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Ukraine war briefing: ‘With precision, as planned’ – Kyiv outlines battlefield gains

Ukrainian forces have ⁠recaptured 745 sq km (288 sq miles) of Russian-occupied land in a key sector this year, Volodymyr Zelenskyy ⁠has said. “This offensive operation of ours was carried out with precision – exactly as planned.” Ukraine’s president outlined gains broadly in line with assessments from the well-regarded Ukrainian open-source group DeepState. Russia’s battlefield advances have slowed this year across much of the front, analysts say, though Russian ‌forces still threaten cities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The Russian military still regularly announces the “capture” of villages, though observers say these are often shortlived flag-raising incursions involving a handful of troops. “From January to August of this year, our warriors of the airborne assault forces and other units carried out an effective offensive operation in the Oleksandrivskyi sector … Russian losses amounted to at least 9,550 people killed and more than 6,600 people wounded.” Ukraine’s “exchange fund” was also replenished, Zelenskyy said, referring to Russian prisoners of war who can be swapped for Ukrainians held by Russia. The Oleksandrivskyi sector is a 60km (37-mile) stretch of the front taking in parts of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Donetsk oblasts where they meet. Zelenskyy said 26 ⁠settlements there had been brought back under Kyiv’s control. DeepState, which tracks both sides’ positions on the front, said in its ‌latest assessment that Ukrainian forces had restored control over 19 settlements along the frontline, and pushed back Russian troops in six more settlements. The US-based Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment that Russian online sources were likely using AI-enhanced video footage to support Moscow’s claims of advances. A major Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk hit warships at a naval base and forced two major grain terminals to halt operations ⁠on Wednesday, according to Russian and Ukrainian officials as well as grain industry sources. Zelenskyy said two frigates, a large landing ship, a corvette and other vessels were hit. Describing the attack as having “strategic significance”, Ukraine’s SBU security service said ⁠Kyiv’s forces hit the Novorossiysk naval base with drones and missiles. The Russian regional governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, said the attacks killed at least two people including an eight-year-old child. Novorossiysk also hosts oil export infrastructure, including for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium owned partly by US ‌oil companies Chevron and Exxon Mobil, and carries Kazakh oil exports to market. The Financial Times (paywall) reported on Wednesday that after a request from JD Vance, the US vice-president, Ukraine agreed not to target CPC infrastructure and non-Russian vessels, as long as they were not under Ukrainian sanctions or carrying Russian oil or other cargo. Russia’s Orenburg region has introduced ⁠fuel rationing after a ⁠Ukrainian drone strike on the Orsk refinery this week in the Urals mountain ⁠province. “Dear residents of our region, I ‌will be ‌frank: a difficult fuel situation is ‌developing in the region,” said Yevgeny Solntsev, the regional governor. He announced restrictions on gasoline sales, including a ban on filling up containers, limits on ‌sale volume, and sales on odd or even days based on licence plate numbers. Other ‌Russian regions were already under similar restrictions. A group of Ukrainian soldiers appealed to their military leadership for help in a video where they told of spending four months on the frontline without rotation and drinking urine during a 12-day stint when drone-dropped water supplies did not arrive. Ukraine’s 121st Brigade command confirmed the social media video’s authenticity and said the brigade “continues to take all necessary measures to properly supply the servicemen” in what it described as “extremely difficult” battlefield conditions. Platoon commander Anatoliy Saichuk accused senior officers of lying to soldiers’ families by assuring them the men were fully supplied. “Some of my servicemen were semi-conscious for several days due to lack of water and food,” he added, saying he had eventually decided to abandon the positions when circumstances allowed. The South joint forces group, which commands the area, said the platoon was fighting in a “difficult and dynamic sector of the front”, adding the video showed “an isolated fragment of a complex operational environment”. Moldova has agreed to give Ukraine a 50% discount ⁠on rail cargo ⁠shipments until the end of the year, according to both governments. Ukraine, a major grain exporter by sea, has sought the alternative route because of Russian attacks on its ports and shipping. Russia ⁠struck Ukraine’s Izmail ⁠port ⁠area in the southern Odesa ⁠region over Wednesday night, causing ⁠damage and ‌fire, local ‌authorities said. Izmail, close to ‌the Romanian border, is home to ⁠Ukraine’s largest Danube port, handling grain and other commodities. Russia’s agriculture ministry has also said it is ‌working to redirect its export flows to alternative routes because of Ukrainian attacks in the Black Sea.

