There’s no question that Kelly Osbourne was very close to her father, the late Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne. His passing in the summer of 2025 left not just Kelly but all of her siblings and his wife, Sharon Osbourne, positively devastated. Ozzy played a final show with his Black Sabbath bandmates, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward on July 5 at Birmingham’s Villa Park in the United Kingdom. He passed just a few weeks later, on July 22. Just shy of 11 months since her dad’s death, Kelly Osbourne attended the Royal Ascot in style. View this post on Instagram A post shared by MTN (@movietvnewsofficial) Kelly Osbourne Paid Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne at the Royal Ascot Kelly Osbourne wore a simple black dress and a fascinator with a large bat on top to the 2026 Royal Ascot. In an online video, she admitted the look was dedicated to Ozzy. Her father very famously bit the head off a bat in 1982 after mistaking it for a toy. It was a story that sounds too crazy to be real, but it’s 100% true and one of the tales that made Ozzy Osbourne one of a kind. Fans loved seeing Kelly Osbourne at Royal Ascot and noticed she looked well after months of commentary about her weight. “Getting her smile back slowly but surely. Bless her,” a fan wrote. This person concurred, writing, “So great to see you smiling, @kellyosbourne ! Sending you tons of love, hugs, and light!” One fan tried to help explain Kelly’s grief. “I’m not one to ever body shame but it is so good to see Kelly looking healthier now… grief can make you so unwell and she’s really been through it with losing her dad and the end of a big relationship. So much pressure on her as a celebrity also… I just hope she continues to get better and be happy,” they shared. Losing your father is never easy, but Kelly seems full of joy once again. This story’s featured image is by Max Cisotti/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Royal Ascot

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM A dam fell in Iceland last December, the first the country has ever deliberately dismantled. The structure on the River Melsá had long since stopped generating power. Sheep were living in the old powerhouse. “It wasn’t providing any electricity,” said Hamish Moir, a river engineer from CBEC, the Scottish firm that provided technical support for the demolition. To see the river restored to its natural state, he said, was “really rewarding.” That would have been a footnote in a quieter year. Then the European numbers came in. A record 602 river barriers were removed across the continent in 2025, up 11 percent from the year before, according to a new report from Dam Removal Europe. The removals reconnected 2,324 miles (3,740 kilometers) of rivers, pushing the EU closer to its goal of restoring 15,500 miles of waterways to their natural state by 2030. A sixfold increase in six years The pace has accelerated sharply. River barrier removals across Europe have grown sixfold since the first official count in 2020. Iceland and North Macedonia took down barriers for the first time in 2025. Sweden led the continent with 173 removals, followed by Finland with 143 and Spain with 109. The UK removed 35. More than three-quarters of what came down were structures smaller than about six and a half feet (two meters). Many no longer served any economic function. They were ageing obstacles blocking fish passage and disrupting the sediment flows that riverine ecosystems depend on. The ecological cost of a fragmented river Dams and weirs are not neutral infrastructure. They block fish migration, alter water temperature and flow, and prevent sediments from reaching coastal areas downstream. Freshwater migratory fish populations in Europe have declined by 75 percent since 1970, and much of that collapse is attributed to the fragmentation of river systems by barriers. “For centuries, Europe treated rivers as engines for economic growth, damming them for mills and hydropower, straightening them for navigation, and burying them beneath cities,” said Chris Baker, director of the European branch of Wetlands International. “We built our prosperity by fragmenting our rivers, but the ecological price has been enormous.” The EU’s nature restoration law, which took effect in 2024, explicitly calls for barrier removal as part of reconnecting rivers and lakes across the continent. One complication worth watching Restoring river connectivity is not straightforward. A study published last year found that artificial barriers can also slow the spread of invasive species, creating what researchers call a “connectivity conundrum”: when barriers come down, species previously contained can move into new stretches of river. “While initial improvements in connectivity can be rapid, stressors such as invasive species can eventually accumulate and erode longer-term conservation value,” said Ellen Dolan, a biologist at Queen’s University Belfast and lead author of the study. Careful preparation, monitoring, and long-term management, she adds, can reduce those risks. None of this changes the overall picture. More than a million barriers fragment Europe’s waterways, and tens of thousands are thought to be obsolete. Removing them is slow work. Six hundred a year is a start.     