• We wrongly stated that the World Health Organization recommended in September 2008 that the electronic cigarette be banned (14 February, p 33). The WHO in fact stated that it did not consider the electronic cigarette to be a legitimate therapy for smokers trying to quit.
• We said that in 1709 “from Czechoslovakia in the east… everything turned to ice” (7 February, p 46). No such country existed in 1709. It was founded in 1918 and split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
• Our picture of the starfish Luidia sarsi was upside down (24 January, p 36).
