Thousands of protestors gathered in the streets of Greece’s major cities on 6th December to pay their respects to Alexis Grigoropoulos, the 15-year-old boy shot dead by a policeman a year ago. To avoid a repetition of the riots that followed his death, Ta Nea writes that the new Socialist government, which has only been in power for two months, decided on a ‘zero tolerance’ policy. This involved deploying almost 10,000 police in Athens to surround about 200 youths who were using the university campus as a base. Under orders to protect "the cities and their inhabitants", the police made a record number of arrests, the Athens newspaper reports. However, they could not prevent some shop windows from being broken, and several protestors and policemen were injured. The dean of Athens University was rushed to hospital following a mild heart attack after being assaulted by youths. Protests continued in several large cities on Monday, and the atmosphere remains extremely tense.
The leader of Greece’s leftist alliance SYRIZA is the new bright hope of Greek politics. Steering a course between pragmatism and the rhetoric of class warfare, he has unsettled Berlin, and not just those who back Angela Merkel's austerity policies. 
Europe’s economic woes have forced us to try to understand the secret Olympian world of global finance. But now that we pay more attention to bond yields and stability mechanisms, isn’t it clear that the experts up on their lofty peaks don’t know what’s going on either? 
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country that is far from being a model democracy. An Estonian journalist takes a critical look at the deferential treatment enjoyed by the regime in Baku.