Free Republic

Video LinkIt's springtime and I'm in love!If you've got a pulse (and you're a guy), you will be too.

"Keeping Up With the Kardashians" star Khloe Kardashian is apologizing after dropping the R-word in a live Instagram video on Thursday. The new mom of True Thompson did an Instagram live featuring her and her sister Kourtney doing their morning workout with their trainer. In the video, Kardashian becomes frustrated with her older sister who was trying to sync their smartphones but seemed to be having trouble. According to Us Weekly, Kardashian was heard in the video saying to her sister, "Yes, you can, you f–-ing r-----d." And as Kourtney appeared to have more trouble with the devices, True's mom...

Maureen O'Hara died in her sleep at her home in Ireland today. She was 95 years old

The actor Maureen O’Hara, famed for her flaming red hair and her role in The Quiet Man, has died aged 95. Her family confirmed in a statement that the Irish-American film actress and singer passed away peacefully in her sleep on Saturday. “It is with a sad heart that we share the news that Maureen O’Hara passed away today in her sleep of natural causes,” a statement from the Fitzsimons family read.

Auburn, strawberry blonde, red, whatever the shade of hair, thousands of redheads were present at today's international Redhead Day. Ginger-haired people from all over the world gathered in the city of Breda, The Netherlands, for 'Roodharigendag' - the annual day where everything beautiful about the flame-haired population is celebrated. The festival started in 2005 when Dutch painter Bart Rouwenhorst decided he wanted to paint 15 redheads. He advertised for models and received 150 replies. Gradually over time, the festival has grown in popularity, with around 5,000 people attending the gatherings every year.

Over the centuries, they’ve been scorned, persecuted and marginalized. But it was an example of modern-day disdain towards redheads that prompted an Italian photographer’s mission to safeguard their diversity, The Local has learned. Let’s face it, redheads get a tough time, especially in the early years of their life. I should know, because I am one. But more on that later. Marina Rosso, a 29-year-old fine art photographer and researcher from Udine, is not a redhead as the English translation of her surname might suggest. But after hearing in 2011 that flame-haired men were being rejected from the world’s largest...

She’s got copper-colored locks, a peppy personality, an ethnically diverse group of friends, and she knows how to talk millions of Americans into buying a Monterey Ranch Crispy Chicken Sandwich. She’s the Wendy’s Girl. The actress who has played the all-knowing, slightly kooky burger lover for two years is a 28-year-old Alabama native named Morgan Smith Goodwin. (She added her second surname after marrying Dave Goodwin, manager of New York City restaurant Gramercy Tavern.) And while her character has remained nameless in the fast food chain’s TV commercials, it’s not a far stretch to assume she’s Wendy, the freckled little...

A DNA expert has has made the bold claim that ginger hair gene could die out if Scotland climate improves. REDHEADS could become extinct as Scotland gets sunnier, experts have claimed. The gene that causes red hair is thought to be an evolutionary response to the lack of sun in Scotland. Redhead colouring allows people to get the maximum vitamin D from what little sun there is. Only one to two per cent of the world’s population has red hair but in Scotland the figure is about 13 per cent, or 650,000 people.

Scientists believe the gene that causes red hair could die out if temperatures continue to rise Polar bears and Emperor penguins aren't the only species under threat due to climate change. Gingers could become extinct as a result of increasingly sunny skies, experts have warned. Scientists believe the gene that causes red hair is an evolutionary response to cloudy skies and allows inhabitants to get as much Vitamin D as possible. But if predictions of rising temperatures and blazing sunshine across the British Isles turn out to be correct, flaming red heads could cease to exist within centuries. While only...

Full headline: Treasure trove of skulls reveal missing link in human evolution: Facial bones suggest early Neanderthals used their teeth as a 'third hand' The 17 skulls belong to a single population of a fossil hominin species This is the biggest collection of human fossils ever found on one site They shed light on pre-human evolution from around 400,000 years ago Skulls showed Neanderthal features in face and teeth but not elsewhere These features evolved due to eating and perhaps for use as a 'third hand' Study adds to theories that the Neanderthals developed their characteristic looks slowly, and intermittently,...