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post Europe removed a record 602 river barriers last year first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM So many of us participate in the same morning coffee ritual: the machine warming up, the pressure building, the crema settling into the cup. It’s such a fixed sequence that it’s hard to imagine any part of it changing. But against the odds, researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney just changed the most fundamental part. Their new method brews espresso using ultrasonic soundwaves instead of heat, at room temperature, in under three minutes. In a blind taste test with 100 coffee drinkers, the results were indistinguishable from a traditionally made shot. “It’s a different process, but you get the same richness and concentration of a normal espresso in under three minutes,” said Francisco Trujillo, a chemical engineer and co-author of the study published in the Journal of Food Engineering. How do soundwaves make espresso? The process centers on a phenomenon called acoustic cavitation. Researchers fitted a standard filter basket with a transducer, a small metal device that generates ultrasonic vibrations. Those vibrations pass through the coffee grounds and water, causing microscopic bubbles to form and collapse rapidly. Each collapsing bubble acts like a tiny brush against the coffee grounds, breaking them open to release their flavor compounds, caffeine, and oils. Getting the recipe right took some tinkering. “The most important [part] was the brew ratio, that is how much water is used per gram of coffee, because this helps ensure the final drink is concentrated and not too diluted,” Trujillo explained. The team also worked through variables like grind consistency and the length of exposure to the soundwaves before landing on the right combination. This isn’t Trujillo’s first time applying sound to coffee. He previously patented a similar system for cold brew, though those conditions were calibrated for cold brew’s milder, more diluted flavor profile rather than espresso’s concentration. The taste test Once the recipe was dialed in, 100 participants tasted both the ultrasonic and traditional versions without knowing which was which. They couldn’t reliably tell them apart. In some cases, the ultrasonic version actually rated slightly higher. “These findings showed that using ultrasound did not harm taste, and in some cases even improved it, despite brewing at room temperature and without the heat normally associated with coffee making,” Trujillo said. Why this could matter beyond the home kitchen A single espresso machine isn’t a major energy draw. But add up every café, every office, every hotel lobby running shots from morning through afternoon, and the numbers grow. The ultrasonic method uses about 25 percent of the energy a conventional machine requires. Trujillo’s goal is to see the technique adopted by large-volume coffee manufacturers, where the energy savings would add up to something no home kitchen ever could. For now, the technology is still in the research phase. But it has cleared its biggest hurdle: the cup actually tastes good. In the coffee world, that’s not a small thing. People are particular. Source study: Journal of Food Engineering—Ultrasound enables espresso-strength coffee brewing in 2-3 minutes at low temperature with lower energy consumption     Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post This ultrasonic espresso method uses 75 percent less energy and tastes just as good first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

When parents set rules and boundaries, they usually do so with their family’s best interests in mind. They should be adhered to and respected by all, even close family members. In a Reddit post, a dad revealed that when his in-laws continually ignored punctuality and hindered their plans, he drew up a perfect boundary. AITA for not letting my in-laws continue to be late for everything? byu/jax904dude inAmItheAsshole The in-laws were always late to every event, and it was becoming a huge inconvenience for his family. When they refused to make changes despite being confronted, he set a straightforward boundary that was sure to be effective: The Five-Minute Rule. What is the 5-minute rule? The dad mentioned that he was married for 16 years and his in-laws had “never been on time” to any event. He added that they weren’t even a few minutes late, but delayed by half an hour or so all the time. The man recalled a situation that was the last straw. His teenage kids had canceled their plans to spend time with their grandparents on Halloween, but they were late as usual. “They were supposed to be here at 6:30 PM to go trick-or-treating. At 7:15 PM, we called and they said they were ‘5 minutes away.’ 22 minutes later, they arrived without any concerns,” the dad mentioned. The dad then came up with the “5-minute rule.” He finally put his foot down and explained that the in-laws can’t be any later than 5 minutes. “If you tell me you’re gonna be somewhere at a time and aren’t, after 5 minutes, I will leave. If we are meeting to eat or something and you’re late, we will order and eat without you, we will leave when we finish, even if you’re just getting there,” the dad explained. He didn’t just devise the plan but also executed it unapologetically so the in-laws would learn a lesson. “Tonight, they had plans to take my kids out for dinner. They said they’d be here at 7 PM,” the dad noted. Despite being reminded about the rule, they hadn’t arrived by 7.05 PM. Here’s how the dad handled his late in-laws “I called them. They said they were 10 mins away. I told them to not bother with it. They tried to ask me to give them another chance since they live an hour away, and I said no way and stuck to it,” the dad mentioned in his post. He added that he felt the in-laws were being “disrespectful and not valuing” his time, and that he had to draw the line somewhere. His confident and assertive response is a perfect example of setting clear boundaries. What experts say about healthy boundaries When we set boundaries, it’s good for both sides of the relationship. “When we learn how to set boundaries in a healthy way, we are respecting ourselves, as well as making room for an honest and realistic relationship with others around us that won’t cause burnout,” Amanda White, LPC, writes in Therapy for Women. People supported the dad’s reaction and applauded him for taking a stand for himself. u/islandtan11 said, “Clearly your in-laws don’t respect or the time frame you gave and importantly – your kids.” u/kipsterdude wrote, “It’s one thing if it’s a rare occurrence but their behavior is chronic.” This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated. The post Dad fed up with late in-laws devised ‘5-minute rule’ and the perfect example of ‘good boundary’ appeared first on Upworthy.

