Snowmail: Harry's tour 'PR exercise'
Updated on 01 March 2008
We report on Prince Harry's arrival back in the UK from Afghanistan.
Both Prince Charles and the prime minister have spoken publically in glowing terms of Harry's curtailed tour of duty. But PR guru Max Clifford's come out unexpectedly fiercely in criticising what he regards as an ill-thought out publicity stunt. "It just comes across, the whole thing, as a very, very calculated public relations exercise," he claims, designed to rehabilitate Harry's image as a partying posh boy. Crucially he claims there's no way Harry was ever put "in real danger," and claims the public are rather more clear-sighted about the manipulation than the media appear to have been.
Clifford added: "The other aspect of it is he's been shown firing a machine gun at Muslims. What does that say? He becomes a big target. Harry likes to go to clubs and pubs - does that make them targets?"
Developments in the Jersey child abuse investigation, from where Sue Turton reports. Police have warned they could prosecute anyone trying to intimidate witnesses or victims of the alleged child abuse in Jersey. Detectives are investigating reports that a former member of staff at the Haut de la Garenne care home had told one victim to keep quiet. Forensic teams are now examining a secret underground chamber where scores of victims claim they were abused.
We're also monitoring the situation in Gaza, where Israeli troops have killed at least 36 Palestinians; some are militants who've clashed with soldiers in the North, where Israeli tanks have crossed the border. But children and other civilians are also confirmed dead in Israeli military aircraft raids and missile strikes. At least 71 Palestinians have been killed in four days of intense Israeli air strikes and raids. Israel has warned the territory could face "disaster'" if militants continued firing rockets across the border. Politicians on both sides have fuelled the tensions by using the emotive language of a "shoah" or Holocaust.
And a rare interview with one of Liverpool's most successful playwrights Willy Russell, who has been helping develop a new repertory theatre company in Liverpool's city centre and to this end has re-written one of his earliest plays. The creator of Blood Brothers, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine has always been a maverick, not someone to join in general festivities. He hasn't as yet contributed to Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture. And he probably won't directly. But at the age of 60 he remains a resident and fundamentally engaged with his home city, as Nicholas Glass reports.
Katie Razzall's pulling together the day's sport. Teddy Sheringham's announced he's to retire at the end of the season. We'll have all the premiership results and details of the fight for the top of rugby union's Guinness Premiership.
See you at 6.30pm
Samira
