The crest of the swollen Mississippi River moved downstream yesterday as volunteers manned sandbagged levees and coped with the costs of the Midwest's worst flooding in 15 years. "At times like these you don't know whether to cry or laugh. But here in the Midwest we tend to favour the latter," said Charlotte Hoerr, who, with her husband Brent, farms land not far from the river in this small Missouri town.

Rising flood waters forced the evacuation of a hospital today as the American Midwest continued to suffer the effects of heavy storms.

Britain's Olympic prospects in triathlon, already promising given the fact that Tim Don topped the world rankings after his last competition, have been further enriched by the unexpected emergence of Helen Tucker as world champion.

His wife has yet to give up the fight for her party's 2008 presidential nomination, but Bill Clinton is already offering a back-up plan to ensure that the family name occupies high office in America long after his own tenure as president. What's wrong with President Chelsea Clinton, say in 2016?

Leonard Doyle experiences winter in Winterset, Iowa which is also home to some modern-day gunslingers

When it comes to campaign expenditure, the team behind Hillary Clinton's presidential bid appears to have forgotten her husband's theme song "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow".

So farewell then, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, you taught The Beatles about meditation, then used their fame to boost your business. They came home and you went on to extend your international movement with a university in Iowa and headquarters in, most recently, Amsterdam. Now you are dead, some commentators seem eager to dismiss your teachings, along with all that 1960s flower-power indulgence, as a phase of naïve childishness that seized the youth of the time and sent it in the wrong direction.

The media gleefully predicted Obama's onward march, and were left stunned when New Hampshire spoke. So, has Hillary finally found her voice? By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts hoping to become the first Mormon in the White House, was this weekend embroiled in a two-front battle, where defeat would almost certainly end his quest for the Republican presidential nomination.

Less than two weeks before the small, rural and mostly white state of Iowa decides who it would like in the White House, it indicated yesterday that it will reject the favourites in favour of two long-shot candidates, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee.

She once looked to have an invincible lead over her Democratic rivals, but the former First Lady has had to call in all the family to boost her flagging campaign

In just 10 minutes of frantic bidding, one of the most important watercolours in British art history also became the most expensive. The Blue Rigi: Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise by JMW Turner was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder yesterday for £5.8m, nearly three times more than the valuers' pre-sale estimate of £2m.

When your surname is Archer you might hope that something deep within your ancestry would stir itself when you are called on to take aim at immortality. Alas, the six-footer that would have earned an everlasting place in the record books as the first 59 on the European Tour agonisingly popped off the wire.