Potatoes ‘boil’ in the ground as record heatwave sweeps across swathes of Asia

In a potato field in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, Lee Sang-hyuk dug into the soil and found nothing worth saving. A week earlier the crop, located in Gangwon province, had looked fine. Now the potatoes came up soft and collapsing, “like boiled potatoes”, spoiled by heat that had turned the ground into something closer to an oven. “It’s not just one or two fields like this. How can I even put it into words? It’s so upsetting,” he told local broadcaster SBS. His ruined harvest is one thread in a punishing summer across east Asia, as record heat swept through South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong in recent weeks. On 2 August, the south-eastern city of Yangsan recorded a temperature of 42.5C, the highest registered in South Korea since modern weather observations began in 1904. The heat has since been blamed for at least 31 deaths nationwide, according to the country’s disease control agency, while more than 900,000 livestock and 1.4 million farmed fish have died. Authorities issued a heat warning, urging people to “immediately stop all outdoor activities”. South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, told his cabinet the extreme weather was “unlike anything we have experienced before”. “We need to make efforts for a fundamental overhaul of the national crisis system,” he said, “since this extreme weather is becoming the new normal.” In neighbouring Japan, temperatures reached 40C or higher at multiple locations and the country recorded its first ever “kokushobi”, or “cruelly hot day”, a new category introduced this year by the country’s weather agency for temperatures above 40C. In Tokyo, three lions died of suspected heatstroke at a city zoo. Scientists say the extremes are part of a wider pattern. Researchers working through Japan’s Weather Attribution Centre found that the country’s intense July heat would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming. Without the warming caused by human activity, they calculated, a heatwave of this scale would occur on average once ever 10,000 years. The heat struck even as an El Niño event was under way, a natural climate pattern that has in the past been associated with a lower likelihood of extreme summer heat in Japan. In Hong Kong, its observatory posted an official temperature of 36.9C, the highest recorded there since records began in 1884, as the outer bands of Typhoon Dolphin swept hot air over the city. The record heat also exposed the failings of the city’s heat stress warning system for outdoor workers, which remained at its lowest tier even as temperatures reached a record high. “The threshold for the red warning is clearly set too high”, Lam Chiu Ying, a former head of the Hong Kong Observatory, wrote on Facebook. “If even a record-breaking temperature can’t trigger it, isn’t it just a display piece used to decorate a shop window?” Hong Kong’s Labour Department has since said it is reviewing the warning system with the observatory. In China’s western Xinjiang region, a weather station recorded a 50C reading in July and heatwaves gripped the country’s north-east, while North Korea reported a run of tropical nights in Pyongyang, with temperatures failing to fall below 25C. June-Yi Lee, a climate scientist at Pusan National University and a coordinating lead author of the UN’s most recent climate assessment, said the regional heatwave may have been shaped by a mix of atmospheric circulation patterns and a warming climate. A strengthening ridge of high pressure over the Tibetan Plateau and western Pacific, layered on top of this year’s El Niño, may have helped create conditions for the heat, she said. The World Meteorological Organization said in its latest State of the Climate in Asia report that the pace of Asia’s warming between 1991 and 2025 is roughly twice that of the preceding three decades. About 160 miles (257km) south of Seoul, in Gwangju, watermelon farmer Hong Kyung-hee watched fruit that would normally sell at a premium turn to mush. “The inside was good, the sweetness was good, everything was fine”, he told KBS from his farm. “But after three days it changed overnight like this. In my 50 years of farming, this is the first time.” Strawberry farmer Yoon Woo-ha in Damyang county, South Jeolla province, lost seedlings that she had cultivated for three months and won’t be covered by insurance. South Korea’s crop insurance scheme covers only designated crops, growing methods and regions, leaving farmers exposed when losses fall outside those boundaries. “When the insurance can’t cover this,” said Lee Jun-kyung, head of the Gwangju chapter of the Korean Peasants League, “it goes straight into farm household debt.” Prof Lee warned that heatwaves were expected to become more frequent and intense as the climate heated up, while compound extremes, such as consecutive heatwaves and heavy rainfall, were becoming more common. “There is an urgent need for rapid, large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to limit further global warming together with well-planned adaptation measures to address the climate change that is already occurring,” she said.

