Always Reporting the Worst

I have read and believed for a long time that newspapers and the media are constantly reporting all of the bad thing that happen. This issue was realized for me when I was reading the KW record yesterday. I was looking at what they said about the recent approval of a 1 dollar fee to support a refugee. They only had around one line about it, but they had a whole article about how the radio station lost their funding. This I find shocking, why not report the feel good story about how university students are going to support refugee students. The story about the radio station is second in my mind.
This issue also ties into the issue about always reporting about deaths, even if the families don't really want it. There was a recent school shooting and the story is once again spread through out the media. Why do we only care about the bad things in life, is it inherent or are we conditioned to only care about those issues.

EU: Divorce and Rekindling Love

The European Union is going to be tested and hopefully come out stronger due to the issues of Divorce and Rekindling relationships this year. Yes, I am talking about Kosovo and Cyprus. Kosovo and Serbia have continued their divorce, some would say started. Cyprus on the other hand could be ending their separation that has been around since the 1970s.

Kosovo recently unilaterally declared their independence from Serbia. This act was not a surprise, since there has been no real control from the Serbian government since the 1990s. Serbia is the last part of the Former Yugoslavia, everything else has left. Their country has gotten smaller by 25% in the last 2 years. This would not seem to be a big lost but there is more than just the land. Montenegro was the last part of the former Yugoslavia connected to Serbia, which left in 2006. This meant that the nation for the Slavs in the Balkans was over and there was nothing left of the former nation. When Kosovo declared independence went much deeper, it is the historical homeland of the Serbian People. Their most important historical event happened in a land that has now declared their independence.
This is an important issue of the EU because it is happening in the 'backyard'. I would suggest the term in the living room/kitchen would be more appropriate. Serbia is almost surrounded on all sides by the EU, and will be completely surrounded with in 20 years. The EU is also putting in a fairly large peacekeeping group into Kosovo. They have also suggested that they would give advanced membership to Serbia because of all of the land that it has lost. The EU-Russian relationship is also going to be strained over the actions that they do. There are also countries with in the EU that do not want other countries to separate because then they could fall apart as well (Spain is an example).

The Rekindling Love of Cyprus, the Greek South and the Turkish North, could be a great story for 2008. In past decades it has been the North that have been holding back, then it was the Greeks in the 2000s but now it could be neither. The Greek Cypriots are holding a presidential election where all of the leaders are in agreement that there should be reunification of Cyprus. The current president who was the hard liner among the three front runners is now out of the race. This is a election that will go down in the history books as an exciting one, 3 candidates each getting 1/3 of the vote. The winner got 33.51 %, second place got 33.29 % and the third place got 31.79%, why do we not have election that good in Canada.
In the runoff both of the presidential candidates are compromising on the issue of reunification. This would be a positive note in Europe if reunification could occur, ending one of the longest peacekeeping missions the UN has ever been on. There is still the issue in my mind of the UK's military bases, but that is a whole other story.