Gangster wanted over murder of Veronica Guerin finally arrested

September 3rd, 2010   by Natalie

A prominent Irish gangster and murder suspect who has lived on the continent for many years has been arrested near Amsterdam and faces extradition to the UK.

John Traynor was a key figure in the Dublin criminal underworld before fleeing the Republic of Ireland after Veronica Guerin, the crusading crime journalist, was murdered in 1996.

She was shot dead while driving her car near Dublin. Irish police believe Traynor tipped off the gunman who drove up beside her on a motorcycle and killed her.

The killing caused uproar in the Republic, and laws were introduced allowing the proceeds of crime to be confiscated. A monument was erected to Ms Guerin, who is remembered as a fearless pursuer of crime figures.

At the time of the reporter's death Traynor, 62, was seeking a court order to prevent her from writing about his activities. During his career Traynor associated with well-known criminals such as Martin Cahill, known as "the General," who was shot dead by the IRA. Traynor was chillingly portrayed by the actor Ciaran Hinds in the movie Veronica Guerin in which Cate Blanchett starred as the journalist.

Traynor also worked with John Gilligan, another feared underworld figure who was acquitted of the Guerin murder but given a lengthy sentence for drug trafficking. Another man, Brian Meehan, is serving life imprisonment for the journalist's murder.

Gilligan has made many court appearances in recent years in attempts to stop the authorities seizing millions of euros of assets which he is believed to have amassed by illegal methods including drugs sales.

Two years ago Gilligan caused a stir by blaming associates for shooting Ms Guerin. He announced in court: "John Traynor had Veronica Guerin murdered, 100 per cent. He set me up and he stole Brian Meehan's telephone."

The Dublin authorities have made no obvious attempts to extradite Traynor back to Ireland from the continent, where he is said to have lived in Holland, Spain and Portugal. The general assumption is that prosecuting him would be unlikely to result in a conviction.

Traynor is said to have youthful convictions for offences such as burglary and housebreaking. When he was older he was caught with a gun. He moved on to more serious crimes in the lucrative drug trade, where he was known as a fixer.

Moving to England after the Guerin shooting, he was given a seven-year sentence for handling stolen bearer bonds reportedly worth millions. He vanished in November 1992 when he failed to return to HMP Prison Highpoint in Suffolk after a short period of home leave.

Traynor has therefore been on the run for 18 years. He was detained in the Amstelveen area of Amsterdam after a joint operation by the Dutch police and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

In a statement the agency said: "He is now awaiting extradition to the UK to serve the remainder of his sentence. This arrest is as a result of ongoing collaboration with the Dutch authorities that Soca has to apprehend criminals operating in the Netherlands that impact on the UK."

Parts of Ireland, particularly Dublin and Limerick, continue to be plagued by a violent underworld rooted in the drugs trade. Rival gangs and individuals are involved in lethal feuding which has resulted in more than a dozen deaths in recent years.

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Secrets of the subconscious unlocked

September 2nd, 2010   by Natalie

A man sits in a courtroom, accused of what he knows not. His lawyer, one Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, looks at the judge and insists: "This man is innocent." A few minutes before, a stranger slashes her wrists in a toilet and dies.

Not, in fact, scenes from a Hollywood thriller, but just two of the vivid images recounted to a respectful audience at Friday night's meeting at the Academy of Dreams in London.

Bob Roope, 67, an optician from St Albans, Hertfordshire, is the man in the dock; Field Marshal Rommel, one of the few Germans to emerge from the Second World War with anything approaching a good reputation, his "shadow", according to a Jungian interpretation of Mr Roope's reverie. Glynis Downey, 50, a former nurse who lives in Hammersmith, is the unfortunate woman who finds the corpse: a "sinister" end to a dream that had started out promisingly, with a sandy beach and a "cosy" session with a tall, handsome man called Lone.

Dream groups, such as the one Debbie Winterbourne runs each month in north London, are cropping up all over the UK as people seek an alternative route to self-enlightenment. The quest to interpret nocturnal visions may not be new, but the global fascination with the dream industry certainly is.

Christopher Nolan's new sci-fi thriller Inception, which opened this weekend to almost universally euphoric reviews, is one big dream sequence that sees the star, Leonardo DiCaprio, and his fellow thieves hop from one dream to the next.

