“€6 billion cut and run,” headlines the Irish Independent, the day after Minister of Finance Brian Lenihan presented the severest budget in the history of the state. The accompanying cartoon of Lenihan torturing a taxpayer on the rack, saying “We’ll just have to make things stretch further”, sums up the mood. “A savage budget,” the Dublin daily resumes, “will take €3,000 from the average household. Income tax rises, cuts to child benefit, higher petrol prices and a string of other charges will leave low and middle-income families much worse off.” With the EU/IMF €85 billion bailout for the economically stricken nation conditional on the budget getting passed through parliament, Ireland’s unpopular coalition squeezed by on a vote of 82 to 78, the daily notes.
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.