the city requesting a lot split for property on Blacks Road.

They also have submitted new paperwork outlining possible plans for the temple.

John Tai, a representative from the Columbus Buddhism Center, could not be reached for comment on the temple project because he is out of the country, but Pataskala Planning Director Diane Harris said she has spoken to Tai and the project is moving forward.

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Former Abba star Anni-Frid Reuss has lost a lawsuit aimed at pushing a Quigong resort specialising in Chinese medicine and meditation into bankruptcy to recoup a multi-million dollar loan, a lawyer said Friday.

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QANTAS has been ordered to reinstate a flight attendant banned from international duties over her practise of Falun Gong.

Sheridan Genrich, from Sydney’s Lane Cove, was demoted to a short-haul attendant after she was threatened by authorities during a 2008 stopover in Beijing and deported because of her spiritual beliefs.

In making his ruling, Fair Work Australia Commissioner Frank Raffaelli said he was unimpressed with the way Qantas had carried out its investigation into Ms Genrich’s case.

“The implication of Qantas’s action is that there is a restriction on the practice of her spiritual beliefs in private, which is contrary to both Australian and international law,” Commissioner Raffaelli said in his judgement, which was obtained by The Epoch Times.

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A spiritual center near Boone where patrons practice transcendental meditation is not exempt from taxes, despite claims that it’s an educational institution, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.

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