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It's Friday

Martin Vennard | 08:53 UK time, Friday, 31 August 2007

One obvious topic that we could look at today is the legacy of Princess Diana. It's the 10th anniversary of her death and ceremonies are taking place in London and elsewhere to mark the occasion.

A number of stories surrounding the event have arisen. Prince Charles's new wife, Camilla, is not attending the ceremony in London, despite having been invited by Diana's sons.

Diana blamed Camilla for the break up of her marriage to Prince Charles. Diana's death in a car crash in Paris 10 years ago led to unprecedented scenes in Britain, with hundreds of thousands of people laying flowers outside her home and turning out to pay their last respects. Meanwhile the Royal familiy was criticised for its failure to recognise the public mood in the country.

Now a You Gov in Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper says respect for the royal familiy in Britain has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time ever.

The official inquest in Britain into Diana's death has still not taken place and some people believe that she may have been murdered rather than the victim of crash in a car whose driver had been drinking. Should we be talking about Diana's legacy?

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, have joined forces to call for intense action to secure a ceasefire in Sudan's Darfur region.

Mr Brown and Mr Sarkozy have written a joint which appears in Britain's Times newspaper and French paper Le Monde.

Mr Brown and Mr Sarkozy say the UN-African Union peacekeeping mission there should be the starting point for efforts to bring peace to the region. Should we use this peg to look at the situation in Darfur?

In Britain, HSBC bank has overdraft charges for recent university graduates and pledged to repay charges it has deducted, following a campaign by students on the social networking website Facebook.

Around four thousand graduates who found the bank had suddenly started charging them for overdrafts joined a Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off! group on the website.

Earlier this week we looked at the decision by Yahoo to hand over to the Chinese government information about its Chinese clients. But is this an example of the positive power of the internet and sites such as Facebook? Were HSBC right to give in to the campaign? Could such sites be used to promote causes that may not be so benevolent?

There are reports that Zimbabwe is to vital support from one of its few remaining allies on the world stage, China.

A British government minister, Lord Malloch Brown, says that China told him that it was dropping all assistance to Zimbabwe except humanitarian aid. We talk about Zimbabwe a lot, but is this a peg to consider whether this is the beginning of the end for President Robert Mugabe, whose country is suffering from hyper-inflation, mass unemployment and emmigration?


On Thursday we talked about looking at Pakistan. Since then, the former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was toppled in a coup by President Pervez Musharraf, has said that he will return home from exile on 10th September to challenge President Musharraf. Should we look at reaction to the announcement?

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