Read the daily news to learn English

‘The end of the road’: the man on a mission to take Barcelona back from overtourism

After decades of relentlessly marketing their vibrant Mediterranean city, the Barcelona authorities have appointed a man on a mission to say “no more” – and, he says, to return its most iconic market back to local residents. Last year, the Barcelona area last year attracted 26 million visitors, up 2.4% on 2024. The appointment of José Antonio Donaire as the city’s first commissioner for sustainable tourism represents a significant change of heart and a shift away from viewing tourism as an unalloyed good to believing it is alienating citizens and eroding the Catalan capital’s identity. “We’ve reached the end of the road, Barcelona has reached the maximum number of tourists it can accommodate,” he says. “We don’t want more tourists, not even one more, but we need to manage those we have.” It could take some time to feel the impact of the changes Donaire proposes, not least because, whatever the city’s intentions, other actors, many of them beyond its control – such as the port, the airport, airlines, hoteliers and the big-is-better travel industry – may not be on the same page. But there is no doubting his sincerity and ambition, which even extends to rescuing Barcelona’s famous La Boquería market, emblematic of the worst of what mass tourism has wrought on the city’s identity. La Boquería, once a haven for chefs and foodies but for years a no-go area for most of Barcelona’s residents, will, he says, return to being a market that sells fresh food rather than takeaway snacks, which will be banned with the consent of the majority of stall holders. “Within a year you’ll see the new Boquería,” Donaire says. The city’s attempt to curb visitor numbers began in 2017 with a moratorium on building new hotels in central Barcelona, but that was largely undermined by the rapid surge in short-let tourist apartments listed on sites such as Airbnb. In 2028, Barcelona’s 10,000 legal tourist apartments will have their licences revoked and it is hoped by the city council that the majority of these properties find their way back on to the rental market and alleviate the city’s housing crisis. Donaire accepts this has not been the case in New York City – which in effect banned tourist apartments in 2022 without any subsequent increase in rentals – but says Barcelona has plans to incentivise landlords to put property back on the market. “At the moment the housing stock is growing by 2,000 homes a year,” he says. “If we can get those 10,000 tourist apartments on the residential market, it’s the equivalent of five years’ growth.” Donaire, an eloquent man with a penchant for tartan waistcoats who came to the job with a professorship at the University of Girona and as director of its tourism research institute, says the new policies are not aimed so much at reducing numbers as changing the profile and behaviour of visitors. About 65% of visitors are classified as “leisure tourists” while the rest are either in Barcelona for conferences, or are what Donaire describes as “cultural visitors” who come for the museums, architecture and music festivals. He says the aim is to reduce the number of leisure tourists to arrive at an equal three-way split between them, culture visitors and people coming on business. Other measures include reducing the number of cruise ship berths from seven to five: the city though will still receive upwards of three million cruise passengers each year. These visitors spend little when they’re ashore and, as Donaire puts it, “create more problems than benefits”. Another group that will not be affected by restrictions on city centre hotels and tourist lets are the seven million annual day trippers, most of whom arrive by coach. Barcelona has increased parking fees and forced coaches to park on the periphery of the city in an effort to reduce numbers. About half of tourists in Barcelona are repeat visitors who will have already seen the main sites and Donaire plans to encourage this group to make day trips out of the city or to visit areas such as Montjuïc, a large park that is home to several museums but scarcely any residents. “What we don’t want is to encourage tourism in areas that aren’t prepared for it and where it will create problems,” he says. Barcelona is also – and not for the first time – clamping down on various forms of antisocial behaviour, including a ban on organised pub crawls. “We’re not interested in this type of tourism and we want it to disappear,” says Donaire. It furthermore plans to invest a portion of the recently increased tourist tax into the city centre to increase local commerce in an area where retails is dominated by convenience stores, souvenir and cannabis shops. Such proposals will no doubt be received with some scepticism, especially as the quality over quantity – although those were not Donaire’s his words – is not a new refrain, but he and his backers hope that after 30 years of tourist boom the balance may be tipped back in favour of Barcelona’s residents. “Many citizens feel the city centre no longer belongs to them,” Donaire says. Can he be the man to give it back to them?

