Incredible moment two neutron stars collide captured in world-first video



Astronomers have captured a powerful neutron star merger in world-first timelapse footage released by the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

The research team use an extremely sensitive array of radio telescopes to detect one of the most energetic short-duraction gamma ray bursts ever observed.

The array in Atacama, Chile recorded the explosive light down to tiny, milimetre-scale wavelengths for the first time.

Only half a dozen gamma ray bursts like this have been observed before, and those were recorded at longer wavelengths.

The result is a video showing the light from a neutron star colliding with another star approximately 20 billion light years away.

What is a gamma ray burst?
The most energetic explosions in the universe, gamma ray bursts can release more energy in a few seconds than the Sun emits over its entire existence.

They can take place when massive bodies like stars smash into each other, or when black holes are formed.

Short duration gamma rays like this one — dubbed GRB 211106A — usually last only a few tenths of a second.

‘These mergers occur because of gravitational wave radiation that removes energy from the orbit of the binary stars, causing the stars to spiral in toward each other,’ said researcher Tanmoy Laskar, who will shortly join the University of Utah as an assistant professor of physics and astronomy.

‘The resulting explosion is accompanied by jets moving at close to the speed of light.

‘When one of these jets is pointed at Earth, we observe a short pulse of gamma-ray radiation or a short-duration gamma ray burst’

The explosions leave behind a luminous afterglow in the surrounding gas that scientists can examine.

But they’re still really difficult to detect as they take place so far away. Even very luminous afterglows like this one still appear incredibly faint from Earth.

How do scientists detect events like this?
Less sensitive telescopes had already spotted GRB 211106A’s afterglow — but at the time, scientists didn’t know exactly what they were looking at.

This is because it was spotted on a X-ray observatory — Nasa’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory — which doesn’t capture light at the milimetre-wavelength level.

This meant astronomers couldn’t see the very distant galaxy the burst actually occurred in. Without knowing just how far away it was, they didn’t realise what a powerful source it must have had.

After combining information from a range of wavelengths, including new data from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), scientists now understand the afterglow in much greater detail.



‘Millimeter wavelengths can tell us about the density of the environment around the gamma ray burst,’ said Northwestern University’s Genevieve Schroeder, who coauthored a paper on the event.

‘When combined with the X-rays, they can tell us about the true energy of the explosion.’

Millimeter wavelengths can be detected for a longer time than x-rays, she added, allowing scientists to work out the width of the jets that accompany gamma ray bursts.

Data from the Hubble Space Telescope allowed scientists to finally determine the proper location of the burst.

‘The Hubble observations revealed an unchanging field of galaxies, [while] ALMA’s unparalleled sensitivity allowed us to pinpoint the location of the GRB in that field with more precision,’ Lasker explained.

‘It turned out to be in another faint galaxy, which is further away. That, in turn, means that this short-duration gamma-ray burst is even more powerful than we first thought, making it one of the most luminous and energetic on record.’

With even more powerful and sensitive telescopes coming online, it’s likely scientists will be able to learn even more about events like these.

‘With the James Webb Telescope, we can now take a spectrum of the host galaxy and easily know the distance,’ Lasker said.

In the future, astronomers will also be able to use the telescope to capture infrared afterglows and probe their chemical composition, he added.

You can read more about the research in a preprint on the academic arXiv server. The paper will also be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

https://metro.co.uk/2022/08/04/incredib ... -17121697/

[lush]

Goat runs loose in Spanish city, breaks into jewelry store
Aug. 4, 2022 / 3:21 PM*



Aug. 4 (UPI) -- Police in Spain responded to an unusual situation when a loose goat ran through the center of a city and broke into a jewelry store.

Witnesses in Cartagena, in the Murica region, captured video Wednesday when the goat ran through the busy city center with National Police in pursuit.

Police said the goat smashed its way into a jewelry store near Bar Columbus and caused damage to the interior of the business before officers were able to lock it in a bathroom.

A pair of shepherds were summoned to the store and tied the goat's legs for safe transport.

It was unclear how the goat came to be wandering loose in the city.

