For the record

Our piece on a gunman who took a female soldier hostage at Orly airport before being shot dead by her comrades said the soldiers were “part of the Sentinelle special forces, an elite military group installed around France to protect sensitive sites”. This was incorrect. Sentinelle is not a special force or an elite military group; it is an operation in which personnel are rotated throughout from the French army, navy and air force (“French investigate airport death of ‘radicalised Muslim’ who shot at police officer”, World news, last week, page 23).

Montgomery, not Birmingham, is the state capital of Alabama – although Birmingham is its most populous city (“Alabama murder mystery could be the new Serial”, World news, last week, page 25).

Roderick Williams is a baritone, not a tenor (“BBC must now do for arts what it has done for science, says R4 culture boss” (News, last week, page 7) and Vladimir Ashkenazy was appointed guest conductor of the Philharmonia in 1981, not the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and has been the Philharmonia’s conductor Laureate since 2000 (“An artist’s life”, page 3, early editions, last week).

Write to Stephen Pritchard, Readers’ Editor, the Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, email observer.readers@observer.co.uk telephone 020 3353 4656