The Guardian, 30 June 2010
UK Chancellor George Osborne's austerity budget will “result in the loss of up to 1.3m jobs across the economy over the next five years,” the Guardian leads. According to a Treasury assessment leaked to the London daily, the most draconian cuts in public spending since World War II will lead to “between 500,000 and 600,000 jobs going in the public sector and between 600,000 and 700,000 disappearing in the private sector by 2015.” The chancellor has so far failed to mention the impact his emergency measures will have on the labour market, the Guardian notes. The Treasury assumes that “the private sector will create 2.5m jobs in the next five years”.
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.