ThunderStorm.

Situația lui Denis Alibec (34 de ani) la FCSB a devenit tot mai complicată, după ce a fost adus cu surle și trâmbițe în vară. Vârful de atac a marcat doar o singură dată de la revenirea sa în curtea campioanei României și a căzut în dizgrația lui Gigi Becali (67 de ani). ”U” Cluj a luat în calcul să îl transfere pe Denis Alibec: ”E interesant pentru orice echipă din campionat” Denis Alibec ajuns în prezent a treia opțiune pentru postul de atacant la bucureșteni, în spatele lui Daniel Bîrligea (25 de ani) și Mammadou Thiam (30 de ani). Nemulțumit de statutul său, vârful de atac ar fi decis să plece în iarnă, iar o primă echipă s-a arătat deja interesată de semnătura sa: Universitatea Cluj. Radu Constantea, președintele clubului ardelean, a confirmat că ”Șepcile roșii” vor analiza o posibilă mutare în mercato-ul din iarnă. ”Vor fi schimbări în iarnă, dar vom face analize. Alibec e interesant pentru orice echipă din campionat. E jucătorul lor și nu pot comenta acum. Vom analiza situația sa în iarnă, alături de tot staff-ul”, a declarat Radu Constantea, conform iamsport.ro. 600.000 de euro este cota de piață a lui Denis Alibec, conform Transfermarkt. 12 apariții a avut Denis Alibec în acest sezon pentru FCSB. https://m.digisport.ro/fotbal/liga-1/denis-alibec-e-tot-mai-aproape-de-plecarea-de-la-fcsb-echipa-din-superliga-interesata-de-transfer-3895443

Dacă ți-ai pierdut mirosul, nu da vina doar pe o răceală. Ar putea fi un semn că inima ta are nevoie de ajutor. Pierderea simțului mirosului ar putea fi un semnal de alarmă timpuriu pentru bolile de inimă. Cercetătorii au analizat datele medicale a peste 5.000 de adulți cu vârsta medie de 75 de ani, fără antecedente cardiace. Participanții au fost împărțiți în funcție de cât de bine puteau identifica mirosuri obișnuite, notează DailyMail. Pe parcursul a aproape zece ani de urmărire, cei cu un simț al mirosului slab au avut un risc de două ori mai mare de a dezvolta boală coronariană în primii patru ani, comparativ cu persoanele cu miros normal. Un miros slab poate fi legat nu doar de probleme nazale sau neurologice, ci și de vase de sânge deteriorate la nivelul nasului, un semn al unui sistem cardiovascular afectat. În plus, pierderea mirosului poate influența nutriția, sănătatea mintală și starea generală de bine, factori care contribuie indirect la bolile de inimă. https://www.stiripesurse.ro/pierderea-mirosului-simptom-boli-inima_3826184

Perhaps the most notorious of Ozzy Osbourne’s outrageous on-stage antics was biting the head off of a bat. So as tributes for the late rocker poured in from around the globe, one stuck out as particularly surprising – from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta). The 76-year-old Black Sabbath frontman’s death was announced on Tuesday, with his family saying Osbourne – who suffered from various ailments, including a form of Parkinson’s disease – “was with his family and surrounded by love”. Tributes soon poured in for Osbourne from musical world luminaries such as Elton John, Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart … and Peta, the famously strident animal-protection group. “Ozzy Osbourne was a legend and a provocateur, but Peta will remember the ‘Prince of Darkness’ most fondly for the gentle side he showed to animals – most recently cats, by using his fame to decry painful, crippling declawing mutilations,” Peta said on its website and social channels. “Ozzy may have been the singer, but his wife, Sharon, and his daughter, Kelly, were of one voice when it meant protecting animals. “Ozzy will be missed by animal advocates the world over.” Osbourne had famously partnered with the organisation in 2020 to speak out against the declawing of cats, and lent his face to an ad campaign showing his bloodied hands with the tagline: “It’s an amputation. Not a manicure.” “Amputating a cat’s toes is twisted and wrong. If your couch is more important to you than your cat’s health and happiness, you don’t deserve to have an animal! Get cats a scratching post – don’t mutilate them for life,” Osbourne was quoted as saying at the time. Peta suggests that those looking to protect their pets to seek out “humane ways to prevent cats from scratching on furniture”. As well as biting the head off a dead bat he believed to be a stage prop in 1982 while performing in Iowa – and later going to hospital for a rabies inoculation – Osbourne also claimed to have bitten the heads off two doves during a record label meeting the year before, supposedly having brought them to the meeting to release as a sign of peace. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jul/23/ozzy-osborune-animals-peta

