"The ECB defends Spain and Italy with a record purchase of debt," headlines the daily El País, reporting the purchase by the European Central Bank of €22 billion worth of bonds from the two countries "to calm the markets." It’s a "record" figure, following the launch in May 2010 of the ECB’s so-called Securities Market Programme (SMP). "A drop in the ocean," writes the Madrid daily – but its effect on the markets was "immediate."
This initiative by the ECB is "temporary", adds El País, pending the acceptance by national parliaments within the eurozone of the strengthening of the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), at the start of September at the earliest. For the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, buying back debt of countries in trouble is a bad strategy that plainly marks the “demise of the ECB". Dominated by countries in the south, which hold the majority on its board of directors, the European Central Bank "has turned into the European Bad Bank," whose reputation can only get worse.
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.