Xi Jinping prepares to welcome Vladimir Putin to China, four days after hosting Donald Trump

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin exchanged “congratulatory letters” on Sunday ahead of the Russian president’s visit to Beijing this week, four days since Donald Trump left China after a high-stakes summit. Xi, China’s leader, said bilateral cooperation between Russia and China had “continuously deepened and solidified”, with this year marking the 30th anniversary of the two countries’ strategic partnership, according to Chinese state media. Putin’s visit to Beijing is scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday. An article published in state media tabloid the Global Times on Monday said the visits of the US and Russian presidents showed Beijing was “fast emerging as the focal point of global diplomacy”. “The tightly sequenced visits have sparked widespread attention, with analysts noting that it is extremely rare in the post-cold war era for a country to host the leaders of the US and Russia back-to-back within a week,” the Global Times said. China’s deepened relationship with Russia has been a cause for concern in the west, particularly since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. China’s economic and diplomatic support for Russia since then has helped to sustain the conflict, according to western diplomats and analysts. The two men have met on more than 40 occasions, far outstripping Xi’s encounters with western leaders. China and Russia’s bilateral trade has soared to record levels since 2022, with China purchasing more than one-quarter of Russia’s exports. China’s large purchases of Russian crude oil have supplied Moscow with hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue for the war in Ukraine. Beijing has bought more than $367bn of Russian fossil fuels since the start of the full-scale invasion, according to data collected by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The purchases have supported China’s energy security, which has become especially important since the crisis in the Middle East stopped the shipping of oil through the strait of Hormuz. Neither the war in Ukraine, nor the Sino-Russian relationship, appeared to feature heavily in Trump’s talks with Xi last week. The Chinese statement about the main bilateral meeting made a brief reference to “the Ukraine crisis” while the US statement did not mention it at all. Instead, the US-China talks appeared to focus on trade, Taiwan, and the war in the Middle East, with Trump saying China agreed with him on the importance of reopening the strait of Hormuz. Xi also pressed Trump on Taiwan, warning him of the potential for conflict if the issue was not handled properly. Trump left Beijing saying that he had not decided whether to approve a multi-billion dollar deal of US weapons to Taiwan. Halting the sale would be a major win for Beijing, which seeks to take control of the self-governing island, something the majority of Taiwanese oppose. Joseph Webster, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said in a newsletter that “Taiwan may be the subtext of the Xi-Putin meeting”. Webster said Beijing may be looking to sign more fossil fuel deals with Moscow to ensure its supplies of energy in the event of a future conflict. Expanding Russian oil pipeline capacity to China “would significantly enhance Beijing’s oil security in a Taiwan contingency”, Webster wrote. Russia has been pushing China to move forward with the “Power of Siberia 2” gas pipeline that would add 50bn cubic metres of capacity to the existing network between the two countries. Additional research by Yu-chen Li

