President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy "will now be able to address the United Nations no differently from US president Barack Obama, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez or Russia's Dimitri Medvedev,” reports EUObserver. The EU will now be symbolically given “almost all the rights” enjoyed by fully-fledged states including “the right to speak, the right to make proposals and submit amendments, the right of reply, the right to raise points of order and the right to circulate documents”.
Until now the EU has only had observer status at the UN. A similar move to give the EU something near full member status, put forward by Belgium, was last year rejected. The new status will allow EU foreign policy chief, high representative Catherine Ashton and her officials to speak on the floor. Ms Ashton was "delighted" by the move she says ‘will in future enable EU representatives to present and promote the EU's positions in the UN,’” reports the Brussels based news service.
According to EUObserver, in order to win the platform the EU has agreed to changes in how the UN is structured, transforming it from “an assembly of nation states into a body that also offers representation rights to regional blocs as well, including potentially the African Union, the Arab League and the South American Union”.
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.