Israeli militants besiege two Palestinian families in their West Bank homes

Israeli militants have besieged two Palestinian families in their homes since the weekend, aiming to take over their properties in the West Bank village of Qusra through a campaign of terror. A group of settlers and soldiers set up a tent outside the home of Yousef Hassan on Sunday afternoon, trapping him inside with his wife and two young daughters. The Israeli men gathered just metres away from the spot where 28-year-old Amir Moatasem Odeh was killed by a settler in March. Another attacker stabbed his father. No one has been arrested over the murder and assault. “Every night, the settlers throw stones, use obscene language and shout during the night. We are living in a state of terror,” Hassan said. His mother, brother and sister, and three neighbours have also been blockaded inside, and their power and water have been cut off. Settlers used the same tactics to steal another Palestinian home in neighbouring Jalud village, driving the al Tubasi family out in July after a months-long siege. They cut off water and electricity to the homes, although a solar panel allows Hassan to keep some devices charged in Qusra. They have also blocked medical care. When his younger daughter, a two-year-old, fell ill with vomiting and a high fever on Monday, settlers blocked an ambulance from reaching the house. The girls and their mother were eventually evacuated on Tuesday. They are short on food and are drinking water and juice delivered by the ambulance that came to collect his daughter. “The situation is extremely dire,” Hassan said. On Wednesday morning, the commander of Israeli forces in the region, Gen Avi Bluth, visited the families and promised to lift the siege, an Israeli military spokesperson said. Hassan confirmed the visit. “Today, the area commander came and spoke with us and assured us that he would evacuate the settlers. For the first time, I feel that there is some seriousness on the part of the army in dealing with the settlers,” Hassan said, but added that it had not yet produced tangible results. Soldiers took the tent but not bedding and other possessions and, after brief clashes with the settlers, withdrew. “The settlers are still there in front of the house, and we are still unable to leave.” An Israeli military spokesperson said commanders were “gravely concerned” about the settlers’ actions and that soldiers who supported them would face disciplinary action, but declined to give a timeline for lifting the siege. On Wednesday evening, chief of the general staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Eyal Zamir, met other senior commanders to discuss the situation in Qusra. He ordered a battalion of infantry reservists back from leave to reinforce troops in the West Bank. “The battalion, which is currently undergoing a period of refreshment and training, will be deployed to the sector in order to strengthen operational control. Furthermore, additional soldiers will remain on standby for deployment as necessary,” a military spokesperson said. The military is working with the police to bring “those responsible for the disturbances to justice”, the spokesperson added. Israeli militants target Palestinians with near total impunity in the occupied West Bank. Since 2020, Israeli civilians and soldiers have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians there, and there has been only one indictment over those deaths. Violence is deployed as part of a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing. Israel has forcibly displaced 64 Palestinian communities over the past three years, rights group B’Tselem said. Fifteen other communities have lost residents, with more than 4,800 people driven from their homes. “What is happening in Qusra is not an isolated incident,” said B’Tselem’s executive director, Yuli Novak. “Settler militias, backed by the Israeli military, are expanding their attacks into Palestinian villages and towns – seizing land, attacking homes and forcing families out. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the West Bank is accelerating and expanding in plain sight.” Dozens of Israelis from the country’s security, political and cultural elite have threatened legal action against their government over its failure to tackle “Jewish terrorism” in the occupied West Bank. As the occupying power in the West Bank, Israel is responsible under international law for ensuring the safety of Palestinian civilians and meeting their basic needs. The Israeli military has declared the area a closed military zone and blocked journalists from approaching the Palestinian homes. Israeli settlers are subject to the same orders but have not been removed. Sufian Taha contributed reporting