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...

Their very name has become a byword for all that is brutish, stupid and crude. In the popular imagination, these were the violent, shambling, grunting apemen of legend. If you accuse someone of being a Neanderthal, you are not paying them a compliment. But Neanderthal Man, who represented one of the oddest and most mysterious chapters in the history of humanity, has been undergoing something of a makeover in recent years. We now know that these extinct cousins were not the brutes of legend but a sophisticated and intelligent species, capable of creating fire, fashioning delicate tools, burying their dead...

The gene known as MC1R suggests the Neanderthals had fair skin and even freckles like redheads. After analysing the fossil bones found in a cave in north-west Spain, the experts concluded they had human blood group "O" and were genetically more likely to be fair skinned, perhaps even with freckles, have red or ginger hair and could talk... The report, published in BMC Evolutionary Biology, concludes that: "These results suggest the genetic change responsible for the O blood group in humans predates the human and Neanderthal divergence" but came "after humans separated from their common ancestor ... chimpanzees." ...One gene...

DNA reveals Neanderthal redheadsNeanderthals’ pigmentation possibly as varied as humans’, scientists say By Steve BradtWith Neanderthals’ surviving bones providing few clues, scientists have long sought to flesh out the appearance of this hominid species. Illustration created by Knut Finstermeier, Neanderthal reconstruction by the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum Mannheim 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...

What would it have been like to meet a Neandertal? Researchers have hypothesized answers for decades, seeking to put flesh on ancient bones. But fossils are silent on many traits, from hair and skin color to speech and personality. Personality will have to wait, but in a paper published online in Science this week (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1147417), an international team announces that it has extracted a pigmentation gene, mc1r, from the bones of two Neandertals. The researchers conclude that at least some Neandertals had pale skin and red hair, similar to some of the Homo sapiens who today inhabit their European homeland....

Neanderthals roamed as far as Siberia 18:00 30 September 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi DNA extracted from skeletal remains has shown that Neanderthals roamed some 2000 kilometres further east than previously thought. Researchers say the genetic sequence of an adolescent Neanderthal found in southern Siberia closely matches that of Neanderthals found in western Europe, suggesting that this close relative of modern humans migrated very long distances. Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues examined skeletal remains found in the Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains and dated as between 30,000 and...

London - Red hair may be the genetic legacy of Neanderthals, according to a new study by British scientists. Researchers at the John Radcliffe Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford were quoted by The Times as saying the so-called "ginger gene" which gives people red hair, fair skin and freckles could be up to 100 000 years old. They claim that their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man who lived in Europe for 200 000 years before Homo sapien settlers, the ancestors of modern man, arrived from Africa about 40 000 years ago. Rosalind Harding, the...

Siberian Graveyard's Secrets YEKATERINBURG, Russia In a medieval Siberian graveyard a few miles south of the Arctic Circle, Russian scientists have unearthed mummies roughly 1,000 years old, clad in copper masks, hoops and plates - burial rites that archaeologists say they have never seen before. . Among 34 shallow graves were five mummies shrouded in copper and blankets of reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Unlike the remains of Egyptian pharaohs, the scientists say, the Siberian bodies were mummified by accident. The cold, dry permafrost preserved the remains, and the copper may have helped prevent oxidation. . The discovery adds...

Denmark Sperm bank turns down redheads The world's largest sperm bank has started turning down redheaded donors because there is too little demand for their sperm. By Richard Orange 4:41PM BST 16 Sep 2011 Ole Schou, Cryos's director, said that there had been a surge in donations in recent years, allowing the facility to become much more picky about its donors. "There are too many redheads in relation to demand," he told told Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet. "I do not think you chose a redhead, unless the partner - for example, the sterile male - has red hair, or because the...

Russia has offered a mass Cold War-style 'spy swap' deal to the U.S., it was revealed today. The deal could see up to 11 convicted spies - allegedly including a Russian colonel - exchanged for 'femme fatale' Anna Chapman and her co-accused. Chapman is being held with nine others in the U.S. on accusations of being part of a 'deep cover' spy ring in the U.S. Read more: