News is packaged information about current events happening somewhere else. News moves through many different media, based on word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, and electronic communication.
Common topics for news reports include war, politics, and business, as well as athletic events, quirky or unusual events, and the doings of celebrities. Government proclamations, concerning royal ceremonies, laws, taxes, public health, and criminals, have been dubbed news since ancient times.
Humans exhibit a nearly universal desire to learn and share news from elsewhere, which they satisfy by traveling, talking to each other and sharing. Technological and social developments, often driven by government communication and espionage networks, have increased the speed with which news can spread, as well as influenced its content. The genre of news as we know it today is closely associated with the newspaper, which originated in China as a court bulletin and spread, with paper and printing press, to Europe.
