The Balkan peninsula has been, over the centuries, the scene of clashes between numerous actors. If many frictions have been resolved, the tensions between Kosovo and Serbia have continued to this day, showing no sign of abating. To seek a solution to the conflict, since 1999, Kosovo has been the subject of the UNMIK (United Nations Mission In Kosovo) peacekeeping mission, the only United Nations mission currently existing on European territory.

The underlying causes of such a profound tension are to be found in the differences between the Serbian and Albanian populations, the two ethnic groups that today compete for the Kosovar region. The differences are certainly social and cultural, and language is an important point of confrontation. The Albanian population, despite the various dominations, in particular the Ottoman one, has constantly maintained a completely native language which, although it has absorbed elements from both Turkish and Serbian, is an entirely different language from the Serbo-Croatian language of Slavic lineage and even more different from Turkish.
Furthermore, although not central, religion plays a certain role in the friction: during the Ottoman rule, the Albanians had converted to the Muslim religion while the Serbs had rigidly maintained their Orthodox beliefs.

After the Second World War, Kosovo returned under the control of the new federal Yugoslavia led by Tito, whose charisma had managed to compact the mass of Slavic peoples under the red flag: it is thanks to his figure that tensions have found a respite, even though remaining latent. Kosovo in the aftermath of the war was in an uncomfortable position: during the conflict it had welcomed the annexation of Albania to the Italian protectorate, the population had cooperated extensively with the occupying forces and had conducted large-scale violence against the inhabitants of Serbian ethnicity. However, over the years, Tito proved to be condescending to the requests of the Kosovar people, first recognizing the status of "Autonomous Territory" to Kosovo and then that of "Autonomous Province", on a par with the Republics of the rest of Yugoslavia.

With Tito's death in 1980, both Pan-Slavism and Socialism, the fundamental glues of the fragmented Yugoslav society, quickly began to fade away. In the following decade, tensions were mounting. In Serbia, Milosevic was elected president in 1989, riding on nationalist ideals and bragging about the return of a "Great Serbia". The clashes between the Yugoslav republics culminated in a terrible civil war in 1991. After 4 years, with the Dayton agreements, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina achieved independence, marking the end of Yugoslavia, whose territory was now confined exclusively to Serbia and Montenegro.

Kosovo officially remained under the control of Belgrade, not even being mentioned in the Dayton agreements. Frustration among the Kosovars was increasing and the armed confrontation seemed ever closer, with thousands of young people joining the ranks of the UÇK, the National Liberation Army founded a few years earlier. In 1997, the UÇK proclaimed an insurrection in the eastern Drenica region, waging a series of attacks on police and federal institution buildings. The following year, Serbian paramilitary squads attacked Prekaz; the conflict was now inevitable. Both sides were guilty of actions contrary to international war law: Yugoslav soldiers often made disproportionate use of force, without paying too much attention in distinguishing civilians from insurgents and did not refrain from looting and burning the houses of the villages; UÇK members deliberately targeted the Serbian civilian population through kidnappings and killings, forcing them to flee their homes.

The growing violence of the clashes between Serbs and Kosovars prompted the governments of the United States, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy to reactivate a Contact Group, already used in previous years, to exert political and diplomatic pressure on the Yugoslav authorities in order to suspend the repression operations undertaken by the Serbian police in the Kosovar region. On March 31, 1998 the Security Council, in condemning the acts of violence committed by both warring parties, adopted the first of a series of binding resolutions under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, ordering the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to reach a political solution to the crisis by following the guidelines dictated by the Contact Group. After an apparent progression of negotiations, the conflict re-erupted in 1999 when the anti-terrorism units of the Serbian police executed 45 civilians in the village of Raçak, in central Kosovo. NATO was therefore taking a place side by side with the United Nations, acquiring a central position within the complicated negotiation process.

A final attempt od mediation was made by the Contact Group in Rambouillet, France, where difficult negotiations were carried out between the Albanian guerrillas and the Yugoslav government from the beginning of February 1999. The requests of the two parties immediately appeared difficult to reconcile: the UK, thanks to a special pressure from the then United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, accepted the clauses of mediation, clauses not accepted by the Serbian government, arguing that these terms they represented a disguised independence for Kosovo and a humiliation for the country.

Less than a week later, on March 24, 1999, at the proposal of General Clark, NATO Secretary Solana authorized the start of military operations. Over the next three months, Alliance air units conducted some 38,000 sorties, during which they dropped more than 23,000 bombs. The NATO bombings continued unabated until the first days of June, when Miloševic surrendered and decided to negotiate. On 9 June, in Kumanovo, Macedonia, the warring parties finally reached an agreement: the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, under continuous NATO air raids, agreed to every request from the international community, also accepting heavy restrictions on its sovereignty.

On 10 June 1999 the Security Council adopted the resolution 1244/99, deciding the deployment of an international peace mission called UNMIK (United Nations interim administration Mission in Kosovo) composed of both civilian forces and military and security personnel. For the first time in its history, the United Nations has placed a territory under its direct control. The resolution divided the mission into four pillars, each headed by an international organization and with specific tasks to perform. The interim civil administration was entrusted to the United Nations. Responsibility in humanitarian matters was entrusted to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which was supposed to ensure the rapid return of the more than 800,000 refugees and displaced persons. Responsibility in humanitarian matters was entrusted to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, with the task of ensuring the rapid return of more than 800,000 refugees and displaced persons. Finally, the European Union leaded the process of material and economic reconstruction of the region.

