Gates of Vienna News Feed 8/2/2011

Gates of Vienna News Feed 8/2/2011The United States Senate passed a compromise bill that allowed the debt ceiling to be raised by 2.4 trillion dollars, officially ending the possibility of default. That’s enough to see Congress through Hallowe’en, at least — or so we hope. The stock market responded to the long-awaited move by losing almost 2% of its value.

In other news, the mayor of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius demonstrated his resolve to crack down on parking scofflaws by using an armored personnel carrier to drive over a Mercedes illegally parked in a bus lane.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Diana West, EF, Frontinus, Gaia, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JP, McR, Nilk, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.