Ukraine war briefing: The drones that bombarded Moscow region

The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces has reeled off a list of Ukrainian aerial weaponry used to destroy targets in the Moscow region over the weekend, including the RS-1 “Bars” jet-powered UAV, the Firepoint FP-1 winged drone, and a drone previously unknown to observers and analysts, dubbed the Bars-SM Gladiator. Ukraine’s SBU security service highlighted a strike on the Angstrom plant in Zelenograd, Moscow region, Russia, which “specialises in the production of hi-tech products and microcircuits for high-precision weapons … A fire was recorded on the territory of the facility. The enterprise is an important component of the Russian military-industrial complex and is involved in the production of microelectronics, radio electronics, optical systems, and robotics for the enemy’s military needs.” The SBU continued: “Also in the Moscow region, the Solnechnogorskaya pumping station was hit, which is a critical part of the ring oil pipeline around Moscow and is used for pumping, storing and shipping large volumes of gasoline and diesel fuel, in particular for the Russian army. A fire was reported on the premises.” The strikes “reduce the enemy’s ability to continue its war”, said the SBU. Russian authorities said at least four people were killed and a dozen more wounded, and reported several hits as being from “drone debris” – as they frequently do to imply that drones were shot down by Russian defences instead of striking their intended targets. Early on Monday, the Russian defence ministry sought to emphasise the role of its air defences, claiming 3,124 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the past week. Agence France-Presse said its journalists were granted access to an undisclosed location where Ukraine launched its long-range drones in what turned out to be one of the largest pummellings of Russia during the conflict. They described how battalion members prepared plane-like drones before they took off towards Russia, leaving trails of sparks and flames from their rocket boosters behind. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said taking the war to Moscow was “entirely justified”. In his nightly address, Ukraine’s president said that on Sunday, Ukrainian troops’ combat operations on the battlefield outnumbered Russian ones – “a very significant result”. “Much has been accomplished this year, and a shift in the balance of activity on the frontlines is noticeable.” Within Ukraine, the SBU said, a Russian command post in the Bunge area of Donetsk region and enemy UAV control points were hit in the Dvorichnaya area of Kharkiv region, Zavitne in Kherson region, and Udachne in Donetsk region. “In addition, Ukrainian soldiers struck enemy manpower concentrations in the areas of Myrne, Donetsk region, Krasnohirsk, Zaporizhzhia region, Volfinsky, Kursk region of the Russian Federation, as well as two concentrations of occupiers in the Novoekonomichesky district of the Donetsk region.” Over Sunday night, Russia again attacked Ukraine with drones and missiles, targeting the southern city of Odesa as well as Dnipro in the south-east, Ukrainian officials said. In Odesa, drones hit residential buildings along with a school and a kindergarten, injuring an 11-year old boy and a 59-year-old man, said Serhiy Lysak, the head of the local military administration. In Dnipro, three people were injured in a missile attack, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. Earlier, in the Zaporizhzhia region, a car was hit in a Russian attack, injuring a woman and a man. In Kherson region, the regional prosecutor’s office said a drone dropped explosives on a home, killing a man, while eight civilians were injured in attacks on regional cities and towns. A suspected Ukrainian military drone was found crashed in Lithuania on Sunday, the Lithuanian government’s crisis management centre said. The drone was not detected when it entered Lithuania, and was not armed with explosives, said the chief of the centre, Vilmantas Vitkauskas. The drone was found crashed at the village of Samane, the centre said, 40km from the Latvian border and 55km from Belarus. Kyiv was yet to comment. Separately, the Latvian army said a drone alert was issued on Sunday morning along its border with Russia, and Nato military fighters were summoned to the area. One drone entered Latvia for a short time during the alert, the army said. Since March, several stray Ukrainian drones have entered the airspace of Nato members Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia which border Russia and its ally Belarus. Kyiv has insisted the drones were aimed at military targets in Russia but sent off course by Russian countermeasures. The Latvian prime minister, Evika Silina, fired her defence minister after one incident, leading to the fall of her government. The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces has defended Ukraine’s long-range attacks into Russia. In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Robert Brovdi, known as “Madyar”, said: “The sources of funding for Putin’s war expenses … have become legitimate and priority military targets in any area, in any part of the territory of the occupying country, whether we are talking about the south, the Urals, or Siberia.” The interview was given before Ukraine on the weekend launched its wave of more than 600 drones into Russia.

