Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/30/2012

The worsening financial situation in Greece dominated today’s EU summit in Brussels. German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed down from her original proposal for a “budget czar” to oversee Greece and help it meet IMF requirements for a new bailout. Greece’s creditors are expected to have to write down even more of the country’s debt.

Meanwhile, Spain seems to be entering a new recession: newly-released figures show that growth for the final quarter of 2011 slipped below zero.

In other news, a plague of pythons is wiping out the small mammal population in the Florida Everglades. The pythons are not native to Florida, but are descended from pets that either were released by their owners or escaped during some of the big hurricanes of the 1990s.

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

Thanks to CSP, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, Kitman, Steen, The Observer, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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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.