Ms Winterbourne, who set up her Academy of Dreams two years ago and charges £10 per session, said interest had doubled in the past year. "People come as a form of therapy. A lot of dream theory says dreams are metaphors for what's happening in your life," she said. As well as running her monthly sessions and regular workshops, she teaches at the College of Psychic Studies in Kensington.

Carole Murray, a dream therapist and hypnotherapist, said her clients often come because they want help analysing a dream that has affected them deeply. "Women come more than men. They come from all sectors and from all ages. Most people have a good degree of intelligence about them," she said. "The benefits are that you know yourself better; you can work things out – who you're angry at, for example."

Mr Roope, who has been interpreting his dreams for the past 30 years, said attending a dream group "brings things to life for me". He added: "I find this group very creative. It helps me get very much in touch with myself." Chatting through his recurring dreams of Rommel had helped him to "realise how to take care of the dark side in myself. I need to make it an ally".

Peter Cox, 61, also left happier on Friday despite sharing a dark tale of social rejection. He had described how dancing with women who later blanked him in two recent dreams had left a "bitter aftertaste of unfilled potential and dashed hopes". But he was cheered after Mr Roope pointed out that "at least he had got a dance in his dream" – progress compared with an earlier dream that had seen Mr Cox cycle through the Valley of Death.

Louise Chunn, the editor of Psychologies magazine, said she could imagine dream groups taking off, in much the same way that "today's narcissistic society" is addicted to talking about itself on Twitter. "I can imagine talking about your dreams becoming a trend in the way that people photograph their food. Is this just another way to validate ourselves?" She warned that the upshot could be to leave those with less exciting dreams feeling inadequate.

Some psychologists and psychiatrists worry that dream groups might cause harm if the distressing emotions turned up by the subconscious mind are mistreated. Patrick McNamara, associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Boston University and author of Nightmares: The Science and Solution of Those Frightening Visions During Sleep, believes that dreams shouldn't be shared with anyone who lacks due regard for their complexity.

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Beleaguered Capello beset by echoes of the McClaren era

September 1st, 2010   by Natalie

In the last two weeks of Steve McClaren's reign as England manager, the squad's injury problems became so overwhelming that the situation would almost have been comical had the team's situation not been so precarious.

The day that Fabio Capello's predecessor announced his squad for the final Euro 2008 qualifier against Croatia, Wayne Rooney injured himself tripping over an ice box while playing head tennis. John Terry's knee locked. Michael Owen strained a thigh in the warm-up game against Austria. Ashley Cole was injured. Rio Ferdinand was suspended. And all anyone remembers from that defeat at Wembley in November 2007 was McClaren's wretched brolly.

Capello has never shown much interest in what happened before he was England manager but now, at his lowest ebb, he might recognise some of the misfortune that afflicted McClaren almost three years ago. From the moment Capello's side beat Andorra in the first 2010 World Cup qualifier two years ago, the Italian has lived a charmed life until, that is, his side arrived in South Africa in May.

Since then he has learned that being a successful England manager does not just require a glittering career in club management and a single-minded approach to the job. You need luck too. And the injuries afflicting Capello's squad this week as he begins qualifying for Euro 2012 suggest that his luck is running dangerously low.

Like McClaren, Capello finds himself with huge injury problems in defence. When McClaren faced Croatia in that infamous 3-2 defeat on 21 November he had none of his first choice back four fit. Of Capello's current first choice defenders, he still has Glen Johnson and Ashley Cole at full-back although Cole's recent problems with an ankle injury have been severe enough that Kieran Gibbs has been steered away from the under-21s as cover in the senior squad.

McClaren was so low on centre-backs in November 2007 that he had to play Sol Campbell and Joleon Lescott as a partnership for the first time. On Friday against Bulgaria, and then Switzerland in four days' time, Capello must choose from Michael Dawson, Phil Jagielka, Matthew Upson, Lescott and Gary Cahill. It is not the ideal set of options for an England manager in desperate need of a good result.

Jagielka has a bruised foot and although the Football Association think he will be able to train tomorrow, that is by no means certain. The five central defenders have just 35 caps between them, of which Upson has 21. He is currently part of a West Ham team who have lost all three games this season. Lescott, who is regarded by Capello as cover at right-back, is playing at left-back for Manchester City.