At least four people killed in Russia as Ukraine launches retaliatory strikes

One of Ukraine’s largest ever drone strikes against Russia’s regions, including Moscow, has killed at least four people and wounded a dozen more, the Russian authorities have said. The wave of almost 600 Ukrainian drones struck overnight across 14 Russian regions, as well as the Crimean peninsula and the Black and Azov seas, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday, with the area around the capital among the worst-hit. Three people were killed in the Moscow region and one in the Belgorod region, the authorities said, as Russian air defences shot down 556 drones overnight and neutralised another 30 after dawn. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, confirmed the strikes, saying drones had flown more than 500km (310 miles) from Ukrainian territory and that Ukraine was “overcoming” Russian air defence systems concentrated in and around Moscow. “Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified,” he said, adding that the strikes on Moscow showed Kyiv was “clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war”. Zelenskyy said last week that more drone strikes would be launched in retaliation for a deadly three-day Russian attack across Ukraine that killed more than 20 people and injured about 50 others. Russia has repeatedly launched similar attacks on Ukraine’s capital and other cities during the war. Moscow’s regional governor, Andrei Vorobyov, said a woman had been killed when a home was hit in Khimki, north of Moscow, in what he described as a “massive” strike on the region, which surrounds but does not include the capital. Vorobyov said rescuers were still searching the debris for another person. Two men had also been killed in the village of Pogorelki, six miles north of Moscow, after drone debris fell on a construction site, he added, and several residential high-rises and “infrastructure facilities” were damaged. “Since 3am this morning, air defence forces have been repelling a large-scale UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] attack on the capital region,” Vorobyov said, adding that four people had also been wounded. India’s embassy in Moscow said one of its nationals was among the dead. In the capital itself, air defence systems intercepted more than 80 drones overnight, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, posted on social media. Twelve people were wounded and “minor damage” was recorded where the debris fell, he said. One of the strikes wounded construction workers and damaged three houses at a site near Moscow’s oil and gas refinery, Sobyanin said, adding that refinery production had not been disrupted and the “technology” of the refinery had not been affected. Ukraine’s SBU security service said an oil refinery and two pumping stations had been hit around Moscow. The strikes “reduce the enemy’s ability to continue its war”, it said, and showed “even the heavily protected Moscow region is not safe”. Russia’s largest airport – Sheremetyevo in Moscow – said drone debris had fallen inside its perimeter without causing any damage. The Moscow region is often attacked by drones but the city itself, about 250 miles from the border with Ukraine, is less frequently targeted. In Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, one man was killed in a drone attack on a lorry, the authorities said. Russia, whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, launched more than 1,500 drones and dozens of missiles in the consecutive waves of attacks across Ukraine on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Ukrainian officials said. A cruise missile hit a nine-storey apartment block in Kyiv on Thursday, killing 24 people, including three children. Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday it had intercepted a further 279 Russian drones overnight, out of a total of 287 launched. Moscow and Kyiv have returned to trading attacks since the end last Tuesday of a three-day truce – which both sides accused the other of violating – to mark the anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in the second world war. Diplomatic efforts to end the four-year-old conflict are at a standstill, with Kyiv unwilling to accept Moscow’s maximalist demands for territory in the eastern Donbas region and US attention turned to the US-Israeli war against Iran. Later on Sunday, a suspected Ukrainian military drone was found crashed in Lithuania, the Lithuanian government’s national crisis management centre said. The drone entered Lithuania undetected and was not armed with explosives, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, the chief of the centre, told reporters. It was found crashed at the village of Samane, 40km (25 miles) from the Latvian border and 55 kilometres from Belarus. Kyiv has not commented. Separately, the Latvian army said a drone alert was issued on Sunday morning along its border with Russia, and Nato military fighters on a Baltic air police mission were summoned to the area. One drone entered Latvia for a short time during the alert, the army said. Since March, several stray Ukrainian drones have entered the airspace of Nato members Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which border Russia and its ally Belarus. Kyiv consistently said the stray drones were launched to strike military targets in Russia, but confused by Russian interference. Some of the drones crashed and exploded, including two drones that hit and caused fire at a Latvian oil storage facility on 7 May. The Latvian prime minister, , fired her defence minister after the incident, which then led to the fall of her government on 14 May. With Agence France-Presse and Reuters

UAE blames Iran or proxies for strike near nuclear plant, as Trump tells Tehran ‘clock is ticking’

