As the rain began to fall and night was closing in on the city of London, my group approached the Waterloo Station just prior to rush hour — the time was not quite 4:30 p.m., when out of the corner of my eye, groups of people began taking papers off the top stack of a metal news rack.

In a city where you have to pay 50 pence, or around 70 cents depending on the exchange rate, just to use the toilet — it was interesting to see that all of London Metro offered a free commuter newspaper for the journey home. The paper was available for pick-up at all of the larger stations, (Kingscross, Victoria, Waterloo), and was called the London Evening Standard.

The daily paper was good-sized, similar to the meaty Sunday editions of most localized papers here in the states. Now, at first glance this paper differed little from papers like The Daily Evergreen, but upon closer examination had a very different overall effect as my trip wore on over the course of a month.

You see, fellow readers, papers like the London Evening Standard contained news in all forms, covering a vast range of topics including but not limited to: political, tragic, global, entertainment/theater, sports, food, opinion, culture and lifestyle.

This type of varied news and ability to escape some of the tragic news of the day was actually quite easy — because unlike many American-based papers that have a slight tendency to focus mostly on the bad — there were issues of the Evening Standard that didn’t have sensationalized bad news splashed across the cover every single day.

There was also an intensified focus on politics in general, from the very centralized and local discussion about members of parliament and local councils, all the way up to things said by elected members in the House of Lords. The Evening Standard and “The i,” a paper from the parent press Independent, even have a whole page dedicated to readers’ opinions or thoughtful Tweets.

Amongst the global politics, much to my surprise, there were off-and-on full pages of American politics which was great because even though I was far from home, I felt like I was still connected to them and able to participate in current discussions if needed.

This was even true in Paris. Now granted, I can’t read or speak French, but it was easy to tell by the pictures that the world seems to be fascinated with Donald Trump and American politics in a way that is not reciprocated.

As many of you know, last semester Theo Mynka dedicated his opinion column to highlighting global politics, and admittedly I have a newfound respect for his work.

My fellow readers, and especially Cougs, global politics and our heads of state are of particular importance to the rest of the world — they look at us with keen eyes, perhaps even flabbergasted by the words of our presidential hopefuls, and yet when it comes to United Kingdom politics, can you even name the Prime Minister or any members of parliament?

Think about it, let me know your thoughts. Should newspapers in America be required to include more articles on global politics?