La Stampa, 30 September 2010
"He won, but he lost.” This is how La Stampa, with the headline "Vote of confidence, but with eyes on the elections”, sums up yesterday’s paradoxical parliamentary vote of confidence for Silvio Berlusconi. Italy’s prime minister would have actually fallen flat without the backing of 32 “rebel” MPs led by his ex-ally and president of the Chamber of Deputies Gianfranco Fini. "A happy birthday of shit,” groused Berlusconi in the heat of the moment. Il Cavaliere, who turned 74 yesterday, will now have to make terms with Fini – which will inevitably rile his other ally, the Northern League. Hence La Stampa’s forecast that "yesterday’s tremor won’t be the first or last of the upheavals that are bound to rock the country for some time to come”.
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.