A man who was apparently trying to reach Spain from Morocco using a rubber ring and flippers has been rescued after he was spotted by a family sailing to the Balearic islands. The family were on their yacht 13 nautical miles south of the Andalucían town of Benalmádena on the Costa del Sol, on 16 July when they manoeuvred around the stern of an oil tanker and saw something moving on the waves. According to the Diario Sur newspaper, they assumed it was a bird until they looked through a pair of binoculars and realised it was a person. Video of the rescue, shared on social media by the Spanish Royal Assembly of Yacht Captains (RAECY), shows the exhausted young man swimming towards the yacht as a rope is thrown for him to grab. After bringing him on to the boat, the family gave him water, clothes and a cup of soup. “We’ve called in a shipwrecked man and we’re going to pick him up,” says a man in the footage as he pans the camera around the empty waters. “It’s incredible where he is because just look, all the passing boats are really far away from him.” Sources at the RAECY said the man was wearing a wetsuit and was equipped with only the ring and a pair of flippers. “He almost didn’t speak,” they said. The family headed for the port of Estepona but were met by a maritime rescue service vessel at sea that took the man to port in Málaga and handed him over to police and the Red Cross. Such dangerous crossings are not uncommon. “Dozens of migrants try to reach Spain like this, using the only basic means they can afford,” wrote María Martín, migration correspondent for the Spanish daily newspaper El País. She said it was a method often used by young men trying to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in north Africa, but added it was less common among those trying to cross the wider stretch of the Alborán Sea between Morocco and Spain. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/22/man-rescued-trying-to-reach-spain-from-morocco-in-rubber-ring-and-flippers

If you came to this Derbyshire spot in winter, with all its down-at-heel problems of congested traffic, air pollution, dense housing and largely garden-free conditions, the bottom of Fairfield Road would be about the last place in Buxton you’d imagine to find breeding house martins. Yet it is about the only place in town with a good-sized colony of these exquisite if declining summer migrants, so unpicking why they have persisted here and gone almost everywhere else locally is instructive. One element may be the height of the terrace housing. The buildings are on three floors and the overhanging eaves, where martins locate their mud-cup nests, are beyond the reach of “tidy-minded” souls worried about droppings below. A more certain factor is that the back of Fairfield is only a house martin’s swoop away from what was once the town tip called Hogshaw. Yet in the last half-century it has been redeemed by nature and smothered in sallow and birch woodland. Those two are among our most insect-friendly tree species, and the resulting abundance of invertebrates which not only accounts for the birds’ presence here, but determines almost everything about house martins. They may weigh just 19g and, when perched on the nest lip, remind you of tiny pied mice, but they are global wanderers, travelling from sub-Saharan latitudes to profit from the northern hemisphere’s peak insect abundance in April-September. Come autumn, they return south to some largely unknown portion of Africa. Those journeys really put into context those projects for helping martins, or swifts, which address only their nesting places or which work by erecting artificial nests. In a sense, you can’t give martins a home, as some conservation groups advertise in their strapline: because their home is the whole world. If you’re going to help house martins, then think mainly about the insects of which the birds are made. That’s why Hogshaw, the old tip, needs to become Buxton’s newest nature reserve, a place outside human design, a zone set aside for its semi-wild character and for its wildlife, which local people can cherish. Achieving that goal would give Buxton’s house martins real hope of a genuine home. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/15/country-diary-for-these-birds-home-is-where-the-food-is

Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, called an early recess as Democrats push for a vote to release the Epstein files. Key US politics stories from Tuesday 22 July at a glance. House speaker says calls for an Epstein files vote ‘political games’ Republicans downplayed the decision to cut short the workweek, while arguing that the White House has already moved to resolve questions about the case. Last week, Trump asked the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to release grand jury testimony, although that is expected to be only a fraction of the case’s documents. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, dismissed the calls for a vote as “political games” and also argued that Congress must be careful in calling for the release of documents related to the case, for fear of retraumatizing his victims. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/23/trump-administration-news-updates-today

