Toby Harnden

Democratic candidate John Edwards's wife Elizabeth announces her cancer has spread to her bones and the result is universal sympathy and admiration for her bravery.

Get well soon, Tony

Then Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, reveals his cancer has spread to his liver. What happens next?

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Accompanied by me and two dozen other press during the first leg of their flight, to Kingston, a fraught and dejected Pakistani team left their Jamaican resort in Montego Bay on Saturday night bound for London.

The Pegasus Hotel: the scene of the crime

Here in Kingston, a bewildering multitude of theories still abound - from individuals afraid their match-fixing exploits were about to be revealed by Mr Woolmer to shady Indian betting Mr Bigs checking into the Pegasus Hotel on the night he was murdered. So what do we know so far?

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It was murder. I have just come out of an extraordinary press conference here in the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, when it was announced that Bob Woolmer, the Pakistan cricket coach, died of "asphyxia due to manual strangulation".

Detectives are investigating Bob Woolmer's murder

So who throttled the former England all-rounder in room 374 on floor 12 of the Pegasus Hotel? And why? This is a highly unusual and mysterious case. But already there are a few clues about the way it was carried out that support some theories and all but discount others.

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Is this the future of US election campaigns? Call it "Big Sister". A guerilla YouTube attack ad that portrays a droning Hillary Clinton and shows an athlete wearing a Barack Obama logo smashing an image of her is creating a huge blogosphere buzz.

Could the Big Sister ad sink Hillary's chances?

No one (yet) knows who created the video, based on Ridley Scott's famous 1984 Apple spot for Macintosh. Team Obama is delighted but says the equating of a Hillary presidency with George Orwell's nightmare vision of "1984" is nothing to do with them.

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Well, I did survive without email and blogs for nine days. But my Inbox wasn't pretty when I came back. And it was harder than I thought to avoid news entirely - even on the remotest Caribbean islands.

I only used the internet once!

One benefit of the maelstrom of technology we get caught up in every day is that when - if - you can escape it then the sensation is even more blissful. It made me more determined to use technology as a tool rather than allowing it to enslave me.

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Today begins an experiment. I'm leaving my laptop and BlackBerry at home. My email accounts are set to Out of Office Auto Reply. I'm not going to touch a computer or watch television for nine whole days and nights. I promise.

The BlackBerry is staying at home

There's a message on my mobile saying don't bother to leave a voicemail because I won't be checking for them. The Telegraph foreign desk has our hotel telephone numbers but has vowed only to contact me in the direst of emergencies.

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Looks like Chuck Hagel, the vitriolically anti-war Republican senator who was wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam, will declare a run for the White House on Monday.

War - what is it good for? Chuck Hagel (left) tales a stand

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A fortnight before he launched his 2008 White House bid, Senator Barack Obama moved to expunge crimes he had committed as a Harvard student. No doubt fearing a big scandal, he paid the money and hoped for silence.

Obama's been a bad, bad boy

But now the extent of those crimes has been revealed. They number 17 in all, and that's not including additional offences deriving from not taking responsibility for the crimes for nearly two decades. Yes, he showed a callous disregard for the law.

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Lewis "Scooter" Libby will not go to jail. And neither should he. The first statement is based on my hunch that the appeal process will be spun out and President Bush will pardon him. The second is my judgment based on the context and significance of the crime he was convicted of.

Lewis "Scooter" Libby leaves court yesterday

In the breathless political and media reaction to yesterday's verdicts, all sense of proportion and reason has disappeared. Senator Harry Reid, Democratic Majority Leader" said the case proved that the White House tried to "manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics". Rubbish.

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Apologies for the post title, but that's a sample of American political debate at the moment. First, the bomb-throwing Ann Coulter calls a (heterosexual) Democrat a "faggot". Then TV host Bill Maher regrets a suicide bomber didn't get Dick Cheney.

Ann Coulter: disgusting 'at best'

So did Right-wing Coulter's comments or Leftie Maher's remarks provoke the greatest opprobrium? No prizes for the correct answer.

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Sitting in the First Baptist Church in Selma yesterday, I was surprised to hear Hillary Clinton contend that the struggle for black voting rights had given her the chance to run for president in 2008.

Hillary was outshone in Selma

Excuse me if I refer back to the history but I doubt that the civil rights heroes who marched across Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965 were risking their lives so that white middle-class women from Chicago could run for the White House.

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Not convinced that she alone can steal Barack Obama's thunder in Selma, Alabama on Sunday, Hillary Clinton is deploying what her campaign staff view as her biggest asset: Bill.

Will Bill steal the limelight from Hillary?

The couple will be together publicly for the first time in her presidential campaign in Selma - where I am writing this from - on Sunday.

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Mitt Romney reckons he has found the secret of success - stick it to the Frogs.

Is Mitt Romney onto something?

In a PowerPoint presentation compiled by his campaign staff and inevitably leaked, all his weaknesses are listed along with useful "enemies" such as "France" and "Hillary Clinton".

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