Thursday, February 3, 2022

Bits and Bites from Around the World > Mom throws daughter in bear enclosure; Teen sentenced to 100 years; Stunning Images of our Galaxy; Moscow best city in the World

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Woman throws daughter into enclosure with live bear


Disturbing incident filmed at an Uzbek zoo shows the animal and the staff rushing to the toddler


Zuzu the bear. © Facebook / Tazhkent Zoo


In a blood-curdling incident captured on camera at a zoo in Uzbekistan’s capital city Tashkent on Friday, a young woman threw her three-year-old daughter into the enclosure of a massive brown bear.

CCTV footage from the scene showed the woman lifting the child into the air, putting her onto the fence of the enclosure and then pushing her into its five-meter-deep moat.

Zuzu the bear was visibly startled by the sudden invasion, rushing to check on the child as soon as she plunged into the moat. The animal approached the girl, sniffed her, and then walked away.

The predator was then promptly led away by the zoo’s staff, who hurried to extract the girl from the enclosure. While the infant was not harmed by the bear, she was hospitalized with injuries she suffered from her fall.

Uzbekistan’s prosecutors have launched a criminal probe into the incident, with the woman suspected of an attempted murder of a helpless person. If found guilty, she may face up to 15 years behind bars.

The woman, identified only as Z.T., had been known to the authorities, the country’s family ministry revealed Sunday. The 30-year-old had been receiving support over her crumbling marriage and suffered from depression, the ministry added. The woman’s husband is said to have been away, working in Russia.




Teen sentenced to 100 years over siblings’ deaths


Indiana teenager receives heavy sentence for murders of baby sister and brother


A teenager in the US state of Indiana has been sentenced to serve two consecutive 50-year prison terms for suffocating his baby stepbrother and half-sister to death in 2017, when he was just 13 years old. The judge who announced the sentence on Tuesday had insisted that the case against Nickalas Kedrowitz be tried in an adult court.

While the teen’s attorney had insisted his client had untreated mental health problems, Ripley County Prosecutor Richard Hertel pointed out that Kedrowitz had committed the crimes months apart, dismissing the notion that he had murdered his siblings in the “heat of passion.”

What kind of passion could we possibly be talking about?

Kedrowitz was convicted in August of murdering 11-month-old Nathaniel Ritz and 23-month-old Desiree McCartney in July 2017 and May 2017 respectively, at the family’s home in Osgood, Indiana. He was arrested in August 2018 and reportedly told detectives he was “freeing his siblings from hell and the chains of fire,” confessing to using a towel to suffocate his half-sister and a blanket to smother his stepbrother.

So, it was not mental illness, it was pure and simple demonic possession!

Questioned by investigators about what exactly the “hell” in question was, Kedrowitz answered “chores,” urging the authorities to look at the list of daily chores he was expected to complete. It’s not clear if they ever saw the list.

The teen’s uncle apparently told investigators that Ritz’s father had attacked Kedrowitz the day before he suffocated the infant boy, leaving the 13-year-old with a bloody nose. Shortly before killing his half-sister, the teen reportedly squeezed a kitten to death for allegedly scratching him.

According to an affidavit from Indiana state police, Kedrowitz told investigators he had “had a conversation with God about [his siblings’ deaths] but he could not talk about it because he had promised God he wouldn’t tell anyone.”

He, of course, wasn't God!

Kedrowitz’s own father is in prison on unrelated charges, while his mother cooperated with the investigation into her infant children’s deaths.




‘Remarkable’ images of our galaxy’s center revealed


A supermassive black hole lurking in the center of the Milky Way is the brightest spot


© Heywood, SARAO


A new MeerKAT telescope image of the galactic center reveals the “complex heart” of the Milky Way, with astronomers saying they now have “the best insight yet into the population of mysterious ‘radio filaments’ found nowhere else.”

Released by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, the “remarkable” image is based on a mosaic of 20 separate observations, which took a total of 200 hours of MeerKAT telescope time to acquire. 

A rare, almost-perfect spherical supernova remnant that has been discovered at the edge of the MeerKAT mosaic.
A tailed radio source visible on the right of the image could be an object in our galaxy moving at high speed,
leaving a trailing wake. ©  Heywood, SARAO


The super-sensitive radio telescope consists of 64 antennas spread over a diameter of eight kilometers in the South African desert. It has allowed humanity to look into the center of the Milky Way, which, despite its relative closeness – it is just about 25,000 light-years away – is obscured by dust and gas and is very hard to penetrate.

The picture is dominated by the emission from the galactic center “super bubble,” which is traversed by many parallel radio-emitting magnetized threads astronomers call filaments. 

The complex, cirrus-like emission from the Galactic centre super bubble dominates this image. 
This is traversed by the Radio Arc, a complex of many parallel radio filaments. 
The bright dot near the centre of this region is Sagittarius A, a 4 million solar mass black hole. 
©  Heywood, SARAO


One of the strands has been lovingly nicknamed “Mouse” by the scientists; another feature is being called “Snake.” The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A can be seen as the brightest spot. 

The clarity and depth of the image give it significant scientific potential, the astronomers say.

In the centre of the image is the supernova remnant G359.1-0.5. To the left is ‘the Mouse’, a runaway pulsar 
possibly formed and ejected by the supernova event. To the upper right is one of the longest
and most famous radio filaments, known as ‘the Snake’. ©  Heywood, SARAO


“Up to 100 light-years long, these unique structures have defied a conclusive explanation for their origin since discovery over 35 years ago. MeerKAT has discovered many more such filaments than were previously known, and the new data release will allow astronomers to study these objects as a population for the first time,” the report reads.

The astronomers admit their own fascination over the discoveries, with SARAO chief scientist Dr. Fernando Camilo saying that “the best telescopes expand our horizons in unexpected ways.” The lead author of the study, Dr. Ian Heywood, confessed that he never gets tired of looking at the picture.

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UN names Moscow Best world city to live in


The Russian capital beat out major European and North American rivals

to claim the top spot


© Getty Images / ArtMarie


The UN has published its global cities ranking for 2022, and has awarded Moscow the top spot among large cities for quality of life and infrastructure, commending the metropolis for its transportation and its citizens’ well-being.

A draft of the report, the full version of which will be released in March, was made available online on Wednesday. Experts analyzed the 50 largest cities globally and ranked 29 “world cities” according to six metrics: productivity, infrastructure development, quality of life, equity and social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and urban governance and legislation.

The Russian capital came out first in terms of “quality of life” and “infrastructure development,” and was third overall in the “City Prosperity Index,” which considered all the categories together. The first and second spots were taken by Singapore and Toronto respectively, and the fourth and fifth by Sydney and London.

The report defines quality of life as “how an individual’s life or society’s condition is in comparison to another person or society, i.e. how good (or bad) someone’s life is compared to other individuals’ lives. Therefore, this is the measurement of a city’s average achievements for ensuring general well-being and satisfaction of its citizens.”

Infrastructure development is defined as “the set of basic physical systems, organizational structures, facilities, and installations needed for the functioning of a society, or economy. The prosperity of a city largely depends on the development of infrastructure, including transportation, communication, or provision of [basic] services, among others.”

Among the 29 cities, Moscow was ranked 12th for productivity, 13th for equity and social inclusion, 17th for environmental sustainability, and 10th for urban governance and legislation.

Around 20 million people officially live in the Russian capital and its surrounding region, though measurements of the population vary according to methodology. Some estimates suggest the real figure is substantially higher.

By any accepted measure, with at least 13 million inhabitants, Moscow city proper is the largest wholly within Europe, beating out London, St. Petersburg, Paris and Berlin.


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