Former Mexican governor charged in case of 43 students who vanished in 2014

The former governor of Guerrero state in Mexico has been formally charged over his alleged involvement in the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, a case that has become a symbol of the country’s brutal cartel violence and government impunity. Ángel Aguirre, who was arrested last week, is accused of forced disappearance and obstruction of justice for ordering the destruction of surveillance tapes that may have shed light on what happened to the students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college on the night of 26 September 2014. On Wednesday, a judge ruled Mexico’s attorney general had presented enough evidence to formally charge Aguirre with forced disappearance and ordered that he remain in a maximum security prison awaiting trial. A lawyer for Aguirre denied his client’s wrongdoing. Guillermo Baradas told reporters: “We presented evidence demonstrating a high-level meeting attended by Mr Ángel Aguirre at the time the videos were allegedly handed over to him.” Aguirre’s indictment is the biggest breakthrough in the Ayotzinapa case since the 2022 arrest of Jesús Murillo Karam, who served as Mexico’s attorney general at the time of the students’ abduction. The brutality of the case rocked Mexico and continues to haunt the country more than a decade on. With the remains of only three students identified, it is not known what happened to the 40 others. On the night that they were abducted, the students from the Raúl Isidros Burgos teacher training college in the village of Ayotzinapa had commandeered several buses in the city of Iguala to get to a protest in Mexico City. But before they could leave Iguala, in Guerrero state, the students were attacked by a local criminal gang working with municipal police. A years-long international investigation determined that federal forces, both police and military, were also involved either by participating directly or failing to intervene as the students were taken away and presumably killed. The government at the time orchestrated an elaborate coverup, attempting to place blame for the attack solely on the criminal gang and local police. Suspects were tortured into giving false confessions and crime scene evidence was manipulated. Meltión Ortega, a spokesperson for the 43 students, said: “We want no more deception; we want to be told the truth and for those responsible to be punished. The victims from Guerrero deserve to have the actual perpetrators and the masterminds punished, rather than just seeing a charade, as has happened in serious cases of human rights violations.” Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has vowed to get to the bottom of what happened to the students and formed an investigative unit to dig into the case last year. “I’m going to put all my effort, all my energy, all my willpower [towards obtaining truth and justice],” she told reporters at a news conference last week.

Greenland forces Trump-linked US oil firm to delay drilling

Greenland authorities have forced a US oil company connected to Donald Trump to postpone drilling wells in the Arctic territory, defying claims by the US president’s envoy that Americans could be extracting crude by next year. Amid Trump’s imperialist threats, tensions have been rising on Greenland’s eastern coast after the oil company brought drilling equipment ashore in July without permission, drawing a “strong warning” from the government. Just week before Greenland Energy intended to sink its first wells into the tundra, the government said on Thursday: “The necessary regulatory process cannot be completed, and the necessary approvals cannot therefore be obtained before the planned start of drilling.” It said that during talks Greenlandic officials had expressed concern that the timetable was too tight to assess the environmental and social impact. The authorities will have to decide whether to sanction drilling in a protected wetland that is home to rare birds and the muskoxen on which local hunters depend. At the earliest, drilling could now commence in the winter of 2027, the government and the company said. That is a long way off the prediction made as recently as May by Jeff Landry, the hard-right Louisiana governor whom Trump named as his envoy to Greenland. He said after a visit that oil supposedly lying under Greenland could ease the energy crisis caused by the US attack on Iran. Landry, whose stated goal is to “make Greenland a part of the US”, said: “We could have those barrels on production within 10 months or so.” Robert Price, the Greenland Energy chief executive, who maintains that oil worth $1tn could lie under the remote Jameson Land region, said: “Greenland Energy remains committed to advancing its oil exploration programme responsibly and in accordance with Greenland’s regulatory process, and in full compliance with Greenlandic authorities.” Price added: “We will use this time to refine our plans and deepen relationships with local communities, strategic partners and relevant authorities.” Since a rich friend put the idea of acquiring Greenland in Trump’s head during his first term, the president has threatened to do so by buying it from Denmark, seizing it with military force or cutting a deal. Shareholders in Greenland Energy had been hoping for a “Trump pump”, a presidential endorsement that could send the New York-listed stock rocketing. But on Wednesday the price fell by more than a third after the drilling delay was announced. Price had said a ship bringing 300 containers of drilling kit would set sail from Canada for Greenland in September, with a first well to be sunk the following month. He told a community meeting – falsely – that Greenland had granted permission for the company to start landing equipment. Greenland Energy’s British partner 80 Mile said in an update for investors on Wednesday that the delay was due to the need to “complete the permitting and regulatory approval process”. 80 Mile holds exploration licences granted before Greenland stopped issuing them in 2021, citing the climate crisis. Greenland Energy, formed last year, has announced plans to spend $60m (£44m) raised from investors to fund drilling in exchange for a majority stake in the project. Its representatives have said its oil venture is “not related to American annexation”, yet the company has established multiple connections to the Trump administration. Phil McGraw, better known as the chatshow host Dr Phil, has a deal with Greenland Energy to “capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters” for a documentary series to be broadcast on television and social media. He recently appeared in the Oval Office alongside Trump, having served on the president’s religious freedom commission. A US navy veteran who is working on Golden Dome, the missile defence plan for which Trump says controlling Greenland is “vital”, sits on Greenland Energy’s board. And Kenneth Griffin, a Wall Street billionaire who gave $1m towards Trump’s second inauguration, bought 9% of Greenland Energy’s shares in April. Rod McIllree, 80 Mile’s boss, said: “While we are disappointed that the timing of the Jameson drilling programme has been impacted, the company remains fully committed to advancing this highly prospective project.”