The Jeffrey Epstein files scandal swirling around Donald Trump and his administration continued to escalate on Thursday as officials from the Department of Justice met with the late sex offender’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, whose lawyer said she “answered every question … honestly and to the best of her ability”. Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, arrived on Thursday morning at the office of the US attorney in Tallahassee, Florida, ABC News reported. The state prosecutor’s office is based in the federal courthouse in the Florida capital and Maxwell’s lawyers were also seen entering the building, the TV network reported. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking and other crimes at a federal prison in Florida, after being convicted in New York in late 2021. On Thursday afternoon, Maxwell’s attorney David Markus said that his team and Blanche had a “very productive day”, Fox News reported, adding that Markus declined to comment on whether Maxwell and Blanche would meet again on Friday. “[Blanche] took a full day and asked a lot of questions,” Markus said, adding: “Miss Maxwell answered every single question. She never stopped. She never invoked a privilege. She never declined to answer. She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability.” The meeting comes amid growing political and public pressure on the Trump administration to release more details about the Epstein investigation – something that Trump and members of his administration had promised. Mark Epstein, the brother of the disgraced financier, told the Guardian in an interview that if he had the opportunity he would ask Maxwell “what she and Jeffrey might have known what the dirt was on Donald Trump”. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/24/ghislaine-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein-doj

i like v2 more than v1, i love the text , effect. Good job!

“How the Democrats lost the working-class vote”, ran the headline on the New York Times’s front page on 6 January. According to the Times, the Democrats’ estrangement from the working class was decades in the making. The party’s enthusiastic embrace of trade and globalization led to the closure of factories across industrial America, eliminating jobs that had been a prime source of stability, identity and prestige. While many Democrats attributed Trump’s success to the left’s embrace of “woke” language and causes like transgender rights, the Times observed, the economic seeds of his victories “were sown long ago”. A longtime AFL-CIO official was quoted as saying that “one of the things that has been frustrating about the narrative ‘the Democrats are losing the working class’ is that people are noticing it half a century after it happened”. Given the long incubation of this development, one might say the Times itself was late in recognizing it. But the question remains: how can Democrats win back those working-class voters? One key question has dominated: should the party move to the left or tack toward the center? Should it stress progressivism or moderation? In a way, though, it’s a false choice. The Democrats could combine both approaches in a policy of pragmatic populism, fusing the insurgent ideas and galvanizing fire of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with the plainspoken bread-and-butter appeal of a Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto-repair shop owner who represents a rural district in Washington state. Pragmatic populism would offer sweeping solutions to the economic anxiety facing so many American families but without the polarizing rhetoric. It would avoid labels like “oligarch” and “tycoon”, drop references to socialism and redistribution and refrain from saying that billionaires should not exist (even though a strong case can be made for that proposition). Instead, pragmatic populists would adopt a message of “let us join together to create a more perfect union”. They would promote the idea of a social contract, founded on the notion that those who have surged ahead economically have an obligation to help those who have been left behind. They would argue that the .01% have thrived thanks to an economic system built over decades of public investment in schools, roads, ports, communications, regulatory agencies, the police and the courts, and that the very wealthy need to “give back” (as super-rich philanthropists are fond of saying) so that ordinary working people can share fully in the fruits. To consider how this would work, take the issue of childcare. A pragmatic populist would say: “The skyrocketing cost of childcare is crushing families across the country. In New York City, the typical family is spending a quarter of its income on such care, and many parents, especially mothers, have to quit the workforce to look after their kids. And childcare providers earn so little that many are leaving the industry. We need to provide parents more in tax credits and providers more in wage subsidies. The cost will not be negligible, but such a policy would not only ease the struggles of parents but also make them more productive workers. So we’re going to ask corporations and the very wealthy to contribute somewhat more in taxes to help make that happen.” Or take dental care. While food deserts have gotten a lot of attention, dentistry deserts have not. According to the CDC, nearly 60 million Americans live in areas in which dental services are in short supply. Even where such services are available, the cost of root canals, implants and crowns can be prohibitive, especially for the working class. Two-thirds of the shortages are in rural America, and a program to expand the Affordable Care Act to include dental insurance could help the Democrats make inroads in a part of the US they have all but lost. Small businesses offer another ripe constituency. Such enterprises (defined as having revenues of less than $40m and workforces of under 500) make up more than 99% of all firms in the country. Many of them are hampered by fines, fees and red tape. The Democrats have long been seen as indifferent or even hostile to this sector. In a promising sign of change, the New York mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, has proposed creating a “mom-and-pop czar” to help ease the regulatory burden on the city’s bodegas, pharmacies, barber shops and beauty salons. These businesses also have a hard time getting credit. Most are too small to interest the mega banks that dominate the US financial system. The thousands of small banks in the country that do cater to this community are themselves under tremendous strain. The Democrats could propose ways of easing the availability of credit for small-business owners, especially Black and Latino ones, who often lack the necessary credit records and collateral. The hemorrhaging of Black and Latino voters is among the most troubling developments for Democrats. Many complain that the party shows up every four years asking for their vote, then forgets about them. During the recent election, Trump’s surge among Latinos in Texas’s Rio Grande valley offered a stinging rebuke to a party that had long counted on their support. “I think Democrats have historically taken the Rio Grande valley for granted,” Beto O’Rourke, the former senatorial candidate, told the Guardian last summer. “Republicans saw an opportunity, they’re hungry, and they’ve gone after it, investing money and running strong candidates with resources behind them.” The Democrats have by contrast spent heavily on Washington-based consultants and lobbyists, starving local operations of funds and hollowing out the party’s infrastructure on the ground. Where the Democrats are present, they have a reputation for being bad listeners given to lecturing people about what’s good for them. This has to change. Here are some recommendations for Democrats – politicians and otherwise: Don’t ask what’s the matter with Kansas. Don’t ask how Trump voters can vote against their interests. Don’t ask evangelical Christians how they can support someone like Trump. Don’t claim that the facts and science are on your side. Don’t claim that Trump voters are victims of disinformation. Don’t blame the Democrats’ unpo[CENSORED]rity on Fox News and other rightwing outlets. Don’t campaign with celebrities. Don’t sermonize when discussing climate change. Don’t call Trump supporters stupid. That last suggestion might pose the greatest challenge of all. Even after the accumulation of so much evidence about the resentment that blue-collar Americans feel at the hands of white-collar liberals, condescension remains rampant. This was clear from the more than 2,000 reader comments posted on the Times article about the Democrats’ loss of the working class. Some samples: “They’re just dumb, bitter jerks who were looking for permission to be as resentful and judgmental in public as they were in private.” “The working class has, by and large, left the 4th estate for the purveyors of disinformation.” “I have to live with trump as president the next 4 years and possibly the rest of my life because of these ‘working class’ idiots who vote against their own interests.” “Most working class people are not reading the NYT, or any conventional news sources—this goes double for the Trump supporters amongst them. They are ignorant.” In the end, such an outlook is neither pragmatic nor populist. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/23/democrats-progressives-centrists-future

