Creeping up on current affairs.
More on The Daily Beast: http://goo.gl/qMk5j
Over the last few weeks, Wikileaks has published some damming reports that the Gaddafi family has given millions of pounds to fund their education and their entertainment. This has forced some celebrities to donate the earnings to a charity and to give a some what half hearted apology, mixed with an excuse. Wikileak's findings has also cause an independent enquiry into the funding of over 3.7 million pounds to the London School of Economics from the Gaddafi family and the resignation of its director Sir Howard Davies.
Further to our post earlier on the European Court of Justice's flawed decision on equal insurance premiums for male and female drivers, Dizzy has an interesting post here:
http://dizzythinks.net/2011/03/asessing-risk-will-never-be-as-cheap.html
Recent protests in the Kingdom of Morocco have prompted concerns in other Arab kingdoms. So far the extreme protests in the Arab world have taken place in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya - all republics.
There have been small scale protests in countries such as Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia, but these have been contained with, on the most part, little bloodshed.
That Morocco, a country that has seen a decade of reforms, is subject to large scale street protests has damaged the theory that Arab monarchies are not inherently more stable than their republican neighbours.
The demonstrators are unhappy about repression and curbs on civil liberties, and are calling on Morocco to adopt a constitutional monarchy, such as those in the UK and Spain.
Rebels in the Ivory Coast have pushed south and taken a town formerly held by government loyalists. We reported last week of clashes in the southern port of Abidjan, and now appear to have taken a town in the Dix-huit-montagnes region, Zouan-Hounien. This small provincial town near the Liberian border is not an important gain in itself, but marks a general escalation of hostilities.
With a tip of the hat to the Crisis Monitors on the fantastic Blogs Of War, we have introduced our very own Current Event Trackers.
This page (accessible from the navigation bar at the top of the page) will contain Twitter widgets running searches for major current events, updated in real time.
For now there's only one, following the Arab rebellions and protests, more will follow.
If you have any ideas for other trackers, let us know in the comments below.
