"Wake up, Italy!" headlines the Italian edition of Wired, which is launching a campaign to make high-bandwidth internet available throughout the country. The small number of operators who control the oligopoly in the telecoms sector have no interest in making the necessary investment and have completely blocked the development of the fibre-optic network in Italy, which is now ranked 42nd in the Akamai State of the Internet report on bandwidth. This is all the more surprising, because as the magazine argues, high-bandwidth internet would be a much more cost effective motor for development than "large-scale public works projects" put forward by the government (like the proposed bridge across the straits of Messina connecting Sicily to the mainland). The European Commission has estimated that the extension of fibre-optic networks to all of the EU could create up to two million jobs by 2015. And it would herald the end of the "digital divide" between urban areas and the poorest worst-connected regions.
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.