Remember the mayor who ran over illegally parked cars with a tank? Fake story.

Remember the mayor if Vilnius, Arturas Zuokas, who 'got tough' on illegally parked cars using a tank? The story was all over the blogosphere, and the clip is easily found on youtube, but it's a fake story.

The quirky stars (and I use that term loosely) of an offbeat show known as Erik & Mackan were in Vilnius last Saturday to create a few clips for their show. At first they had an idea to shoot cars with a tank, but when that was (forgive the pun) shot down, the mayor himself suggested they run over illegally parked cars instead. And thus a legendary 'news clip' was born.

Resumé notes that even Swedish news fell for it, despite the stars of the TV show 'Erik & Mackan' being clearly visible as very happy passengers in the tank. Resumés journalist Christian Ström asked Rapport, which is the national nightly news show, if they knew it was a clip with Erik & Mackan for their show.

Göran Larsson, editor-in-chief of Rapport:

"We sorta knew enough before, but chose to run it anyway. The pictures were good and it was also presented as a campaign by the mayor himself"

So there you have it. Swedish national news is a joke. ;)