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Orchard Park police are investigating a particularly gruesome killing, the beheading of a woman, after her husband -- an influential member of the local Muslim community -- reported her death to police Thursday. Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Detectives have charged her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder. "He came to the police station at 6:20 p.m. [Thursday] and told us that she was dead," Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz said late this morning. Muzzammil Hassan told police that his wife was at his business, Bridges TV, on Thorn Avenue in the village. Officers...

Note: Video included. January 21, 2009 For hate speech -- after declining to do so last year, which means that Islamic supremacist groups in the Netherlands have kept up the pressure on lawmakers until they got the outcome they wanted. Hate speech, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and hate speech laws are tools in the hands of the powerful that they can use to silence the powerless and crush dissent. And make no mistake: even though the Muslims in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the West present themselves as embattled victims of racism and "Islamophobia," that...

Almost 500 years ago, on the wall of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, characterizing as "madness" the notion that papal pardons could absolve individuals for their sins. As viewed from Rome, Luther had maligned, even defamed, the church. Luther was eventually excommunicated. His conduct ultimately led to the creation of a Protestant Church in Germany and a Reformation throughout Europe. It is difficult to believe that in the 21st century anyone would seriously propose that conduct such as Luther's should be deemed illegal. But a few weeks ago, the General Assembly of the...

In a recently conducted study, a multidisciplinary French-American research team with expertise in archaeology, past climates, and ecology reported that Neanderthal extinction was principally a result of competition with Cro-Magnon populations, rather than the consequences of climate change. The study, reported in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE on December 24, figures in the ongoing debate on the reasons behind the eventual disappearance of Neanderthal populations, which occupied Europe prior to the arrival of human populations like us around 40,000 years ago. Led by Dr William E. Banks, the authors, who belong to the French Centre National de la Recherche...

Eat like a caveman for a healthy heart By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent Last Updated: 8:28PM BST 08/05/2008 A “caveman diet” of berries, nuts, lean meat and fish could help reduce the risk of developing heart disease, a new study shows. Scientists found that volunteers who ate the stone age fare for just three weeks had lowered blood pressure and a reduced risk of clots. They also lost an average of five pounds in weight.Meat, as long as it is lean, is beneficial Our early ancestors lived on a diet lacking in cereals, dairy products and refined sugar for centuries...

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Seven women who are members of a Russian cult that has been holed up in a cave for months awaiting the end of the world have emerged and are being treated by emergency workers, regional officials said Friday. More than two dozen members who remain inside the cave could come out as early as Saturday, said the official in the governor's office of the Penza region, about 650 kilometers (400 miles) southeast of Moscow. He said four children, who were reportedly under the age of two, were among those remaining inside the cave. Penza Vice Governor...

Over the past decade, two facts have become increasingly obvious – that our ever-increasing consumption is wrecking the planet, and that continually chasing more stuff, more food and more entertainment no longer makes us any happier. Instead, levels of stress, obesity and dissatisfaction are spiralling. So why is our culture still chasing, consuming, striving ever harder, even though we know in our sophisticated minds that it’s an unrewarding route to eco-geddon? New scientific studies are helping to reveal why. It’s our primitive brains. These marvellous machines got us down from the trees and around the world, through ice ages, famines,...

'Cave man' causes trouble for nursing home A 54-year-old Norwegian man who once lived in a cave and refuses to wash is now creating a health risk at an Oslo nursing home, claim its operators. A local court has ruled, however, that he can't be forced to keep himself clean. A lawyer for the so-called "cave man" (long known as hulemannen in Oslo) told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Friday that his client was "relieved and very satisfied" by the court ruling in his favour. "He has waited a long time, and can now finally decide over his own body," lawyer...

Reindeer: It's What Was For Dinner Jennifer Viegas, Discovery NewsOnce a Staple Dec. 20, 2007 -- Reindeer meat went from being an occasional treat to everyday fare among prehistoric cavemen who lived in Southwest France and what is now the Czech Republic, two new studies suggest. In fact, so many nibbled-on reindeer bones were present in their caves that possible calendars circa 26,000 years ago might have been carved on the leftover bones. They may have also been used as counting devices or for ornamentation. The first study, authored by J. Tyler Faith, analyzed bones found in limestone cave and...

Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones of two Neanderthals suggests that at least some of them had red hair and pale skin, scientists report this week in the journal Science. The international team says that Neanderthals' pigmentation may even have been as varied as that of modern humans, and that at least 1 percent of Neanderthals were likely redheads. The scientists -- led by Holger Römpler of Harvard University and the University of Leipzig, Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona, and Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig -- extracted, amplified, and sequenced a...

