“Final pleas by parties as nation votes in crucial election,” headlines the Irish Times, on the day Ireland’s 3.2 million voters go to the polls. In the midst of bitter recrimination over Ireland’s economic meltdown and subsequent EU/IMF bailout, Ireland’s ruling party, Fianna Fáil, could see its 73 seats in the 166 seat Dáil (Irish parliament) reduced to a rump of less than 25. Reflecting widespread disenchantment with mainstream political parties, a record 212 independents are candidates in the country’s 43 constituencies. The man most likely to become next Taoiseach, Enda Kenny of centre-right Fine Gael, urged voters “to turn their anger against the current administration into action when they vote.” Ireland, he said, was living with a “national heartbreak” as it reeled from “the national confidence trick pulled on it by the Government and those to whom it had ceded power, the developers [who triggered the real estate bubble] and banks.”
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.