[johngriffen]

I sometimes get REALLY DEPRESSED reviewing the news these days.
It's always about a global pandemic threatening life as we know it,
protests around the world, stupid politicians, natural disasters,
or some other really bad story.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Welcome to The mobi weekly news magazine
IN OTHER NEWS
FRIDAY AUGUST 5
What is it?
Here is your chance to become an "ACE REPORTER" for our weekly news magazine.
It is your job to fine weird, funny or "good feel" stories from around the world and share them with our readers in our weekly magazine

How do you play?
Just post a story that you have come across that made you smile, laugh, feel good...
BUT NOTHING DEPRESSING

EXAMPLE POST

​Naked sunbather chases wild boar through park after it steals his laptop bag

A naked sunbather was seen chasing wild boar through a park after it stole his laptop bag.
Amusing photographs from Germany show the man running after the animal to try and claim the plastic bag back.
But the cheeky boar and its two piglets appear to be too quick for the sunbather, who can't keep up with their speedy little trotters.
As the incident unfolds, groups of friends and family sat on the grass watch on and laugh.
Heads are seen turning in surprise and amusement in the hilarious photographs.
The incident happened at Teufelssee Lake - a bathing spot in the Grunwell Forest in Berlin, Germany.

Rules:
Each Edition of IN OTHER NEWS will be open for 7 days...
You can post as many stories as you like, but you will only get paid for One Story in any 24 hour period
So in other words, you can only earn WRZ$ once a day.
Each news day will start when I post announcing it
OR at:
9:00 AM CHICAGO TIME (UTC -5)
2:00 PM GMT (UTC -0)
on those days I space out and forget to post or can't due to Real Life
Stories may be accompanied with images - but No big images, please! 800x800 pixels wide maximum
Videos are allowed, but please keep them short, and post a short summary for those that don't like to click on videos
No Duplicate stories - Where a post has been edited resulting in duplicates, then the last one in time gets disallowed.
And please limit this to reasonably family friendly stories

Reward:
Each news story posted that I feel is acceptable (must be a real story, too few words or simply a headline are not considered acceptable) will earn you 50 WRZ$
If you post multiple stories on any given day, you will only earn 50 WRZ$ for the first story of the Day
All payments will be made at THE END of the weekly news cycle.
Special Bonus - Each week I will award "The Pulitzer Prize" for the best story of the week
The weekly winner of the "The Pulitzer Prize" will receive a 100 WRZ$ bonus
It's just my personal opinion, so my judgement is final

So help bring GOOD news to the members of mobi, and join our reporting team...

IN OTHER NEWS

[ozswede]

Antony Gormley’s ‘phallic’ statue may damage our reputation, say students

University students at Imperial College London are battling to prevent the installation of new sculpture by Antony Gormley over concerns that the work is “phallic”.

Alert, a six-metre-high stack of cantilevered steel blocks meant to resemble a squatting human figure, is scheduled to be installed in the university’s newly built Dangoor Plaza in South Kensington this summer.

According to Gormley, the sculpture represents a figure “balancing on the balls of the feet while squatting on its haunches”.

But a motion released by the Imperial College Union says the sculpture may “hurt the image and reputation of the college” because of its “obvious” interpretation as a person baring their erect penis.

Under this interpretation, the motion adds, the phallus extends “approximately three metres horizontally”, about half the total height of the artwork.


The sculpture is meant to resemble a squatting human figure.

“While the artist’s intended form may ‘[evoke our] community of scientific research’ the phallic interpretation does not. The name Alert could also be understood as referring to the statue’s phallus being erect,” the union said.

They also claim students were not consulted about the installation, which will serve as a centrepiece of an area used by students, staff and the public. They note that while there is “nothing inherently wrong with phallic imagery in art”, the phallic interpretation’s preoccupation with the penis could be considered inappropriate for a grand public display.

One of the key concerns for the union was the “exclusionary” phallic interpretation, when scientific research has been beset with issues around gender ratio and inclusion. Official university statistics show that only 41.8% of the full-time students at Imperial College were female in the 2020-2021 academic year.

“College publicity regarding the statue chose an angle that avoided making the statue appear phallic,” the motion added. “This suggests that this interpretation, and backlash, was not unforeseen by some individuals within the college”.

