Smoking can seriously damage your state
"Romania is now an EU tax champion," observes Cotidianul in a report that announces "a further increase in taxes on cigarette manufacturers to be imposed from 1st September." The latest rise follows hot on the heels of an increase on 1st April. With "64 euros in taxes on every 1,000 cigarettes, which includes vice tax of ten euros, Romania has hung a tax millstone around smokers' necks." complains the Bucharest dailyManufacturers based in Romania are complaining about the unwanted effects of the measures. Contraband cigarettes from the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine now represent 30% of all cigarettes smoked in Romania, as opposed to 14% last year, because they are six times cheaper," explains Cotidianul. The Philip Morris and British American Tobacco groups are now threatening to close their factories, as they did in Latvia and Hungary."
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.