From Our Own Correspondent

'Politics at its most brutal, its most basic, democracy as a demolition derby.' That's Mark Mardell's view as he contemplates months of Republican infighting ahead of next year's US presidential election. The Moscow coup of twenty years ago: Bridget Kendall, who was there during that eventful August back in 1991, says it could so easily have succeeded. The smiles seem to have faded somewhat in newly-independent South Sudan but Robin Denselow, just back from the capital Juba, says they still revere their cattle. David Hargreaves has been attending a spectacular riverside religious festival in central India and Karishma Vaswani's had to call in the Indonesian witch doctor after strange goings-on at her house in Djakarta.