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Catherine T., who asked not to be identified by her family name, said she joined a hoteliers’ school in northeastern France in 1985, aged 14, which she later discovered was run by associates of Opus Dei.

She said she was forced to take vows and made to work as a domestic servant for virtually no pay.

Opus Dei responded in a statement that it was “not involved in the charges being brought” and had “nothing to be guilty about.”

It will be the first ever trial targeting the organisation, branded a sect by some, which came to wide attention after featuring in the blockbuster novel and film “The Da Vinci Code”.

“They assigned me a ‘tutor’ who was actually a kind of conscience instructor,” Catherine told AFP. “I entered into the system…. You were forbidden to talk about it to your parents.”

She said the group compelled her to take vows of obedience, poverty and chastity and for the following 13 years gave her jobs with organisations that her lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut said were linked to Opus Dei.

She said she was made to work 14-hour days, seven days a week, cleaning and serving. Staff paid her a salary and then reclaimed money from her by making her sign blank cheques, supposedly to pay her room and board, she alleged.

She added that staff accompanied her wherever she went, including on visits to the doctor. On these occasions she was taken to see an Opus Dei doctor who prescribed tranquilisers that left her “senseless”.

Catherine weighed only 39 kilogrammes (86 pounds) in 2001 when her parents rescued her from the group. Lawyers first took legal action that year alleging “mental manipulation” among other charges. A nine-year investigation followed.

Two Opus Dei leaders are now summoned to appear in a Paris criminal court on September 22 and 23 on labour law charges of undignified punishment and not declaring her as an employee, lawyers said.

The lawsuit also targets the University and Technical Culture Association (ACUT) which ran the school. It said it had nothing more than a “cultural link” with Opus Dei.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, deputized by the government to oversee brokers, is lobbying to replace the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as a regulator of registered investment advisers who manage about $40 trillion. Congress is considering the move as a cheaper alternative to increasing resources for the SEC, since Finra’s $877 million budget is paid by the brokers it regulates.

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Miss Eguchi blogged that her goal is “to become a new idol like never before by taking the best parts of my AKB big sisters”. This was true, but in a creepy-Frankenstein kind of way.

But perhaps even more unfortunate is the moniker the edifice, which will house Mr Van Rompuy’s presidential office and be home to future Brussels summits from 2014, has earned from EU officials.

Built as a state of the art glass and wood wing to an existing Art Deco building, the complex will be focused around a womblike central structure providing a home for summits and meetings of Brussels officials or diplomats.

And it this organic looking “urn” shape has already been nicknamed the “E-Uterus” by Council of the EU officials who will be working in the new building.

Police from Fortune Greens Safer Neighbourhood Team in West Hampstead, north London, are climbing through windows left open to alert residents to the sinister threat.

Officers are carrying out the mock raids in a high-profile initiative to slash the number of burglaries.

They are committing break-ins across their patch, locking up the property and leaving a calling card to notify the stunned owner that they were there.

A young woman on her own was startled when a uniformed cop strolled into her living room after clambering in through an open bedroom window.

KMBC’s Micheal Mahoney reported that the letter is angering some of the people who received it because some of them are fighting for their land from a flood they believe the Corps caused.

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Kneuvean said this may be a case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. But Mahoney reported that some people believe the Corps deliberately released massive amounts of water in hopes of driving down the sales price on flooded ground.

But for Steven Cordell, manager of Cazenove’s Pan Europe fund, that is a scenario that should be avoided at all costs.

‘Unless the Greeks are turkeys voting for Christmas then I don’t see an exit for them out of the Euro.’

‘The Greek state employs something like two thirds of the population so the number of losers would be massive.’

He says the reaction of the military is also a significant factor to consider when discussing any potential break away from the Euro for Greece.

‘Spending on the Greek army is amongst the highest per capita in the whole of the EU, so if a plan didn’t materialise you could see a military coup. We’re talking controlled order here and it has happened before in ‘74.’