By the time you read this, the second US presidential debate will have commenced. In a normal election cycle, one might expect that this would bring policy issues into focus or that a particularly sharp line might set one candidate apart.
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This is, to put it mildly, not a normal election cycle. At times it seems as if Donald Trump is conducting a massive experiment - how bizarre and outrageous does his behaviour have to become before he can be deemed unworthy of people's votes?
In the wake of the furore over his taped comments on women from 2005, Trump finally made good on his threat to dredge up Bill Clinton's many female accusers - what pundits have called 'the nuclear option' - presenting them at a bizarre press conference just ahead of his face-off with Hillary Clinton.
The damage that is being done to one candidate or another in all this is debatable. What is not is the continued hollowing-out not only of the Republican Party as a political institution but of faith in US democracy itself. If the divide between politics and reality television disappears - as it has over recent weeks - then not only Americans but people around the world will become the biggest losers.
Other important stories today:
- After hundreds are killed and injured by an air strike on a funeral reception in Yemen, Saudi Arabia vows to investigate the incident blamed on the military coalition it leads, but only after the US threatens to withdraw its support for the campaign
- Russia's chief diplomat, Sergei Lavrov, accuses the Obama administration of "aggressive Russophobia"
- A 48-year-old Australian man has been arrested for allegedly possessing hashish in the seaside town of Sanur in Bali's south-east.