Zhu Rongji obituary

Zhu Rongji, who has died aged 97, was the fifth premier of the People’s Republic of China and one of its most effective administrators and economic reformers following its foundation in 1949. In 1991, Zhu was summoned to Beijing, in the footsteps of the then president and party secretary Jiang Zemin, and in the aftermath of the 1989 uprisings in Beijing and the collapse of the Soviet Union. As vice premier in the state council, and governor of the People’s Bank of China (1993-95), Zhu was put in charge of China’s economy at a time of immense turbulence, with many fearing that the country would once more turn inward as it had under Mao Zedong. Zhu implemented contentious and tough reforms to straighten out the highly inefficient state-owned sector, and to modernise China’s infrastructure. By the end of the decade, Zhu could rightly declare that the country had become “the factory of the world”, a status that in many ways it maintains. A straight-talking and forceful figure, he was famously harsh on corruption, once sacking a governor of Heilongjiang province on the spot for failing to meet growth targets. This laid the foundation for his popularity within China generally, and the high regard with which he was held abroad. He seemed to come close to the ideal image of a Chinese leader possessed of moral dignity. Alone among high-level politicians of his period, he attempted to reach out to the population at large, and speak to them as an equal. Nor was he willing to stand on ceremony. As he stated in 1998: “I have prepared 100 coffins here – 99 for corrupt officials and one for myself,” according to the party newspaper People’s Daily. This gained him the nickname of “the Boss”. His most significant achievement as premier was to secure China’s entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO). What had begun in 1986 as negotiations over entry into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Taxes (Gatt), had spanned out over a decade, involving an epic series of agreements with both the EU, the US and dozens of other countries. In 1999, the deal with the US, which was the most contentious and important, was almost completed. Zhu was on a visit to Washington, expecting to sign this off, but it was pulled by President Bill Clinton at the time because of domestic problems following the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Aiming some of his famous sharpness and temper at the Americans, Zhu reportedly told his officials that he was in awe of Washington’s incompetence and lack of foresight. The final deal was signed in 2001. It can be seen as a watershed moment in China’s attempts to modernise, and to internationalise its economy, with strong growth and a doubling of the Chinese economy over the next five years. Zhu retired after one term in power, in 2003, and was replaced by his protege, Wen Jiabao. For all the successes of his time in power, these did not come as easy gifts. In the 1990s, the state sector, which comprised most of the key enterprises, was riddled with debt, inefficiency and poor management. To address this, the whole social welfare and public sector framework had to be changed. Up to 60 million workers were laid off, some of them never employed again. Unrest was a striking feature of this period, with one commentator calling it a period of “ferment”. Even WTO entry offered no panacea, with the agricultural and manufacturing sector going through painful adjustments. Zhu was an obstinate and hard-eyed man: he had to be, to deal with the issues he faced. Much of this toughness came from his early years. Born in Changsha, the capital of the central Hunan province – Mao’s home province, too – Zu was orphaned when young and brought up by two of his father’s brothers. He enjoyed a typically technocratic education, joined the Communist party in 1949, and graduated in electrical engineering from the elite Qinghua University in Beijing in 1951. His career through the 50s and into the 70s was rocky. He worked largely in the state development and planning commission (in charge of national implementation of the various five year plans), as an engineer, dealing with the typical duties of resource allocation in a command economy. But his criticism of what he saw as the inefficiency of Maoist policies during the infamous Hundred Flowers campaign of 1956-57, where