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DALLAS - A San Antonio man says he plans to drop his lawsuit against the city of Athens for putting up a nativity scene in front of the Henderson County courthouse as a Christmas decoration. But he isn't giving up his fight. In short, atheist Patrick Green said it's no longer a fair fight because Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has offered to step in and assist the city or the county. Greene's original suit claims the city is helping fund the display, which is a violation of both state and federal law. But he doesn't believe his suit will...

Driving through the tiny rural town of Athens, Texas, and you’d be hard pressed to find something that might catch national attention -- or so it was until about a week ago. An hour and a half outside of Dallas, the Athens town square is dominated by the county courthouse, and this time of year, Christmas decorations are on each corner. But it is the nativity scene across the street from the Taco Bell that has caused controversy. It started with a simple letter. As Jefferson County commissioner Joe Hall tells it, he received the shock of his life when...

ATHENS, Texas - The signs of Christmas are everywhere in downtown Athens. Lights, trees, and Santa and his reindeer line the streets. But it's the nativity scene on the lawn at the county courthouse that has caused concern. "I just don't understand it, to be honest with you," said Henderson County Judge Richard Sanders. "I'm just confused about it." Sanders says residents haven't complained. The issues were brought up by the Freedom From Religion foundation, a Wisconsin non-profit group who sent a letter to the county this week, calling the display unconstitutional and demanding it come down. "I'm an old...

Gods.Resolved by the Boule and the People.Themistocles son of Neocles of Phrearrhioi made the motion. The city shall be entrusted to Athena, Athens' protectress, and to the other gods, all of them, for protection and defense against the Barbarian on behalf of the country. The Athenians in their entirety and the aliens who live in Athens shall place their children and their women in Troezen, [to be entrusted to Theseus ?] the founder of the land. The elderly and movable property shall for safety be deposited at Salamis. The treasurers and the priestesses are to remain on the Acropolis and...

The government is set on expediting the privatization of the Piraeus Port Authority (OLP), following an agreement in principle with China’s Ocean Shipping Co (COSCO) for a 224-million-euro expansion of container terminal facilities last week. “We wish to deepen our strategic relationship with China,” Merchant Marine Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis told Kathimerini in an interview. He said the government had opted to sell the majority of shares in the facility and a timetable for the tender will be announced soon. Well informed sources, close to COSCO subsidiary Piraeus Container Terminal which has operated two piers at the port since 2009, have...

Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis was hospitalized on Sunday night after an attack by unknown men, said to be local authority employees, outside the extraordinary conference of the Central Association of Greek Municipalities (KEDE). Kaminis sustained injuries after exiting the building where the conference took place, while outside it there was a rally against the government's mobility scheme for the broader public sector that also concerns local authorities. On his way out he was followed by a number of men, according to reports, who abused him, punched him and inflicted damage on his car. Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou and Interior Minister...

Zack Snyder's been a busy man - not only is he currently promoting his new Superman movie Man Of Steel but on the day of the premiere he also released a teaser trailer for his next comic book movie - 300. The director took to the blue carpet in London's Leicester Square on Wednesday night alongside Henry Cavill. But while the hype builds over the Henry Cavill film, he's already looking to the next as he gears up for the 2014 release of follow up movie 300: Rise Of An Empire, which he returned to albeit as a producer and...

During the past 2,500 years, the Parthenon—the apotheosis of ancient Greek architecture—has been rocked by earthquakes, set on fire, shattered by exploding gunpowder, looted for its stunning sculptures and defaced by misguided preservation efforts. Amazingly, the ancient Athenians built the Parthenon in just eight or nine years. Repairing it is taking a bit longer.

The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World War II veterans, accused the local officials of political corruption and voter intimidation. Here is what happened: Following World War II in 1946, violence erupted when returning American soldiers discovered their Tennessee county had been taken over by political corruption. Their plan to take it back involved bullets—lots of bullets—and dynamite. Why Athens in McMinn County, Tennessee became a battleground was due to Paul Cantrell,...