Diagram showing two interpretations of the Alert sculpture

The sculpture was given to Imperial College by the alumnus Brahmal Vasudevan and his wife, Shanthi Kandiah.

In a statement about the work on the university’s website, Gormley said he wanted to explore the correlation between people and their environment.

“Through the conversion of anatomy into an architectural construction I want to reassess the relation between body and space,” he said. “Balancing on the balls of the feet while squatting on its haunches and surveying the world around it the attitude of the sculpture is alive, alert and awake.”

Vasudevan said he shared the College’s “vision for a vibrant public space” and was “proud to bring this iconic, world-class piece of art” to the heart of campus.



Speaking to the Art Newspaper, the research postgraduate at the university who submitted the motion said he doubted it would affect the installation of the sculpture. “I think that this is not the sort of thing that the college would pull out of or listen to students about,” he said.

Gormley, whose previous works include the Angel of the North in Gateshead and Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, won the Turner prize in 1994 and is one of Britain’s leading sculptors.

But this is not the first time his work has courted controversy: last year, his sculptures in the seaside town of Aldeburgh, entitled Quartet (Sleeping), were found to violate local planning laws and were likened by local residents to “sex toys”.

An Imperial College London spokesperson said: “Sir Antony Gormley is one of the world’s foremost living artists, and we are grateful to have been gifted one of his iconic sculptures.”

[Fatima99]

Heroic pod of dolphins fight off huge shark about to attack Brit swimmer



A pod of dolphins guarded a British open-water swimmer as he came into close contact with a deadly shark.

In tough conditions in freezing waters, swimmer Adam Walker was attempting to navigate a difficult patch of water near New Zealand, when he spotted a six-foot shark beneath him.

Fearing the worst, the Nottingham man was rescued by a pod of dolphins who circled around him as he cut through the 16-mile long Cook Strait.

He said on Facebook in 2014: "I’d like to think they were protecting me and guiding me home. This swim will stay with me forever."

On a day that was "like swimming in washing machine", Walker said his encounter with the dolphins was a "dream" and it was "more important".



He added: "Dream come true swimming with dolphins over an hour…open-water swimming doesn’t get any better than this!”

The appearance of the shark came as a surprise to Walker, who was told by New Zealand swimmer Philip Rush he did not need to worry about sharks.

Walker told the Marlborough Express he "had a go at him when I got out."

Sharks target dolphins, particularly young calves or sick and injured ones, as prey and it is estimated that one-third of dolphins in Sarasota, Florida have scars from a shark bite.



The intelligent creatures rely on their strength in numbers to ward off attacks and they use their snouts as a "powerful weapon" to ram into sharks and focus on attacking the soft underbelly and vulnerable gills.

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) organisation said: "The main advantage dolphins have against shark attacks is safety in numbers; they stick together in pods and defend one another from a shark’s attack by chasing and ramming it. Dolphins are able to protect vulnerable members of their pods and extended families such as young dolphins and injured or sick dolphins."

It is not the first recorded case of dolphins protecting humans and in 2004, lifeguard Rob Howes and his 15-year-old daughter were swimming with two of her friends off the New Zealand coast when they spotted the feared great white sharks.

Shark attacks are common and the sea beast is happy to attack humans left in a vulnerable position in the water, so spotting the shark in open waters can easily cause alarm for swimmers.

Howes told the Northern Advocate: "The dolphins started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us.

"It was only about two metres away from me, the water was crystal clear, and it was as clear as the nose on my face... some of the people later on the beach tried to tell me it was just another dolphin - but I knew what I saw."

Firefighters remove bear from laundry room of California home



Firefighters in California responded to a home to remove a bear that had broken into the house and damaged a pipe in the laundry room to take a drink.

Santa Barbara County Fire spokesman Scott Safechuck said on Twitter that firefighters were summoned to a Cuyama Valley home on Wednesday on a report of an intruding bear.

Safechuck said firefighters arrived to find the bear "relaxing" in the laundry room.

He said the bear had broken a water pipe in the room and was enjoying a drink.

Firefighters escorted the bear outside the house and the animal "immediately climbed a tree," Safechuck tweeted.

Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC review – where the party started

The scuzziness, excitement and history-making music of 70s club Max’s Kansas City thunders through Danny Garcia’s nostalgic documentary



n the site of what is now a CVS Pharmacy on Park Avenue South stood one of New York’s most legendary venues: Max’s Kansas City. In the late 1960s and 70s it became the key hangout and centre of glam rock and then punk, with all sorts of celebs and artists and notables showing up – including, of course, Andy Warhol, the Zelig of so many different American artistic zeitgeists. Danny Garcia’s documentary even says that Federico Fellini went there, too, but gives no details, and incidentally leaves untouched the mystery of how it got the name.

Max’s was legendary for the music, the drugs, the fights, the scuzziness, the excitement, the horrific lavatories. The great rival club CBGB outlived it by decades but Max’s seems to have as great a place in the Valhalla of music memory. Garcia has some great new footage and live material to show that the bands that were playing night after night, including New York Dolls, Iggy Pop, the Ramones, Bruce Springsteen and Alice Cooper, were pretty amazing. There is also some very entertaining interview material, particularly with the acid Jayne County who should be brought over to the UK to appear on Celebrity Gogglebox immediately.

It’s another film to leave you sighing over New York’s lost 70s heyday of gritty reality and creativity and danger. And just as with Matt Tyrnauer’s recent documentary about Studio 54, it touches delicately on a subject that another type of director, taking a different approach, might make the entire purpose of the film: the link between clubs and crime. There were dark rumours about a counterfeit money operation happening in the basement, involving one-time owner Tommy Dean Mills: bleaching $1 bills plain white, then photocopying $100 bills using the new generation of Xerox machines. What is the truth behind that anecdote? Whatever it is … those were the days.

Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC is released on 5 August in cinemas.

View: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/a ... nyc-review

[prokroustis]

Underwater archaeologists find UK’s earliest medieval shipwreck



Underwater archaeologists from Bournemouth University have discovered the remains of a 13th century shipwreck and its cargo off the Dorset coast in England.
The vessel, known as a clinker ship, is made from overlapping planks of wood and was carrying a cargo of Purbeck stone, a form of limestone made from densely packed shells of freshwater snails.

The shipwreck is referred to as the ‘Mortar Wreck,’ since much of the cargo includes several Purbeck stone mortars and grinding stones. Other items found in the wreck site includes a cauldron and two Purbeck marble gravestone slabs.

Purbeck marble gravestone slabs were widely used across the south of England and were exported to Ireland and the continent. One of the slabs features a wheel headed cross in an early 13th century style, whilst the other slab features a splayed arm cross, common in the mid-13th century.

A tree ring analysis of the ship’s hull indicates that the timbers are from Irish oak trees, felled between 1242-1265. The Irish origin of the timbers doesn’t necessarily mean the ship was constructed in Ireland as Irish oak was widely exported for shipbuilding during the medieval period.

Maritime Archaeologist, Tom Cousins who is part of the team at Bournemouth University assigned to uncover and preserve the wreck said: “Very few 750-year-old ships remain for us to be able to see today and so we are extremely lucky to have discovered an example as rare as this, and in such good condition. A combination of low-oxygenated water, sand and stones has helped preserve one side of the ship, and the hull is clearly visible.”

The site was first identified by local charter boat skipper Trevor Small of Rocket Charters who reported the discovery to archaeologists from Bournemouth University.

Small said: “I was born into a seafaring family. I’ve skippered thousands of sea miles looking for shipwrecks from my home port of Poole. In summer 2020, I discovered what I believed to be an undetected wreck site. Recent storms had revealed something unknown on the seabed. I was granted permission to dive the wreck. The rest is history! I’ve found one of the oldest shipwrecks in England.”

Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, who has been working closely with the university said: “The 13th century ship with its cargo of medieval Purbeck stone is fascinating because it is the earliest English protected wreck site where hull remains are present.”

Hot dogs - and cats - get wearable fans to beat Japan's scorching

this made me smile alot ..


summer

[lush]

Police give tiny owl a ride in New Zealand
Aug. 3, 2022 / 4:19 PM*


A post shared by Bay of Plenty Police (@bayofplentypolice)

Aug. 3 (UPI) -- A pair of New Zealand police officers ended up doing a ride-along with a tiny owl they found wandering in a street.