An attempt by the New South Wales government to reintroduce koalas to a forest in the state’s far south has failed after more than half of the moved animals died, including two with signs of septicaemia, and the remaining marsupials were taken into care. The translocation and deaths of seven out of 13 koalas in April were not made public by the government, prompting questions about whether something went wrong with the project and calls from the NSW Greens for a review. The project was aiming to re-establish a koala po[CENSORED]tion in an area of south-eastern NSW where the species is locally extinct. Translocation is part of NSW’s koala strategy to try to improve the trajectory of the endangered species, at risk of extinction in the state. A spokesperson for the NSW environment department told Guardian Australia 13 koalas were selected for translocation in April and moved from “a high-density po[CENSORED]tion” in the Upper Nepean state conservation area west of Wollongong to the South East Forest national park near Bega. They said three koalas died within a two-day period in early April, which led the department’s project team to put the remaining 10 animals into a wildlife hospital. Four more koalas died. They said necropsy results from two of the first three koalas that died revealed chronic and acute infections of the lungs and liver, suggesting septicaemia – a bloodstream infection – “as the likely cause of death”. Koalas face death, attacks and starvation as blue gums chopped down in Victoria Read more The spokesperson said the remaining six koalas were healthy and returned to their original habitat in the Upper Nepean. They said the reintroduction project was immediately put on hold for research to try to establish what caused the deaths. The team was “investigating a potential link between septicaemia in koalas and adverse weather conditions, as the mortalities occurred four to five days after a significant rainfall event,” they said. “We believe prolonged wet weather can pose serious health risks to koalas, disrupting feeding behaviour, inhibiting thermoregulation, and weakening the immune system.” They said the project team, in collaboration with researchers and veterinarians, would continue investigating “the potential impact of heavy rainfall, as well as factors such as diet, nutrition, and gut microbiome on the success of future translocations”. The state Greens environment spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said the incident was “deeply distressing” and sent “a very cynical message that the government is focused on [a] high risk and failed koala program effort” while habitat destruction for development and logging continued. “This koala translocation experiment has been a catastrophic failure and raises serious questions about how it happened,” she said. “The control settings around this translocation experiment must now be brought into question and reviewed because it would appear they were flawed. “It is deeply concerning that the government allowed this program in the circumstances and given the outcomes, it’s clear they shouldn’t have.” Carolyn Hogg, a professor of biodiversity and conservation at the University of Sydney, said wildlife translocation could be complex and the deaths were “a really unfortunate event”. “We do know unexpected weather events may cause pathogens to unexpectedly appear,” she said. Hogg said for NSW koala po[CENSORED]tions under pressure from habitat fragmentation and isolation, translocation projects were a management tool that could improve gene flow and genetic diversity. Valentina Mella is a senior lecturer in animal behaviour and conservation at the University of Sydney. Speaking generally, she said there were important scientific questions that should be considered before translocating wildlife into a new area. “When you move an animal into a habitat that is considered suitable for that species but that species is not actually present, you have to ask yourself why,” she said. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/14/more-than-half-of-koalas-relocated-to-nsw-forest-died-in-failed-government-attempt-at-reintroduction

