Cross Atlantic media

One of my weekly joys is to read local news from my previous "home" countries. Friday usually sees me checking out the online editions of the Great Yarmouth Mercury, the Eastern Daily Press, both Norfolk, England newspapers and the SUR in English, the weekly Costa del Sol newspaper.

I consider North Carolina my home now, so I'm wondering if it's normal in keeping abreast the news, both good and bad, from where one used to live? Perhaps it is a good way to avoid becoming insular or parochial? England and Spain are experiencing the same devastating economic problems as us here in the US with the resulting rise in unemployment. Sport dominates many pages here and there. People have the same worries over mortgages and other debts.

This weeks SUR has articles on alternate energy sources (southern Spain is an ideal place for solar and wind energy capture), the problems of recycling (the Spanish are having difficulty in determining which items should be placed in which color-coded bins), joy that the reservoirs are full after a extra wet winter and the regular items on the pros and cons of immigration (the Costa is a short hop from north Africa from when hopeful immigrants spend their savings on the often perilous boat ride to the shores of the European Union).

And there are the funnies . . . . my favorite this week (again in Spain) is the story of a Romanian burglar who broke into a house in Benalmádena (my old home town) and got away with several items of jewellery. Unfortunately for him, he left his cell phone at the scene of the crime, which helped the police to track him down and make the arrest. He also left behind his tools with which he forced the entry.

Perhaps we're not so different in the global world as we like to think we are.