MEPs denounce Berlusconi press gagging
On 8 October a majority of European Parliament members denounced the “problem of freedom of the press in Italy”, reports Spanish daily El Periódico, with reference to the Italian prime minister/media mogul’s stranglehold on the Transalpine press. In the course of a “verbal spat” between supporters and detractors of Silvio Berlusconi, the right wing accused the initiators of the statement (left-wing parties, free-market liberals and Greens) of using the European Parliament as a stage for a “political manoeuvre to attack a political adversary”, adds the Barcelona-based daily. “Go protest in Iran, you cowards, where freedom of the press is really threatened!” purportedly yelled Mario Borghezio, a representative of the Liga Nord, Berlusconi’s partners in government. But most of the parliamentary groups came out in favour of Community legislation to “safeguard media plurality and limit its concentration”.
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.