The United Arab Emirates has blamed a fire near its nuclear power plant on a drone launched by Iran or one of its proxies in what the UAE called a “dangerous escalation”. The fire was just outside the Barakah nuclear plant and caused no injuries or radiation alerts, with the emirate’s nuclear regulator saying there was no radioactive leak or risk to the public. But it came at an extremely tense moment in the sixth week of a ceasefire in the Iran war, with peace talks stalled and Donald Trump voicing impatience at the deadlock. “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” the US president wrote on his Truth Social site. According to Axios, Trump met national security advisers on Saturday at his golf course in Virginia and is due to meet his national security team on Tuesday to discuss options. Trump also spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu before an Israeli security cabinet meeting to discuss Iran, Lebanon and Gaza, amid widespread speculation in Israel that the Iran war will restart in the absence of signs of compromise. According to state media, the UAE foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, held talks with other states in the region, including Saudi Arabia with which it has had a strained relationship recently. Riyadh condemned the attack. The minister also informed the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, of the details of the drone strike. He told Grossi that his country had the full right to respond to such “terrorist attacks”. The IAEA said in a social media post that Grossi expressed “grave concern about the incident and says military activity that threatens nuclear safety is unacceptable”. The UAE is reported to have retaliated for earlier Iranian attacks on its oil infrastructure with airstrikes on Iranian facilities. It has tightened its partnership with Israel over the course of the war and has been the most hawkish of the Gulf states over military action against Iran. The UAE’s defence ministry said the drone that targeted the Barakah plant was one of three that “entered the country from the western border direction”. It said the unmanned aircraft had hit “an electrical generator outside the inner perimeter of the Barakah nuclear power plant in the Al Dhafra area”. “Investigations are ongoing to determine the source of the attacks, and updates will be disclosed upon completion of the investigations,” the ministry added. Anwar Gargash, an Emirati presidential adviser, made clear that he believed Iran or a regional proxy were the perpetrators. “The terrorist targeting of the Barakah clean nuclear power plant, whether carried out by the principal perpetrator or through one of its agents, represents a dangerous escalation,” Gargash wrote on X. Gargash called the incident “a dark scene that violates all international laws and norms”, and accused those responsible of having a disregard for civilian lives.

What is Ebola and why is WHO treating outbreak as global health emergency?

Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda are trying to contain an outbreak of Ebola involving – so far – 246 suspected cases and 88 deaths. It began in Ituri province, in eastern DRC, but cases have already been detected elsewhere in the country and in neighbouring Uganda. On Sunday, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern” and urged robust efforts to limit its spread. What is Ebola? Ebola is a highly contagious and often fatal disease. Caused by different viruses mostly associated with fruit bats, the infection often results in viral haemorrhagic fever. More than 40 outbreaks have been documented since it first emerged in 1976. This is the 17th outbreak in the DRC. Outbreaks result from “zoonotic spillover” – animal to human transmission. Infected humans then pass on the disease to others through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood and semen. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, muscle pain and headache followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash and internal and external bleeding. It has a 50% death rate. There are four types or strains of Ebola that affect humans: Zaire, Sudan, Bundibugyo and Tai Forest. The WHO says the latest outbreak involves the Bundibugyo virus. There have only been two previous outbreaks involving this strain, in 2007 and 2012. Why is this outbreak causing such concern? Because the strain of Ebola involved is rare, there is no vaccine for it, and conflict in the DRC makes efforts to contains its spread difficult. Dr Simon Williams, an infectious diseases expert at Swansea University, says: “This outbreak is more worrying than others because … the existing Ebola outbreak vaccine, the Ervebo vaccine, is not appropriate. There are no Bundibugyo virus-specific therapeutics or vaccines. “And it’s a nasty disease with a very high case fatality rate; much higher than Covid, for example. Fortunately, Ebola is much less transmissible than Covid or, say, measles. But it is much more severe and can be fatal to anyone, not just the elderly or immunosuppressed or other higher-risk groups.” When no vaccine is available, infection control usually involves bringing those affected into treatment centres to minimise transmission. That may be very difficult in this case because of the conflict and the targeting of healthcare facilities, says Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia. He says: “In the past healthcare facilities have been targetted by militias and this is one reason why [affected individuals] may choose not to seek care, so pose an ongoing risk to family and other contacts.” Why was the outbreak not detected sooner and how could that delay affect what happens? The outbreak began last month. The earliest-known suspected victim, a 59-year-old man, developed symptoms on 24 April and died three days later. Health authorities were only alerted to the outbreak through social media on 5 May. Fifty people had already died by then, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Slow detection gave the outbreak time to spread, says Dr Jean Kaseya, the director general of the Africa CDC. Any delay in responding to an Ebola outbreak “can have catastrophic consequences”, says Dr Anne Cori, an associate professor in infectious disease modelling at Imperial College London. The large numbers of detected cases and deaths “suggests an unusually high number of suspected cases were identified before the outbreak was officially declared”, she adds. “This indicates that the outbreak has likely gone undetected for several weeks or even months, which can make standard control measures, such as contact tracing, considerably more difficult to implement effectively, especially in a setting which already faces other challenges such as conflict.” How big could this outbreak get? A lot bigger, potentially. While it began in Ituri, two confirmed cases have also been found in neighbouring Uganda – both of the infected individuals had travelled there from the DRC. One of them died at a hospital in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. The WHO fears that the high proportion of positive cases found among those who have been tested, combined with the spread to Kampala and the deaths in Ituri, “all point towards a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected and reported, with significant local and regional risk of spread”. “There are significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time, it has said.

