John B Keane has at least one better claim to be considered Ireland's leading dramatist over young Martin McDonagh: he was born in Kerry, not Camberwell. Mic Moroney talks to him down the line to his pub in Listowel.

While their counterparts in Trafalgar Square are basking in the sun, bathing in the fountains and filling their stomachs, pigeons in Paris are dehydrated and starving, coughing and spluttering.

Doctors are legally entitled to force- feed anorexic patients to stop them from dying, according to guidelines from the mental health watchdog.

Letter: Irish famine's legacy of bitterness

Sir: One can cut through a lot of fruitless argument about the potato famine by asking a simple question: would the government of the day have stood idly by while a million English peasants died and a further million and a half were forced into emigration? If not, there is a case to answer.

Sir: Eric Berman, Executive Director of UN Watch, is wrong to claim (letter, 25 January), regarding sanctions on Iraq, that UN Resolution 986 "permits Iraq to export $2bn of oil over 180 days on a renewable basis to pay for food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies ... "

`If you were expected to recover, you ate, if not, you were left to fade away'

Children are suffering malnutrition because of the Government's decision to cut free and cheap school meals and milk, a report will say tomorrow. The School Milk Association says the policy has resulted in ill-health and stunted growth in up to two million children.

Sir: Could I suggest that neither the Rev Paul Nicolson (letter, 28 November) nor Paul Ashton (3 December) has hit the nail on the head about malnutrition in low-income groups.

Sir: There may well be some evidence of malnutrition in Britain, as the Rev Paul Nicolson maintains (Letters, 28 November), but his suggestion that this is due to inadequate Income Support is a political, rather than a factual argument.

The face of medieval horror in a Moldovan nursery, as the West begins to rescue forgotten children. Too weak or too weary to brush the flies from her face, the child in this picture is one of thousands who face a living hell, abandoned to a waking death until cold and starvation brings premature death. Without help she will almost certainly die, together with hundreds of others suffering from mental or physical disability. England footballers who recently played a World Cup match in the former Soviet republic have pledged support for the disabled children, many of whom are starving to death this winter.

President Bill Clinton is about to deliver a stunning rebuff to international efforts to reduce hunger, even as the World Food Summit winds up in a barrage of rhetoric here today.

Reading 2 Manchester City 0

A leading charity has criticised one of Britain's most acclaimed young designers for using "crass" imagery of a starving child on his clothes.