“I am delighted that Osama bin Laden was killed.” Spoken shortly after the announcement of the killing of the leader of al-Qaeda by a US commando, this very public statement, not at all consistent with the principle of loving thy neighbour, puts Angela Merkel in an awkward position. “The Chancellor has upset a lot of Christians,” headlines the Berliner Zeitung, reporting that Merkel, who is also president of the Christian Democrat Party (CDU), has come under severe criticism from the churches and their supporters, who hold that “there no reason to rejoice in the deliberate killing of a person.” “The public cheering at the liquidation of Osama bin Laden shows how close Christian culture remains to the base and archaic instincts of man,” writes the daily in its editorial. “Certainly, the dances of joy [in New York] were a ritual of emotional relief. But it did not render justice: a man has been sacrificed to the instinct of revenge,” adds the daily, pointing out the disgust felt across the West – and not just by German goodie-goodies – at the dancing for joy in the streets of Gaza when the Twin Towers were brought down in September 2011.
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.