Cavemen 'may have used language' By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent Last Updated: 12:42pm BST 20/10/2007 They are typically portrayed as primitive brutes capable only of grunting, but new research now suggests Neanderthals may have whiled away the hours in their caves in conversation. Neanderthals may have had their own culture Scientists who have been trawling through the DNA found in Neanderthal bones have discovered that the now extinct species had a “language gene” that is only found in modern humans. Their controversial findings create the tantalising possibility that Neanderthals were in fact capable of speech much like humans and communicated...

Guys with bulldog-like faces have been chick magnets throughout human evolutionary history. A recent study of the skulls of human ancestors and modern humans finds that women, and thereby evolution, selected for males with relatively short upper faces. The region between the brow and the upper-lip is scrunched proportionately to the overall size of their heads. Among the men who fit the bill: Will Smith and Brad Pitt. In a past study, researchers found a similar facial pattern in chimpanzees, with males having relatively shorter and broader faces compared with females, controlling for body size. Men with "mini mugs" might...

10,000 B.C. (2008) Actors Steven Strait (D'Leh) Camilla Belle (Evolet) Omar Sharif Marco Khanlian (One Eye) Cliff Curtis Nathanael Baring Timothy Barlow (The Pyramid God) Mona Hammond (Old Mother) Reece Ritchie Joel Virgel Nakudu Mo Zinal Director by Roland Emmerich Director Epic tale that centers on three stages in the development of primitive man, as seen through a 21-year-old hunter from a primitive tribe who must hunt mammoth to survive. Release Date: March 7th, 2008 (wide) Distributors: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution

A prehistoric hunter known as Oetzi whose well-preserved body was found on a snow-covered mountain in the Alps died more than 5,000 years ago after being struck in the back by an arrow, scientists said in an article published Wednesday. Researchers from Switzerland and Italy used newly developed medical scanners to examine the hunter's frozen corpse to determine that the arrow had torn a hole in an artery beneath his left collarbone, leading to a massive loss of blood. That, in turn, caused Oetzi to go into shock and suffer a heart attack, according to the article published online in...

(Scientist says modern humans, earlier species found camaraderie, and sometimes a mate, in each other) Researchers have long debated what happened when the indigenous Neanderthals of Europe met "modern humans" arriving from Africa starting some 40,000 years ago. The result was the disappearance of the Neanderthals, but what happened during the roughly 10,000 years that the two human species shared a land? A new review of the fossil record from that period has come up with a provocative conclusion: The two groups saw each other as kindred spirits and, when conditions were right, they mated.How often this happened will never...

Scientists studying pictures from Nasa's Odyssey spacecraft have spotted what they think may be seven caves on the surface of Mars. The candidate caves are on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano and are of sufficient depth their floors mostly cannot be seen through the opening. Details were presented here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. Temperature data from Mars Odyssey's Themis instrument support the idea. The authors say that the possible discovery of caves on the Red Planet is significant. The caves may be the only natural structures capable of protecting primitive life forms...

Video: The O’Reilly Factor, so easy a caveman could host it! In viewer mail last night Bill received a message saying that hosting his show is so easy a caveman could do it. Bill's reaction was classic. Video here -http://hotair.com/archives/2007/03/09/video-the-oreilly-factor-so-easy-a-caveman-could-host-it/

The ABC network said it had ordered a pilot for a comedy, tentatively titled "Cavemen," that features the characters used in a series of television ads by an insurance company. In the ads, cavemen appear insulted by a Geico insurance pitchman's claim that the company's Web site is so easy to use that "even a caveman can do it." The potential series, one of 14 pilots that will be produced by Touchstone Television this spring, features the cavemen as they "struggle with prejudice on a daily basis as they strive to live the lives of normal thirty-somethings in 2007 Atlanta."...

Iran-Cave MP from Jiroft, Ali Zadsar here Wednesday said that a village whose residents are cavemen has been discovered at the heights of the city of Jiroft near Anbarabad in the southeastern province of Kerman. Speaking on the sidelines of Majlis open session, he said that a village was discovered 120 kms from the town of Anbarabad in the winter of 2005. He added that the residents of the newly-discovered village put on no clothes and feed on leaves. Zadsar said, "The village, called Pid-Nekoupieh, is situated in the mountain and the 200 people who live there have never left...