Members of Greek extremist political party Golden Dawn try to open a 'Greeks only' soup kitchen in Athens, as anti-immigrant feeling bubbles against a backdrop of increasing poverty. Mayor Giorgos Kaminis had banned such events in the city's central square and vowed not to allow the "soup kitchen of hate" to take place

Hundreds of people were fighting eachother on the streets of Athens during a food giveaway, prompting an outcry over the growing desperation created by economic crisis. Farmers protesting against government cuts gave away 50 tonnes of free vegetables and fruit in the Greek capital earlier today, causing chaos in the streets as impoverished and hungry people elbowed their way to the stalls. Startling images of Greeks struggling to seize bags of tomatoes and leeks thrown from a truck outside the Agriculture Ministry have sparked further debate about poverty in the debt-ridden nation. ‘These images make me angry.

Tens of thousands of neo-Nazis rallied in Athens in support of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party, in the movement's largest demonstration of support since its rise to power in last June’s general election. Men dressed in military uniforms, holding torches, donning swastikas and chanting anti-immigrant slogans, marched through central Athens in what was reportedly a memorial event paying tribute to the party’s “fallen soldiers,” The International Business Times reported. "This is a day of remembrance. It's a day to remember that Golden Dawn is here to stay. And so long as it does, there will be hope for the country,"...

Why we can't give up our guns. This brings back memories of the Gore recount in Florida where the vote counters tried to do their business behind closed doors and the patriots that put a stop to it.

A mysterious "snake goddess" painted on terracotta and discovered in Athens may actually be Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest. Once linked to the worship of the dead, the goddess is flanked by two snakes on a slab of terracotta about the size of a piece of notebook paper. She has her hands up above her head, which has given her the nickname "the touchdown goddess"... This unusual piece of art was found amid a jumble of gravel and other terracotta fragments in 1932 in what was once the Athenian agora, or public square. The catch, however, is that...

The mob boss from the south of Europe encounters an unexpected demonstration as he makes his rounds in Athens one September morning... Greco was feeling sorry for himself. As his career decline approached four years of sheer misery, he was beginning to wish he had become a fisherman, hotel clerk, tour guide, archaeologist… heck, anything would be better than running the rackets in times like these. How do you shake people down when the people don’t have anything left to be shaken out of them? Wednesday, September 26 was a particularly bad day for Greco, as he wandered through Athens...

Eight years after Greece spent ~$15 billion to stage the 2004 Summer Olympics, some of those once-gleaming venues are crumbling. The economy is a part of it, but so is the fact that many of these venues were built only for sports with little local interest (like softball), and now have no use. A number of Greek officials admitted to the AFP that there was a lack of planning, and no one considered what they would be used for after the Games. Despite all that, many of the venues from the 2004 Games are still going strong. The Olympic Stadium,...

8 Years Later, Athens Olympic Venues in Decay There's still one group that loves the training pool for athletes at the former Olympic village in Athens' northern fringe. Frogs. They appear to delight in sitting on debris that floats on the half-filled pool's murky waters. The athletes village itself has fared somewhat better, turned into housing for workers. Eight years after the 2004 Athens Games, many of the Olympic venues Greece built at great expense remain abandoned or rarely used. They are the focus of great public anger as the country struggles through a fifth year of recession and nearly...

Gunmen driving a van packed with gas canisters firebombed the Athens headquarters of Microsoft on Wednesday. Fire gutted the ground floor of the blue four-story HQ of the U.S. software giant, blackening its walls with flames, on the eve of yet another European summit seeking a solution to a regional debt crisis first unleashed by Greece. At least two attackers were involved in the sophisticated assault at 4.45 a.m. in Maroussi, a northern suburb of the sprawling Greek capital, police said. Brandishing pistols and an automatic rifle, they kept security guards at bay and set fire to the van carrying...

LONDON — This island off the course of northwest Europe is turning out to be an excellent viewing platform for three blockbuster shows this summer: Queen Elizabeth’s 60th anniversary Jubilee, the London Olympics and the implosion of Europe. The group of countries using the euro as a joint currency is “a burning building with no exits,” says Britain’s foreign minister William Hague. The Europeans with flames lapping around their ankles are the Greeks, but the whole continent is about to feel the burn. Yoking most of Europe together with a single currency has proved as unstable as Napoleon or Hitler...

When Patrick Greene learned that a county five hours north of his San Antonio home had placed a nativity on the courthouse square, he vowed to file suit if they did it again, the Malakoff News reported. An atheist, Greene did not believe the religious symbol of Christmas had any place on government property. Then, as quickly as he blew into Henderson County, he withdrew. He would not lead a rally, he told reporters there, because he believed he suffered from a detached retina and was going blind. He had to leave his job as a taxi driver, he elaborated,...