A man shot himself in the head Wednesday morning at the altar of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove and died at the scene, police said.

Church ushers said that a middle-aged man entered the church, saying he wanted to pray. The unidentified man walked up three steps to the altar area, knelt before a gold cross and put the gun to his head, said John Charles, director of public relations for the church.

On her Bebo page Miss Bond, who used the online name Living Disaster and has internet friends with names like Sam Suicide, said she was obsessed with the hugely popular My Chemical Romance band, whose hit number one with their last album The Black Parade. Her mother, Heather Bond, told the court how she learned The Black Parade is “where you go when you die” as she researched the emo fad.

The daughter of a member of Norway’s parliament committed suicide hours after she received what her family claims were “devastating” results from a personality test administered by the Church of Scientology. Police in France, where the young woman was studying, are investigating.

The Norwegian press is reporting that Kaja Bordevich Ballo, aged 20, the daughter of Norwegian MP Olav Gunnar Ballo, committed suicide two weeks ago after taking a Scientology personality test.

A 16-year-old schoolgirl was found hanged yesterday, bringing to 17 the number of apparent suicides among youngsters in the Bridgend, UK, area since the beginning of last year.

A total of 17 people aged between 15 and 27 and living in and around Bridgend have hanged themselves since January 2007. Local police, who have dismissed fears of a suicide cult, continue to deny any connection between the deaths.

A network of “suicide gurus” who use the internet to advise people how to kill themselves has been exposed.

Fears of a “suicide cult” resurfaced in the South Wales county after Nathaniel Pritchard, 15, and Kelly Stephenson, 20, hanged themselves.

The grim tally in a town hit by a spate of suicides has risen to 16 after two young cousins took their own lives.

The astonishing rate of hangings in Bridgend has terrified parents and one secondary school has been placed on “suicide watch” after pupils appealed for help.

The true scale of a suicide epidemic among young people in a small town was revealed yesterday. As well as the seven deaths linked to social networking websites, a coroner revealed that a further six had also died within a year.

Police have warned parents to keep a close eye on their teenage children amid fears that social networking websites may have played a part in the tragic chain.

Crimes on religious grounds are committed in Armenia every year, the head of the public organization to adapt victims of destructive cults and lawyer, Aleksandr Amaryan, has told our correspondent.

One of the two teenage girls who died in a joint suicide pact posted a series of suicidal poems on the internet in the months before her death.

The search for two teenage girls missing for a week ended tragically yesterday afternoon with the discovery of their bodies in rugged bushland east of Melbourne.