“I see trouble ahead,” leads the Independent, quoting Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, after the release of official data showing that the British economy shrank 0.5 percent during the last three months of 2010. “The news was greeted as "shocking", "dire" and "terrible" by economists,” the London daily notes, raising fears of a double dip recession and, according to King, inflation hitting a 5 per cent high by 2012. Chancellor George Osborne has been quick to endorse the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) contention that the fall in output recorded is mainly due to the “terrible weather” at the end of 2010. He has rejected changing course on his budget austerity drive. “That would plunge Britain back into a financial crisis,” he said – as if the UK was not already in the middle of one.
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.