Democrats divided

The US Democrat Senator Chuck Robb, badly damaged by allegations about his sex life when he was governor of Virginia in the early 1980s, won the state's Democratic party primary with 58 per cent of the vote but on a low turn-out, writes Patrick Cockburn in Washington.

But his chances of re-election as Senator in November were damaged by the former Democrat governor Douglas Wilder bolting his party to file as an independent candidate.