METRO Tuesday, September 22, 2009 D Corks Lisa swims Channel twice A CORK swimmer arrived home yesterday after becoming the first Irish woman to swim the English channel both ways. Student Lisa Cummins, 26, completed the gruelling swim on Sunday in 35 hours, making her just the 20th person in the world ever to have done so. Having never swum competitively before, she started training for the challenge in 2007 to raise money for charity. Its been amazing and everyone has been so supportive, she said on her return. MENU THE Home Digest 4 Guilty Pleasures Celebrity gossip 6 World Digest 10 MetroLife Arts & entertainment 12-13 Letters 17 TV 14-15 60 Second Interview John Da Vinci Langdon 20 Classifieds 18-20 Sport 21-24 Help keep Dublin clean and tidy for everyone by taking your Metro with you and recycling it TODAY: Bright spells, some showers, breezy. Max17C WEDNESDAY: Mainly dry with some showers. Max 16C METRO Weather GROOVE IS IN THE HEART Ava Sreenan- Cassidy, age four and sister Emily, age two help celebrate fundraising by Argos and Homebase of 150,000 for Heart Children Ireland at the Carmichael Centre in central Dublin CIA methods may have made false memoriesTHE CIAs harsh interrogations are likely to have damaged the brains of terrorist suspects, diminishing their ability to recall and provide the detailed information the agency sought, according to a new scientific paper by an Irish academic. Shane OMara, a professor at Trinity Colleges Institute of Neuroscience, looked at techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration through the lens of neurobiology and determined the methods to be counterproductive, no matter how much the suspects might have eventually talked. Prof OMara wrote that the severe interrogation techniques appear based on folk psychology a laymans idea of how the brain works as opposed to science-based understanding of memory and cognitive function. Chronic stress and trauma the likely result of the CIAs methods, said Prof OMara can damage the hippocampus, the part of the brain that integrates memory. The list of techniques the CIA used included prolonged sleep deprivation, being chained in painful positions, exploitation of prisoners phobias, and waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning that President Barack Obama has called torture. Prof OMara warned that this could lead to brain lobe disorders, making the prisoners vulnerable to confabulation the production of false memories based on suggestions from an interrogator. The ESRI paper, based on national employment surveys, revealed the overall pay premium for state em- ployees rose from 9.7 per cent in 2003 to almost 22 per cent in 2006. This could rise to 25 per cent when pensions are taken into account. But ESRI economist Dr Samus McGuinness hit back at the unions for refusing to accept the findings. He said: How a relatively unskilled workers job in the public service is so complex that it shows a 30 per cent pay difference, we dont know. Going forward, there are no grounds for public sector pay increases. Richard Bruton, Fine Gael deputy leader, said the study showed that benchmarking which attempted to link public pay to the private sector was misguided in its failure to link pay rises to reform. The tragedy is that this Fianna Fil Government has repeatedly tried to buy its way out of problems, instead of confronting them, Mr Bruton said. Compared with the rest of the world, Ireland ranks near the top for public- private pay differences. Dr McGuinness described the coun- try as the exception, noting that Japan came close, with a 21 per cent pay difference, while Norway has a gap of seven per cent in favour of the private sector. Public sector workers salaries could be cutBY ED CArTY TAOISEACH Brian Cowen yesterday refused to rule out a pay cut for public sector workers in the next Budget. Mr Cowen was speaking following the publication of a report by the Eco- nomic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) which showed public sector workers were being paid up to 25 per cent more than their private sector counterparts. Mr Cowen said public sector pay and pensions make up one-third of Exchequer spending and signalled it will be looked at ahead of the Decem- ber Budget. Were in a situation where were simply going to have to reshape how we do things, he said. But last night, trade unions dis- missed the claims, saying the ESRI had rehashed an old report as part of a softening-up exercise in advance of pay cuts in the forthcoming Budget. Impacts Bernard Harbor said the study was not a true comparison of wages. This report does not compare like with like and doesnt examine the content or level of responsibility of jobs in both sectors, said Blair Ho- ran, general secretary of the Civil Public and Services Union. No conclusions about pay compari- son can be drawn from such an exer- cise. Bruton: Benchmarking a failure Cowen: reshaping Goddard: Wept in court Teacher jailed over lesbian love for pupil A PRIVATE school teacher in the UK who was pressured into having a lesbian affair by a 15- year-old pupil was jailed yesterday. Music teacher Helen Goddard wept as Judge Anthony Pitts sentenced her to 15 months and banned her from working with children for life. However, he did not agree to a prosecution request for an order preventing the 26-year-old from seeing the teen for five years. Judge Pitts said that would be draconian and unnecessarily cruel after hearing the pair had spent a secret weekend in Paris together and genuinely loved each other. He said Goddard had employed a fair degree of deception during the couples five-month affair. As it is illegal for teachers to engage in sexual relations with pupils until they turn 18 he said a custodial sentence was inevitable. index.html2.html3.html4.html5.html6.html7.html8.html9.html10.html11.html12.html13.html14.html15.html16.html17.html18.html19.html20.html21.html22.html23.html