We confused figures in the editing of a fact box accompanying a feature headlined “Can the UK lose its sweet tooth?” (News, last week, page 15). “Sugar Facts” said there were 30% more obese people in the world than undernourished people. We meant nearly 30% of the world’s population is either obese or overweight, according to a new analysis published in the Lancet on 29 May.
The chancellor is proposing to make the BBC pay a projected £650m for free TV licences for the over-75s – not, as we had it in “The Beeb is not undergoing involuntary euthanasia” (Comment, last week, page 31) – £650,000.
It seems insensitive to correct a piece about such an appalling act, but Isis fighters killed Syrian troops in a Roman theatre at the ancient site of Palmyra, not, as we said in headline and text, an amphitheatre (News, 5 July). In the classical world a theatre was roughly D-shaped, while an amphitheatre was roughly circular. The prefix “amphi” means double.
Contrary to “Frozen in time: May 1986” (Food Magazine, last week, page 54) the characters in Withnail and I played by Richard E Grant and Paul McGann were out-of-work actors, not students.
Write to Stephen Pritchard, Readers’ Editor, the Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, email observer.readers@observer.co.uk or tel 020 3353 4656