The Bay of Plenty Police said in an Instagram post that Senior Constables Marty Madsen and Willy Searle were working a late shift in Opotiki when they spotted an animal they initially thought to be a hedgehog in the road.

The officers took a closer look and realized the animal was an owl that "had been clipped by a car."

"I put him in the car and shot back into town as Marty is a bit of a bird whisperer," Searle said. "By the time I got back to town, he started to warm up and flap around a bit."

The constables decided to return the owl to the wild at Waiotahe Beach.

Searle said the encounter was "a bit of a privilege, really."

[Governor3]

Why do so many bikes end up underwater?
The reasons can be weird and varied

Will her bike wind up in that canal?

When you glance into a waterway, you probably expect aquatic life and the occasional piece of trash. But the reality in many urban metropolises is that lurking beneath the surface of any waterway could be an astounding number of... bicycles.

It's a strange social phenomenon that has forced bike sharing companies to fish out thousands of their rental bikes from rivers in Southern China; and a rental company simply stopped business in Rome because too many of its bicycles were thrown into the Tiber.

In Amsterdam, 15,000 bikes are pulled from canals each year — a number that has actually improved over past years.

Why have so many of these wheeled vessels met a watery grave? And what happens to a bike once it has changed terrains?

Jody Rosen is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and the author of Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle. He joined All Things Considered to shed light on this maritime mystery.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights
On how widespread this trend is around the world

This is a phenomenon that kind of came to my attention first because I started to see news items from various places. You know, a Citi Bike here in New York City where I live turned up at a docking station, kind of blistered with oysters and barnacles. I started Googling around online and noticed that this was a very widespread phenomenon on at least three continents. So it's definitely a widespread problem, but the extent of the problem, I think, is sort of by definition unknown because after all, it's hidden. I mean, there are bicycles that are literally covered by the waterways of the world. So it's not something where we can ever have definitive or reliable statistics kind of by definition.

On the existing documentation of this online

When you see the bicycle go in there and slip below the surface of the water, there's just a certain satisfaction, a certain free zone in that. And I say that not because I've done it myself, mind you. This is a practice which is documented online, for instance, on YouTube quite comprehensively. So there's lots of videos that you can see where people are tossing bikes into water and taking videos of it for fun and sport.

So that is definitely a factor. But there's all kinds of other types of vandalism that surround this, which I think are interesting. If we go back to the city of Amsterdam, where there are so many bikes, it's really one of the world's leading bicycle cities. And there are so many canals. It's sort of an ideal environment for the dunking or drowning of bicycles. And it has been historically such a big problem that there is this municipal core of what they call "bicycle fishermen" there that the city employs to dredge the bicycles out of the canal.

On the role of bike share services in the increase of this

That's what I think is behind the current widespread phenomenon. The fact that these bike programs are proliferating across the world, which I think we can say is a good thing — we need more bicycles in the city — but there are simply more of them around. And in fact, you can imagine that people feel a little bit more impunity, that a potential bicycle drowner would feel less guilt attached to tossing a bike in the water if it's a share bike that has a bank or some sort of corporate sponsor's logo on the mudguard as opposed to, you know, some individual joe-schmoe's bike.

There may be what you might call a political dimension to this. We're seeing a kind of increasingly heated debate over what kinds of vehicles belong on the streets of cities. Motorists are reacting to the increased numbers of bicycles on the streets, sometimes with great annoyance and and sometimes with actual violence. So it may be that at least these drowned bikes, these trashed and vandalized bikes reflect a kind of ongoing battle for the right to the roadways.

In China, we've also had instances of people stating explicitly that the reason that they threw bikes into the water was because the bicycles compromise their privacy. These shared bike programs really keep track of the riders who rent them using apps on their mobile phone. And so this is a kind of an ironic thing because at one time in the 19th century, the bicycle was viewed as really an emancipatory machine, a vehicle of liberation, that gave people a new kind of personal mobility, a new kind of freedom they'd never experienced before. Well, now there are bicycles that kind of spy on their riders. So there may be complicated motivations and politics entering into this

On what happens to the bikes when they are recovered

This is another mystery. And we know that in certain places, for instance, in Amsterdam, they are recycled. There's a program there recycling them. And one of the things that I think is funny about the Amsterdam example is the officials there attribute this phenomenon in part to drunkenness. You know, people who have maybe had a little bit too much to drink, maybe they're walking on their way home after a long night in the bar, they might see a bike and say, "What the heck?" they're feeling a little jolly and they toss it in.

