Obama comes not with peace but a sword
Barack Obama has just been awarded the Nobel peace prize, but this morning New Statesman’s political editor Mehdi Hasan is less than impressed with the American president’s record. Having promised a sharp break with the Bush era, Obama, Mehdi argues, has “stepped into the shoes of his disgraced predecessor,” notably on foreign policy. After announcing that he would wind down the war in Iraq, he has merely diverted US troops, spies and diplomats to the war in Afghanistan and operations across the border in Pakistan. “He has approved air strikes there that have killed more civilians in nine months than died in US bombings in the final year of the previous administration.” Reacting to today’s news from the Nobel committee, Mehdi, in a blog entitled “Is this a joke?” further adds that “the cult of Obama has elevated him to a god-like, saint-like, superhuman position on the global political landscape.” He is receiving “an award for peace before he has actually achieved peace”.
In a time of crisis with high unemployment, young Lithuanians are following in the footsteps of their emigrant ancestors. Tens of thousands have left the country in search of a better life, mainly in the British Isles and Scandinavia. The weekly Veidas reports: 
The new Eurogroup meeting on February 9 is not enough to banish the spectre of a Greek bankruptcy. While Athens may largely be responsible for the crisis, the EU and its partners are not blameless themselves. La Stampa argues that their confused messages and the absence of any strategy have transformed a resolvable problem into an explosive chaos. 
Two camps, two theories, and two visions of France: 18 years after the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis, the precise role played by Paris is still the subject of heated debate, fueled by the findings of successive criminal investigations.