intellectuals and officials were invited to offer their opinions on the party, led to his being branded a “rightist” and sent to the countryside to be a teacher. His rehabilitation back into the central government in 1962 was short lived. Once branded with the stigma of being politically unreliable in Maoist China, suspects were never fully rehabilitated. In 1969, in the depths of the Cultural Revolution, which Mao started to wage war against what he called “bureaucratism and capitalist tendencies” in the CCP, Zhu was once more sent to one of what were euphemistically called “7 May schools” named after the central decree that had set thousands of them up across the country. In effect, they were mini-concentration camps. There he languished until 1975, when he was sent to Beijing for a third time to work at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as an economist. A spell from 1979 to 1982 in the state economic commission, at the start of what has come to be known as the reform and opening up period, led to him being appointed as a vice minister. This marked his full transition from engineering to economics. It was as an economist that he was to have the greatest impact on China in the years ahead. Zhu’s first step towards national and international prominence came in 1987, when he replaced Jiang Zemin as mayor of Shanghai. Shanghai was then at the dawn of its extraordinary growth, starting to build a foundation as the commercial centre of China, a position it had ironically enjoyed before the revolution, in the 20s and 30s. He was instrumental in making the city one of the special economic zones, in 1990, joining places such as Shenzhen, adjoining Hong Kong, and Xiamen, on the coast facing Taiwan. He also steered the city successfully through the trauma following the 4 June massacres in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in 1989. Shanghai was largely to avoid the turbulence and recriminations that this event led to elsewhere. Zhu was frequently called the “Gorbachev of China”, though it was an epithet he disliked. Despite his suffering in the past, he remained resolutely committed to the Communist party and its continuation in power, and his economic reforms were targeted at ensuring that this happened. He did not propose, or support, political reforms, and regarded Mikhail Gorbachev with something approaching contempt, for the way in which his policies had effectively led to the fall of the Soviet Communist party, and the break up of the USSR. Zhu’s fundamental objective, which he achieved, was to ensure that the PRC remained stable, and that it continued to deliver economic growth. He spent his retirement largely uninvolved in politics, appearing only from time to time at high-level party congresses, the last of which was in 2017. The last image of him appeared while he was in hospital in 2020. There is no record of what he made of the leadership of Xi Jinping, or of whether he shared the view that, after Mao and Deng Xiaoping, he was the person who had contributed most to China’s current economic success. He is survived by his wife, Lao An, a retired business executive, and a son and a daughter. • Zhu Rongji, politician and economist, born 23 October 1928; died 12 August 2026

Breakfast, lunch and natmad in Denmark – Scandinavian mealtimes explained | Letters

Confusion over the names of mealtimes (Letters, 2 August) also reigns in Scandinavia. Breakfast in Norway/Sweden is frokost/frukost, but morgenmad (morning food) in Denmark. Lunch in Norway/Sweden is lunsj/lunch, but frokost in Denmark. At least they can all agree on the main meal of the day, which is middag (midday/noon) but served in the early evening. If attending a wedding party or function in Denmark, don’t be surprised to be served natmad (night food) around midnight. It is used as a friendly indication that the event has come to an end, hence its colloquial name of skrub af mad (fuck-off food). Gary Calder Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire • On the Titanic, dinner for first- and second-class passengers was the meal served in the evening. For third-class passengers the meal called dinner was served in the middle of the day; later in the day they had tea and supper. Interestingly, there was no iceberg lettuce on the menus. Dr Paul Brown West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.