Well, many of those bikes, as it turns out, are recycled into various types of food packaging, including the metal that's used in beer cans. So it could be that there's a kind of ecosystem at work where someone, a drunken person, tosses a bicycle into the water, that bicycle is eventually extracted by the bicycle fishing boat, it's recycled into a beer can, and another drunken person comes along, drinks that too much of that beer, tosses another bike into the water, and around we go.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/04/11154069 ... jody-rosen
---------------------------
If you haven't thrown a bike into a river, have you even lived? I remember my first time, I wish I could forget and relive it again. Every part about it; the lift, the throw, the splash, the sink. I hope that anyone who hasn't, gets a chance this summer to throw a bike into the river - Gov

Runaway giant tortoise that stopped trains was looking for love when he went onto railway line, owner reveals



A West African giant tortoise that was hit by a train in Norfolk after escaping from a pet shop should make a full recovery, Network Rail said.

Clyde had gone missing on Sunday morning from Swallow Aquatics pet shop in East Harline and was spotted on the tracks near Thetford on Monday.

The giant tortoise weighs 60kg and measures at 76cm, and had to be lifted 400m to 500m down the track to safety by four rail workers.

Dillon Prest, manager of Swallow Aquatics, said: “I think he smashed his way out to freedom because he wanted to find a girl tortoise. I guess he just wanted some female company, and he thought that Norwich was the right place to find some.”

Steve Deville from Network Rail said Clyde was injured in a collision with a train but it was “not life-threatening”.

Train services were cancelled and delayed on the Cambridge-bound line from Norwich after passengers spotted the tortoise on the tracks on Monday.

Mr Deville said: “He was taken to a reptile specialist in North Walsham and the report we received from the owners of Clyde is that he is safe and well.

“He should make a full recovery. Clyde has become a little bit of a ‘shell-abrity’, he has caused quite a stir since the pictures have gone out.”

Giving an update on the tortoise on Facebook, the pet shop said: “As many of you may know tortoises in general are extremely good at escaping.

“Clyde decided he was going to go off for a walk along our meadow and unfortunately found himself on the railway line. He is safe at a vets undergoing treatment!”

[goldie0608]

Fire Department Helps Celebrate 20-Year-Old's Birthday After Family Home Destroyed in 'Devastating' Blaze

Fire crews sang "Happy Birthday" to the girl after retrieving cake and flowers from her mother's car



As a family of three in Utah prepared to celebrate a daughter's birthday, a house fire led to about $200,000 in damages. But after putting out the flames, a local fire department helped salvage the festivities.

Around 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the Layton City Fire Department responded to a call for the house fire, Layton Fire Marshal Douglas K. Bitton tells PEOPLE in a statement.

Upon their arrival, firefighters "could see a large column of smoke" and they "quickly knocked down flames coming out of the front door and porch." After putting out more flames at the back of the home, they then "encountered a dangerous problem when the overhead power service line for the home broke off and almost hit them."

Fortunately, for both the residents and the firefighters, no one was injured.

In addition to the "devastating loss" of their home, the fire took place as the family was preparing to celebrate a daughter's special birthday.

CBS affiliate KUTV reported that the girl was turning 20.

Bitton tells PEOPLE that the girl's presents, which were in the living room, were all "consumed by fire."

After putting out the flames, fire crews remained at the scene with the family.

In addition to "retrieving a cake and bouquet of flowers from the mother's vehicle," which was not damaged in the fire, the crew then started "singing Happy Birthday."

According to Bitton, the cause of the fire, which "was determined to be unintentional," was "due to an unattended cooking of a pain with oil on the stovetop."

Bitton said the mom was "preparing breakfast for the children" and then "asked the 11-year-old boy to watch while she left to a nearby store to get some items."