Our spy photographers caught what we thought was a Ford Bronco Sport Raptor testing without camouflage, but it's actually just a joke. The fake Raptor version of Ford's compact crossover sits higher, partially thanks to BFGoodrich Mud-Terrain T/A KM3 tires. The prototype also has larger exhaust pipes and two mufflers instead of one, but we now know that a real-life Bronco Sport Raptor isn't in the cards. UPDATE 7/24/25, 6:50 p.m.: A Ford spokesperson confirmed to Car and Driver that the Bronco Sport "Raptor" that was captured in our spy photos isn't a real upcoming model. Instead, it's more of an internal joke. "This is our team having fun, not a Bronco Sport Raptor. Just like our customers, we encourage employees to leverage the customization superpowers of the Bronco family and continue to explore possibilities," the spokesperson said in an email. Once exclusive to the F-150 pickup truck, the Raptor nameplate has begun spreading through the Ford lineup. Along with the F-150 Raptor and V-8-powered F-150 Raptor R, Ford now sells a Raptor variant of the Bronco off-roader and a Raptor-ized version of the smaller Ranger pickup. It appears that Ford isn't stopping there: our spy photographers have caught this Raptor-badged Ford Bronco Sport prototype testing, and it seems to pack some serious hardware upgrades. The Bronco Sport Raptor prototype wears no camouflage, curiously, and it proudly displays Raptor badges on the front doors and tailgate. The former appears to be the emblem from the tailgate of the Bronco Raptor, while the latter looks like the badge from the rear of the Ranger Raptor. The prototype also sports a Sasquatch sticker on the rear fender, suggesting that this vehicle may have started life as a Badlands Sasquatch model, a new addition to the Bronco Sport lineup for 2025. There's also a sticker on the rear window depicting Mothman, a cryptid that was reportedly spotted prowling West Virginia in the 1960s, spawning a series of tall tales. We're not sure what to draw from this sticker, and it might just be Ford engineers having a bit of fun, given that the Sasquatch package is already named for a legendary cryptid. The steel front bumper and bull bar look identical to those of the Sasquatch, but there are some notable differences on this Raptor prototype. The fender flares are wider and feature exposed rivets. This Bronco Sport looks to have a taller ride height, which could come in part from a revised suspension. But that extra ground clearance is also thanks to the beefy BFGoodrich Mud-Terrain T/A KM3 tires, a significant upgrade over the Sasquatch model's Goodyear Territory all-terrain rubber. Unfortunately, we don't know the tire sizes, as Ford's engineers appear to have scraped off the tire code on the sidewalls. Interestingly, the KM3 is a more serious off-road tire than the BFGoodrich KO2s fitted to all other Raptor models, with more of a focus on traction in mud and on rocks at the sacrifice of on-road performance. The prototype is also sporting a new exhaust setup. Instead of a single muffler that leads to two exhaust tips, there are two separate mufflers that each lead to much larger exhaust outlets. This could mean that the Bronco Sport Raptor could add some extra oomph on top of the 250 horsepower put out by the turbocharged inline-four. We're not entirely sure what to make of this prototype. Ford could be developing a new Bronco Sport Raptor, or it could just be testing upgrades to the Sasquatch package or other optional equipment, with the Raptor badges meant to fool us. If this does enter production as a Bronco Sport Raptor, we expect even more design changes to differentiate it from lesser Bronco Sport models, starting with a bolder grille featuring the large "FORD" badging like other Raptor models. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a65501680/ford-bronco-sport-raptor-spy-photos/