When the Shot Around the World isn’t Heard

Every week I have the task of looking through events and headlines to put in our paper. So far I’ve limited my scope to the events happening around campus, in an effort to report on the stories that matter to students. 

However, when the idea of branching out into global news came to me, I hit a roadblock. It was my goal to get students interested and informed, but I wasn’t sure where to look. Every headline was looking at the same stories: elections, Obama’s next plan on something super official and important, problems in the NFL, and ISIS – which I wanted to include in this issue as many students are unaware of how it started or what’s really going on.

Still, with so much focus on these important issues, the whole world seems smaller, less interesting, and even helpless. So I made it a goal to look at other events going on around the world. It wasn’t easy as it took some digging, finding online newspapers in foreign countries uninvolved in the current western conflicts. 

***

Japan holds a consulate in Chicago, like a foreign embassy, where they were mysteriously keeping old human bones. Their sources said the bones were simply under observation and there was nothing intentionally sneaky about their operations.  A 43-year-old woman fended off a bag-snatcher in New Zealand and was promptly rushed to the hospital after sustaining internal injuries. And an elementary school in Unity, New Hampshire is finally being built after much delay. 

The Fault in our Stars author John Green was able to raise over $100,000 at water.org with the efforts of his Nerd Fighters community to help build clean drinking wells in Ethiopia, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates has agreed to match the funds, bringing the total number of Ethiopians with clean water – for life – from 4,000 to 8,000. And in science news, antibiotics were being detected in food sources, and a vaccine for dust mite allergies was created.

***

Are these stories headline-news worthy? Probably not, but they shed light on areas in the world we often ignore to make way for more pressing issues. And in respect, ISIS is a big deal, but I can’t help but wonder if the amount of people who joined the group’s efforts from foreign countries would have been much smaller if not for the constant media attention they have received. 

Of course, The New York Times is going to report on issues Americans care about. But – if I may take a quote completely out of context - in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, even if it means paying less attention to the Middle East, and more attention to countries like Ethiopia, New Zealand, and Japan. Even if just to offer people some hope that this world is not all bad, and possibly, if just slightly, still full of good people.