A Banquet of Unpalatable Choices

Correspondents tell their stories: Mark Mardell in Washington on difficult decisions for President Obama: Charles Haviland, off for dinner with the departing president of Pakistan, ponders over the milk pudding on the legacy Asif Ali Zardari leaves behind; a different perspective on the state of Chinese justice comes from John Sudworth, who was covering the trial in Jinan of ousted politician Bo Xilai; as immigration tops the election headlines in Australia, Jon Donnison tells the story of a refugee who made it from the civil war in Syria to the offices of a women's magazine in Sydney and Nick Thorpe's unearthed the reason why, somewhere in the dry Hungarian soil, the heart of Suleiman the Magnificent is beating a little faster. From Our Own Correspondent is produced by Tony Grant.