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This week, as the leading opposition figure in Russia, Alexei Navalny, lies comatose in Berlin\\u2019s Charit\\xe9 hospital, Sarah Rainsford in Moscow considers the Kremlin\\u2019s peculiar hate and fear of its critics and the methods it is widely thought to have employed in dealing with them.

Gabriel Gatehouse in Beirut observes the sharp generational divide that characterises post-civil war Lebanon \\u2013 and wonders what it might portend for the country's future.

North America Correspondent, Jane O\\u2019Brien, checks in to the \\u201cvirtual\\u201d Republican party convention centred on the White House and detects a new confidence and a different style in the Trump \\u2013 and Republican \\u2013 campaigns for November\\u2019s US elections. What explains the shift?

Sebastien Ash in the Swabian town of Heidenheim, southern Germany, reveals the significance of a face-off of statues linked to the so-called \\u201cDesert Fox\\u201d \\u2013 Erwin Rommel, the well-known general of the Nazi era, noted for his role in World War Two\\u2019s North Africa campaign.

And Christine Finn takes the plunge on the Paris-plages \\u2013 and discovers that the fellow-bathers at the pools at and near the river Seine whom she encounters give a contemporary twist to the national motto of liberty, equality and fraternity \\u2013 although not perhaps in quite the way we might expect.