1403 GMT: The Greek vote for a new austerity package is a "vote of national responsibility", EU president Herman van Rompuy says, my colleagues report from Brussels.
1355 GMT: The euro edged higher as Greek lawmakers voted to approve a massive new austerity package demanded by international creditors.
At about 1340 GMT, the euro rose to $1.4382, compared with $1.4367 late in New York on Tuesday.
1347 GMT: US stocks gained after the Greek parliament approved the austerity plan designed to prevent a destabilizing default, shoring up confidence in Europe's financial system, my colleagues report from New York.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 31.44 points (0.26 percent) to 12,220.13 in the first five minutes of trading.
1337 GMT: The full vote count is in: Greek lawmakers voted 155 to 138 for the hotly-disputed package to slash 28.4 billion euros ($40 billion) from the balance of government spending by 2015, in the first of a two-part vote to continue on Thursday aimed at unlocking emergency finance from the EU and the IMF.
1330 GMT: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Greek lawmakers voting to approve the austerity package is 'very good news', my colleagues in Berlin report her spokesman as saying.
1315 GMT: Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's Socialists lost one vote among their 155 lawmakers in parliament, as expected, but also won backing from one opposition MP.
A second vote on the detail behind the new austerity package has still to be held tomorrow.
1306 GMT: Greek lawmakers have voted to approve a massive new austerity package demanded by international creditors, amid violent clashes between protesters and police firing tear gas outside the parliament in Athens.
An AFP count gave Prime Minister George Papandreou's government the 151 votes it needed to push through measures to save 28.4 billion euros ($40 billion) by 2015, and so unlock emergency finance from the EU and the IMF.
1246 GMT: To clarify previous post, voting started just after 3:35 pm Athens time (1235 GMT) on the massive austerity plan for Greece to save the country from default and the eurozone from contagion.
The 300-seat legislature was called to adopt a 28.4-billion-euro package of tax rises, spending cuts and privatisations demanded by international creditors the EU and IMF.
1242 GMT: Voting has begun on the new austerity package in the Greek parliament.
1238 GMT: Moments before lawmakers are to vote on the new austerity package, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou adds that "there is no Plan B" to save Greece, evoking the threat that public salaries and pensions might go unpaid otherwise.
1230 GMT: Greece will do "everything to avoid default," Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou says.
1220 GMT: Greece's Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos says that, after a refusal by opposition lawmakers from the extreme-right to left to back the government despite EU and IMF pressure, "all this criticism and these accusations are based on one thing only: the fact that this house's Socialist majority will assume its responsibility and vote the plan through."
1155 GMT: Greece's Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos tells parliament he expects his narrow Socialist party majority to line up behind the whip and so win Greece's crucial austerity vote.
"The decision of PASOK (the governing party) has been taken to carry the vote," Venizelos said with voting, slightly delayed, set to begin after violent clashes outside the assembly between police and protesters.
1135 GMT: "You won't go far with all the people against you," Alexis Tzipras, head of the radical left opposition Synaspismos party shouts at the parliament building, my colleagues H?l?ne Colliopoulou and Catherine Boitard write from Athens.
1120 GMT: "I'm going home, there's too much tear gas, the crush in the crowd is unbearable," writes my AFP colleague Sylvia Michaelidou Fyrigou, who is taking shelter in the Syntagma underground station after police fired a salvo of tear gas to disperse a group approaching the parliament building in Athens.
1105 GMT: More from opposition conservative lawmaker Elsa Papadimitriou who has told the Greek parliament that she will vote for the government's austerity plans.
"Yes indeed," she said of which way she would cast her vote. "To act with patriotism is to support the consensus and cooperation... The plan is a solution, necessary... but budgetary asphyxiation and economic suicide are not," she added.
The government has a majority of five in the assembly.
Papadimitriou's decision makes the measures almost certain to pass even though one Socialist lawmaker repeated during the debate that he may vote against the package, in protest at plans to sell off part of the state's majority holding in the national electricity company.
1053 GMT: An opposition conservative lawmaker has told the Greek parliament that she will vote for a government austerity plans that has provoked clashes between police and protesters.
Elsa Papadimitriou told the floor shortly before voting was due to begin in the 300-seat assembly that she will back Prime Minister George Papandreou's plan to shave 28.6 billion euros from the national budget by 2015, as police fired tear gas at thousands of demonstrators massed outside.
1050 GMT: Police have fired tear gas at thousands of protesters massed outside parliament in Athens as the vote on a massive austerity package demanded by international creditors approaches.
Riot police began trying to disperse protesters just after 1:30 pm (1030 GMT), AFP correspondents there tell me.
Demonstrators had said they would try to breach barriers right round the parliament's Syntagma Square home.
-- Clashes between protesters and riot police in Athens worsened on Wednesday hours from a vote in parliament on austerity measures aimed at preventing a Greek debt default.
On the second day of a 48-hour general strike, demonstrators massed around the parliament as deputies readied to decide on a 28.4 billion-euro ($40.8 billion) package of taxes, spending cuts and sell-offs scheduled for around 2:00 pm (1100 GMT).
The measures are deemed crucial for Greece to secure international aid to stave off bankruptcy, which is threatening the stability of the eurozone.
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