The UAE must be held responsible for its part in Sudan’s crisis | Letters

Nesrine Malik’s article is timely, highlighting how evidence of the United Arab Emirates’ complicity in Sudan’s war has begun to prompt calls for action to be taken (The UAE tries hard to keep its reputation spotless. But with the war in Sudan, how can it?, 13 May). What is now needed is a concerted international response. The UN and African fact-finding bodies have to date largely focused on the responsibility of Sudan’s warring parties for international law violations committed. It is time to complement this focus, by documenting and investigating the UAE’s involvement in the war with a view to establishing possible state and individual responsibility. This ranges from a failure to prevent both genocide in Darfur and international humanitarian law violations across the country to liability for the commission of international crimes. Such an inquiry ought not to be confined to the UAE. Multiple reports have pointed to the involvement of several states in the region and beyond in support of both sides, which has fuelled the war, particularly drone warfare. Foreign businesses and other actors have also reportedly been pivotal in sustaining and benefiting from Sudan’s war economy. Having an official report documenting violations by external actors might spur states and others into adopting overdue measures in response. It might also influence the political calculus of influential states such as the UAE which have not faced any accountability to date. If that were to happen, diminished support for and pressure on the warring parties might well raise the prospects for an end to the fighting in Sudan. In turn, this would bring into focus who should provide reparations to the victims of the war and pay for the reconstruction of the country. Sudan’s people have a right to freedom, peace and justice. This entails an end to the interference with their rights, be it from within or outside their country. Dr Lutz Oette Professor of international human rights law, Soas University of London • Nesrine Malik rightly draws attention to the fact that “successive British governments have studiously looked away from one of the primary sponsors of the Sudan calamity”, that is to say the United Arab Emirates, which, despite its repeated denials, has long supported the Rapid Support Forces with money, weapons and mercenaries. It is now nearly two years since the Guardian reported on claims that the Foreign Office was actively trying to suppress criticism of the UAE, even as the RSF was besieging the city of El Fasher in Darfur (UK ‘tried to suppress criticism’ of alleged UAE role in arming Sudan’s RSF militia, 24 June). This too was denied. The UK is the designated UN security council “penholder” for Sudan, and also for the UN’s women, peace and security file, and must do more if this devastating war is to be brought to an end. I am a trustee of a UK charity, Women’s Education Partnership, which enables disadvantaged women and girls in Sudan and South Sudan to access education. Since the war started, we have not had local staff on the ground, and the students are now displaced, trying to follow their degree courses online. Some are too traumatised to study; others have disappeared from contact lists. Most, however, are persevering despite three years of war. Sudanese women played a major role in the inspiring revolution of 2018-19. Let us hope that they will be able to flourish when peace eventually returns. Anna Snowdon Cambridge • 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.