Many people have hit hard economic times in their lives, barely scraping by and making ends meet with nothing leftover once the bills were paid to buy something new. Financial struggle is tough, and unless someone has experienced it personally, they may not fully grasp how much every single cent counts when you’re living paycheck to paycheck. That’s why a story of a compassionate company owner helping out an employee has struck a nerve. A man on Reddit shared that he had gotten laid off in 2020 and was unemployed for most of the year. After being hired in December of 2020, he was trying to get back on his feet financially. His shoes were worn through and he had holes in his jeans. The employee was waiting for his next paycheck to arrive to be able to get some fresh clothes, but rather than having to wait, he was surprised by the owner of his company taking note of his clothing situation and doing something exceptional. Yesterday the owner of my company noticed that the shoes I had on were worn through and the jeans I had on had holes in them. I was planning on getting a new pair of each on my next paycheck. Today he took me to Costco and bought me 2 new pairs of shoes, 4 new pairs of jeans, and some food. byu/DRIPPINNNN inMadeMeSmile What the boss actually did next “Today, he took me to Costco and bought me 2 new pairs of shoes, 4 new pairs of jeans, and some food,” the employee shared along with a photo of the items purchased. The owner could have chastised him, told him he wasn’t representing the company well, and told him to get some new clothing. He could have assumed that the employee just didn’t care rather than assuming the man was wearing the best clothes he had at the time. Instead, the owner supported his worker in every way possible. In a world where management often disregards their employees, this boss’ gesture is a prime example of professional yet human relationships. The employee added that he was touched by the gesture and wanted to add to the goodwill. “It was such an unbelievably nice gesture. I cried and hugged him. I can’t wait until I’m able to pay it forward.” Two men shopping for clothes. Photo credit: Canva He also encouraged people reading the post to donate their time, finances or resources to reach out to people in need. “There’s a lot of good people out there. There are also a lot of people who are worse off than me (I’m fortunate enough to have a roof over my head, heat during the winter, and keep my dog fed.) No matter what we look like or where we come from, we’re all human beings and a little bit of love goes a long way,” he concluded. The comments were filled with warmth The post warmed people’s hearts and inspired several others to reach out and help wherever and whenever they can. u/flitterbug78 wrote, “I love that your response is a plan to pay it forward. Your boss recognizes your worth, and I hope your year goes better than the last!” u/mentosfruitgun added, “What an awesome boss. This is how you keep people motivated to work hard for you. Sympathy and appreciation.” u/geoxan69 remarked, “It’s so obvious and simple but very few people can do it.” u/JazziTazzi exclaimed, “I’m so happy that there are people who are willing to help in some way! And one day, you will be able to help someone too!” What this moment says about real leadership Leadership doesn’t just mean being in charge of people. It also means giving your employees the best chance to do their best work, to support and encourage, and to be an example. This man’s employer showed us all what compassionate leadership looks like and also demonstrated the best way to gain loyalty from employees. Take care of your workers and they will take care of your company. But most of all, this story highlighted how a human helping another human, regardless of their positions or statuses, is always the right thing to do. This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated. The post Boss noticed struggling employee was wearing tattered clothes. His response left the worker teary-eyed. appeared first on Upworthy.