Romania's footballers no longer braindead
"The cliché of the brain-dead soccer player may soon be a thing of the past!" exults Romanian international captain Cristi Chivu. As honorary president of AFAN ( Romanian Association of Amateur and Professional Football Players ) the Inter Milan central defender is overjoyed by the news that the Romanian government is providing financial support for the association's "Social security and on-the-job training for athletes" program. Notwithstanding the economic crisis, AFAN stands to obtain nearly half a million euros from the Ministry for Youth and Sports. According to Bucharest daily Cotidianul, the organization is planning to use 5 millions euros of its own funds and additional money from the EU, to "send footballers to school." AFAN's "on-line university will enable players to study marketing, economics and management."
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.