"Britain under fire for selling arms to Bahrain", headlines The Independent. Britain’s government has been criticised for arms sales to a number of Arab governments that have cracked down on pro-democracy protests in recent weeks. The newspaper reports the government gave the go-ahead last year for sales of crowd control equipment including “CS hand grenades, demolition charges, smoke canisters and thunderflashes". The approval came during Bahrain’s elections in October 2010, which were mired by a crackdown on Shia opposition groups. In the past two days at least four people have been killed and 231 injured in protests aimed at overthrowing the deeply unpopular administration in the tiny Gulf state. The governing Conservative party has long standing ties to Bahrain, the paper says.
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.