"Goodbye to early elections," says Slovenian daily Dnevnik on its front page illustrated by a photo of out-going Prime Minister Borut Pahor waving to photographers shortly after the fall of his centre-left government on September 20. The minority government led by the Social Democrat leader lost a vote of confidence, it had itself initiatied, in the Parliament, the paper explains. The President of the Republic, Danilo Turk, precipitously left New York, where he was attending the United Nations General Assembly, in order to find a solution to "a political crisis which has become more serious," the paper adds. Turk has seven days to propose a new Prime Minister to Parliament, while the country remains without government "in the middle of a global financial and economic crisis," Dnevnik notes. If Turk and the Parliament can't agree on a candidate, early elections should be held at the end of 2011 or early 2012.
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.