As the squad met yesterday afternoon at their headquarters, the Grove in Hertfordshire, Capello was without the kind of players upon whom he has had to rely in the past. There is no Frank Lampard, no Rio Ferdinand and no John Terry. That lack of experience will be felt more in defence acutely than anywhere else.

A chance for someone else to shine? Maybe, but Capello would not be picking Jagielka and Cahill if his more experienced alternatives had been available to him. There might have been an appetite for a new direction after the disappointment of the World Cup but Capello is inherently conservative and would rather go with what he knows with six valuable points at stake.

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Artists flinch at 'honour' of hanging in Tory offices

August 31st, 2010   by Natalie

One might be forgiven for thinking that the task of choosing which pictures to hang on the walls of an expanded new office in Westminster would be one of the least contentious facing an incoming minister.

Not so for Ed Vaizey, the Culture minister, however. He has admitted that his choices from the Government Art Collection have ruffled political feathers among some of the artists themselves, who did not appreciate the "honour" of being admired by a Tory.

Moving into the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Mr Vaizey secured a drawing by the former Young British Artist, Michael Landy, called Compulsory Obsolescence. It was the first painting Landy completed after Break Down, a performance piece from 2001 in which he destroyed all of his possessions. But when Mr Vaizey met the artist at a dinner at the Royal Academy and told him of his choice he did not get the reaction he had hoped for.

"I told Michael Landy he was hanging on my wall and he was absolutely horrified," Mr Vaizey admitted to The Independent.

And not just him. Also on Mr Vaizey's wall is a poster-style screenprint, Mark Wallinger is Innocent.

Mr Vaizey suggested that the artist himself, Mark Wallinger, a lifelong Labour supporter, would be just as dismayed by his choice and that of his boss Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who likewise chose a Wallinger from the collection. "I went to the Turner Prize in Liverpool two years ago. He [Wallinger] might think he's a radical, but his sister came up to me and said, 'I love you in The Wright Stuff.' I got it within the week of taking office.... I got my Mark Wallinger before Jeremy Hunt got his," said Mr Vaizey.

Neither artist offered a response to Mr Vaizey's comments, despite several approaches. Mr Vaizey did manage to cite one artist – Tracey Emin – among those on his walls whom he regards as Conservative supporters. "She is still hanging on by her fingernails," he said.

Speaking to The Independent about the state of arts funding, philanthropic giving and his role at the DCMS, Mr Vaizey admitted that he may have over-stepped the mark with his decorating desires. So overreaching were his hopes, in fact, that some of his requests were met by raised eyebrows. "I asked for a Damien Hirst, but I got a withering look," he said.

Mr Vaizey was categorically informed by Penny Johnson, head of the Government Art Collection, which has more than 1,000 works in its vaults, that "We are not an Argos catalogue", after logging his requests for "a lot of British artists". What he did manage to secure was a screenprint by Richard Long entitled Waterlines, two sketches by Emin, the poster by Wallinger and the Landy drawing, among other works, as well as some fashion and film pieces yet to arrive, including a dress designed by Hussein Chalayan.

Mr Vaizey, 42, began his political career as an adviser and speech-writer in the inner circle of the former Tory leader, Michael Howard, alongside a then fresh-faced David Cameron and George Osborne, who were, in the early days, disparagingly referred to as the "Notting Hill Set". Today, he cuts a far more heavyweight figure, although he is not seen to have the same level of steely ambition as Mr Hunt, who is only two years his senior.

Speaking about his vision for arts funding, Mr Vaizey defended Mr Hunt's funding model of philanthropic giving combined with government funds. Last month, at least seven of Britain's leading benefactors wrote to the Prime Minister to warn that the gap left by threatened arts cuts of up to 40 per cent could not be bridged by private money.

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A step in the right direction

August 28th, 2010   by Natalie

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking," observed Nietzsche, though I've always been a bit suspicious of the ardour with which writers and artists celebrate the inspirational power of taking a stroll: procrastination is a wily foe, and relishes convincing you that your preferred mode of time-wasting is critical to your success. Yet it seems to work. "Methinks the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow," was how Henry Thoreau described an experience many of us have had, be it tackling challenging work or fretting over problems. For what it's worth, I almost always plan this column in ambulatory fashion, muttering to myself in the park. I lay claim to no "great thoughts", but they'd be far worse without walking. And muttering. (Though I'd prefer not to dwell on that, thanks.)

