“Did they die for kickbacks?” Humanité reports on yet another French “affaire d’état”, or political scandal. Eight years after the 8 May 2002 bomb blast which killed 11 French naval engineers working on the construction of submarines in Pakistan, investigators are increasingly drawn to a theory that has long been advanced by relatives of the victims: the bomb attack was “linked to the existence of ‘retrocommissions’ [sums of money presented as standard commissions, which also include an illegal payment that is returned to the seller]. “These payments were subsequently used to finance former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur’s 1995 presidential campaign, which was in part organised by his spokesman Nicolas Sarkozy,” writes the daily. According to the families of the victims, the bombing was a reprisal for the suspension of commissions ordered by Jacques Chirac when he took over the office having defeated Edouard Balladur and other candidates.
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.