The Council identified as the competences of the international civil mission: to define a provisional form of autonomy and self-government for the region; perform basic administrative functions as long as necessary; oversee the development of local government authority and democratic processes, including the holding of free and fair elections; guarantee humanitarian assistance to refugees and displaced persons caused by the conflict and ensure their return to their homes.

After over twenty years, the UNMIK mission is still in place, the only United Nations mission still in the European territory. Over the years it can be said that the Republic of Kosovo has taken several steps towards full statehood: Kosovo has its own government structure which, through the police bodies and the new armed forces, actually controls a large part of the country. However, despite the onerous commitment by international and regional organizations, the results relating to the state building process remain uncertain as well as the achievement of the objectives relating to respect for human rights, the rule of law and the development of democratic institutions. International missions still perform indispensable functions on behalf of Kosovar institutions, which do not appear capable of fully guaranteeing neither an autonomous and efficient judicial system nor the security of the entire region, especially in the northern area where the influence of Belgrade is still evident.Furthermore, the fragility and weakness of the Kosovar state emerge even if we analyze the international relations that Pristina maintains with other state actors.
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In conclusion, it seems possible to state that despite the consistent efforts and important progress achieved in recent years, with specific reference to the protection of human rights and the construction of democratic institutions, Kosovo's path towards full statehood has not yet been completed.

The Internet started in the 1960s as a way for government researchers to share information. Computers in the '60s were large and immobile and in order to make use of information stored in any one computer, one had to either travel to the site of the computer or have magnetic computer tapes sent through the conventional postal system.
 
Another catalyst in the formation of the Internet was the heating up of the Cold War. The Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred the U.S. Defense Department to consider ways information could still be disseminated even after a nuclear attack. This eventually led to the formation of the ARPANET, the network that ultimately evolved into what we now know as the Internet. ARPANET was a great success but membership was limited to certain academic and research organizations who had contracts with the Defense Department. In response to this, other networks were created to provide information sharing.
 
January 1, 1983 is considered the official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. A new communications protocol was established called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol . This allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to "talk" to each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard on January 1, 1983, hence the birth of the Internet. All networks could now be connected by a universal language.

UNIVAC I (the name stood for Universal Automatic Computer) which was delivered to the Census Bureau in 1951. It weighed some 16,000 pounds, used 5,000 vacuum tubes, and could perform about 1,000 calculations per second. It was the first American commercial computer, as well as the first computer designed for business use. (Business computers like the UNIVAC processed data more slowly than the IAS-type machines, but were designed for fast input and output.) The first few sales were to government agencies, the A.C. Nielsen Company, and the Prudential Insurance Company. The first UNIVAC for business applications was installed at the General Electric Appliance Division, to do payroll, in 1954. By 1957 Remington-Rand (which had purchased the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1950) had sold forty-six machines.
 
In conclusion,“The Internet has changed and will continue to change the way we organize,development and functioning of economic, social, cultural, educational,politics . Thus, the emergence and development of the Internet has changed the world with a fantastic rhythm, suddenly changing our view of the world and forcing us to we adapt our thinking and beliefs to new trends and discoveries of technology, technology and innovation. The Internet connects us to the reality of world life, information flows at a fantastic speed and the level of communication is high. The online marketplace is a free marketplace, with hundreds of millions of usersfor business development. The Internet is also the basis of e-commerce in Romania it gained an extraordinary momentum with the year 2004. The activity of marketing has taken an extraordinary leap in speed and promotion marketing of a product or brand. The Internet is the gateway to success and to succeed we must find the right key. The Internet can change the world, but the world must also change your deep mentalities rooted in habits unprofitable for the community. Change in institutional and structural structures functioning of an economy would be beneficial, but it is not desired because the struggle for power it is very fierce, or change for some means loss. Young people are the ones who can change the face of the world, they can change the institutional structure which do not meet the requirements of the new company.

​ZOÉ PORTIÉ

Europe has been praised as the region of the world where freedom of expression and of the press is mostly present, demonstrated by the 2022 Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, in which 9 European countries remain at the top. This standard, nevertheless, has been deteriorating in recent years and showing significant disparities, and conditions on both extremes have progressed considerably.

While two former Communist States are now among the top 10 – Estonia (4th) and Lithuania (9th) –, the Netherlands (28th) no longer is, with Greece (108th) having replaced Bulgaria (91st) as the worst-performing EU nation, even surpassing any candidate country from the Western Balkans – where the worst-ranked is Albania (103rd).

These developments and differences reflect three main trends. First, the return of murdered journalists in the EU. In the centre of two European capitals, Giorgios Karaivaz, in Greece, and Peter R. De Vries, in the Netherlands, were gunned down. Those responsible for the murders carried out before 2020, of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta and Jan Kuciak in Slovakia, have still not been convicted.
 
Furthermore, journalists have faced active hostility from protesters against public health measures aimed at tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. In several European countries, such as Germany, Italy, or France, journalists faced insults and threats and were physically attacked.
 
Finally, the intensification of repressive laws against journalists by some EU and neighbouring governments, namely, in Greece, Hungary, Poland, Albania, and Slovenia. Whereas Serbia scored points in the fight against impunity, and following changes in government, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have loosed their control on the press.
 
European institutions have started to address issues and implement protective measures for journalists and press freedom, such as launching proceedings against Hungary for violating EU’s rule of law, or even calling for governments to take measures to protect journalists, in the context of the recent killings in the invasion of Ukraine. These efforts are a step forward in ensuring that the freedom of media and press is protected.