If we still don't know why walking inspires clarity and creativity, it's because there are too many possible explanations, not too few. An evolutionary psychologist might say we're designed to thrive outside, not at a desk; a scholar of the psychological phenomenon of "priming" might point to studies suggesting that high ceilings – and also, perhaps, the sky – prompt unrestrained thinking. Dreamier types speak of the trance-inducing rhythm of pacing. A study in the European Journal of Developmental Psychology offers more straightforward reasoning. In it, both children and adults performed a memory exercise better when walking than sitting. The researchers speculate that the physiological arousal of walking simply makes for better brain functioning, while the normally detrimental effects of multitasking are eliminated when the tasks are sufficiently different, drawing on separate "wells" of attention, rather than fighting over one.

Maybe. Going solely on anecdotal experience, though, I suspect the greatest mental benefits of walking are explained not by what it is, but by what it isn't. When you go outside, you cease what you're doing, and stopping trying to achieve something is often key to achieving it. (See also: dating, insomnia.) Stepping away from work combats the paralysing effects of perfectionism, because when a task is suspended, the risk of failure is suspended, too; you're thus freer to dream up insights. And in some hard-to-specify way, even the distractions of walking – traffic noise, people – seem to help. The writer Ron Rosenbaum takes this to extremes, not just walking while thinking, but watching TV while writing. "I'm slightly ashamed to admit it, [since] it sounds like such a horrid violation of the writer's solitude," he once said. "But I have a theory of 'competing concentration'… if you have something that you have to focus against... it forces you to concentrate."

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Did George Mallory make it to the summit of Everest before he died?

August 27th, 2010   by Natalie

His body lay half-buried in the frozen scree, face-down and spread-eagled in his last agony. Above George Mallory, a couple of thousand feet higher, the summit of Everest stood impassively waiting for other men to try to conquer the highest mountain in the world. For me, also, it was the end of a long quest.

At the age of 12, I met my relative Howard Somervell, a friend of George Mallory's who watched him leave on his last attempt to climb the mountain in June 1924. Somervell told me about his own attempt to climb the mountain without oxygen, and how he nearly suffocated due to a frostbitten larynx. He turned back 1,000 feet from the top.

"We met Mallory at the North Col on his way up. He said to me that he had forgotten his camera, and I lent him mine. 'So if my camera was ever found,'" he said, 'you could prove that Mallory got to the top.'" It was a throwaway remark, which he probably made a hundred times in the course of telling this story, but this time it found its mark.

I spent years trying to prove Mallory had climbed the mountain and became the 15th Briton to climb the mountain, in 1993. In 1999, I organised a BBC-funded expedition to look for Somervell's camera. Instead the searchers found Mallory's body. There was no camera, though, and still no answer to the biggest mystery in mountaineering: who climbed Mount Everest first?

I kept searching for new evidence, and went on eight Everest expeditions searching for Andrew Irvine, Mallory's young companion. In 2006, I tested perfect replicas of Mallory's clothing and deduced that they would have kept him alive on the summit only if the weather remained fine. However, the answer to the puzzle was under my nose the whole time.

Somervell was responsible for the meteorological records on the 1924 expedition, and his work led me to the vital clue. One of the reasons Mount Everest is now becoming easier to climb is modern weather forecasting. Whereas the early British attempts relied on rough dates for the likely advent of the Indian summer monsoon, now the expedition leader has highly accurate satellite photographs and forecasting available by email. The weather window needed for a summit bid can be predicted with reliability.

But there is one variable that is literally invisible: air pressure. If one tries to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen there are some days better than others: high-pressure days, when there are more oxygen molecules in each lungful of breath. Conversely, a day with low barometric pressure may effectively make the summit a few hundred metres higher. A climber nearing the summit without extra oxygen is working at the absolute limit of human capacity, and the difference of a few millibars of atmospheric pressure can make all the difference. Even when you are using oxygen it is merely supplementing the ambient air, so low pressure will affect you, too. A recent study of fatalities on Everest shows that deaths blamed on the weather are usually associated with a big drop in summit barometric pressure. Mallory had oxygen but it had almost certainly run out before he had time to reach the top.

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'British classics' made with meat from the other side of the world

August 26th, 2010   by Natalie

Food companies are selling products labelled "British" or "traditional" which contain meat from thousands of miles away, research for The Independent shows.

Supermarkets such as Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and the Co-op now stock more British meat, but some sell processed meals with ingredients sourced from overseas in a way that may jar with customers.

A shepherd's pie sold by Sainsbury's as part of its British Classics range with a Union Jack on the packaging, is made with lamb from New Zealand, 11,000 miles away. Another British Classics meal, Lancashire hotpot, also contains New Zealand lamb, along with Marks & Spencer's "traditional favourite" shepherd's pie.

All three list the meat's country of origin somewhere on the packaging – unlike Birds Eye's chicken dinner meal from its "British Traditional" range.

The product carries a picture of rolling green fields reminiscent of the English countryside, but is made in a factory in the Republic of Ireland and contains intensively produced chicken from Thailand, 6,000 miles away. Birds Eye changed the product's name from "Great British Menu" at the start of the year after complaints from members of the public. In small print on the back, the pack states the chicken comes from abroad but does not state its country of origin.

Rob Ward, founder of the Honest Food Labelling Campaign, said: "The Food Standards Agency (FSA) say you cannot portray a product using words or images that misrepresent the food, so if you are using a scene of rolling countryside then that should imply those ingredients are from that scene.

"More importantly, Birds Eye also mis-use the word 'traditional'. The use of 'traditional' is defined by the FSA as something made in its original form, so a roast chicken dinner implies small-scale production, but clearly this is made in a factory in southern Ireland and it isn't even made by Birds Eye."

Mr Ward, who invites the public to vote on misleading marketing on his website, honestlabelling.com, said Sainsbury's should not have used the term British Classic on a dish containing Antipodean meat, even if it was in season. "I think it's wrong," he said. "Sainsbury's have announced they are only using British and Irish beef so that's a great step forward ... so clearly they believe it matters."

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Somali Islamists kill 33 in attack on government stronghold

August 25th, 2010   by Natalie

The Islamist militant group al-Shabaab have stepped up their campaign to topple the government in Somalia, storming a hotel in the capital and killing at least 33 people, including six MPs.

Bodies were left strewn all over a seaside hotel, in a supposedly safer area of war-torn Mogadishu, after insurgents got past security by disguising themselves as police officers.

Witnesses including one parliamentarian described the scene at the Muna Hotel as a "massacre" with gunmen hunting guests from room to room, before blowing themselves up after security forces surrounded the building. The Information minister Abdirahman Osman said "the blood of the dead is leaking out of the hotel".

The worst attack of its kind since four ministers were murdered by a suicide bomber at a university graduation in February, it comes as Shabaab intensifies its campaign to oust the weak, UN-backed government. At least 74 people have been killed since heavy street fighting restarted on Monday. The government said the militants had ignored an appeal for a truce during Ramadan and condemned the attacks as "against Islam".

The hotel killings come after Shabaab threatened a "massive war" if the African Union (AU) goes ahead with plans to reinforce its 6,000-strong peacekeeping force in Mogadishu. Most of south and central Somalia is now controlled by a patchwork of extremist militant groups, of which Shabaab is by far is the strongest.

The transitional government, which nominally controls only a handful of streets in the capital, is wholly reliant on the AU force, made up of soldiers from Uganda and Burundi. Officials admit they would by overrun within hours by Shabaab if the peacekeepers were withdrawn.

The AU and its international backers have found themselves drawn into a test of strength with the Somali militants, who proved their ability to strike beyond the borders last month with twin bombings in the Ugandan capital. Some 77 people were slaughtered in suicide attacks at two Kampala evening spots as they watched the World Cup final, in an attack that Shabaab said was retaliation for the presence of Ugandan troops in Somalia. And despite millions of dollars in foreign support and arms shipments from Washington, the Somali government has been unable to establish any authority on the ground. Some regional analysts have argued for an end to all foreign interference in Somalia.

A spokesman for Shabaab said that yesterday's hotel assault had been carried out by "special forces" sent to kill those "aiding the infidels2.

One MP who survived the attack said she had been woken by the sound of gunshots. She said that guests on the upper floors had tried to escape by crawling out of windows. "Smoke filled my room after bullets smashed my window," she said. "I hid myself in a corner of the room. Then a guest next door came to my door, screaming 'Come out! Come out!' And when I came out bullets continued to fly around. I went back to my room and locked my door. Shortly afterward, the hotel staff asked me to come down and put me in a room at the second floor with four other survivors."

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