According to the Fire Marshal, the home suffered approximately $200,000 in damages and loss. The family of three, who have now been displaced, declined relocation services and are currently being supported by family.

"Fire Service reminds home owners to always attend your cooking processes," adds Bitton.

[PennySerenade]

Mom Delivers 2 Sets of Identical Twins After Being Surprised by Pregnancy with Quadruplets: 'I Feel Amazing!'



A Massachusetts mom is celebrating the arrival of her children — quadruplets in the form of two sets of identical twins — on Thursday.

"The babies decided to make their entrance to the world sooner than expected," mom Ashley Ness, 35, tells PEOPLE exclusively. "I feel amazing!"

All four babies — two girls, two boys — made their grand arrival one minute apart during the delivery by Cesarean section at 3:48 a.m. at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Ness has been hospitalized there since July 6 to care for the delicate pregnancy, she says.

Ness' newborns were delivered after 28 weeks and two days — about 12 weeks earlier than a full-term pregnancy — and will spend roughly the next eight weeks at Mass General for Children, where they are already under the care of the staff in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, says a spokesperson for the hospitals.

"Everyone is doing well so far and recovering because it was a busy night," the spokesperson adds.

A pregnancy like Ness' is a rarity of "like 1 in 10 million," Dr. Ahmet Baschat, director of the Center for Fetal Therapy and a professor in the Johns Hopkins Medicine Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, who is not involved in her care, previously told PEOPLE.

"If she were playing the lottery, if she's this lucky," Baschat said, "she would be very rich."

The phenomenon occurs when two eggs are fertilized at the same time and then each fertilized egg divides again, Baschat said. Because each split egg remains encased in its own placenta — unlike traditional quadruplets, where each of the four would represent an individually fertilized egg and be encased separately — two sets of identical twins are the result.

"It's a high-risk pregnancy," Baschat, a 30-year veteran of his field, said ahead of Ness' delivery. "That variety I haven't seen. We see a lot of rare stuff, but this is the first time I'm hearing this in my entire career."

The same goes for the ultrasound technician who first detected the group of four and delivered the news to a shocked Ness.



"I had to step out of the room to Google it to make sure," the technician said when she returned, Ness previously told PEOPLE.

The last thing Ness had expected to hear when she visited her gynecologist in February with a straightforward goal — to renew her birth control prescription — was that she was pregnant.

It took two more weeks for her to find out how pregnant.

"I'm having twins?" Ness replied to the ultrasound tech, who responded with a puzzled, "I don't know, honey," and then stepped out of the room.

"I'm now in the room by myself panicking, like, 'What's going on? What did she see?'" Ness said in June. "Then she comes back in, and she was like, 'Did you tell anybody you were having twins?' And I was like, 'Why?' She said, 'Can you just hold off on telling people?'"

"So she starts the ultrasound back up," Ness says. "And she goes, 'Honey, there's actually four babies in here.'"

Ness is a part-time hair stylist who shares a three-bedroom home in Taunton, Mass., with her 8-year-old daughter, Chanel, and her boyfriend Val, 47, a small-engine mechanic, and his two youngest sons, Isaiah, 10, and Zayden, 7. (Val has another child, 24, who lives outside of the home.)

On the way to conceiving again, Ness had suffered four miscarriages.

"I just kind of accepted that I was blessed with one child, and I took on his boys as my own," Ness said. "So, I'm like, 'My life is complete,' never expecting to find out that I'm having another baby."

After all that, the news came as "a big shock," she said.



Her very first thought: "It's twins. It's a common thing. We got this."

Indeed, twins run in her family. Her mother had twin brothers, her grandfather was a twin and her aunt had twins. Her boyfriend's mother is also a twin, and his sister had twins.

But learning that she was carrying two sets of twins? "Like, I don't even know what I was supposed to say at that moment," she says.

Further consultation with her fetal-medicine specialists at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston, where Ness received care before being transferred to Massachusetts General, revealed that one set of twins would be male, the other female. It was joyous discovery that didn't entirely mask Ness' anxiety over having two pairs of kids who will look alike.

"It's truly been just a blessing after a blessing," says Ness. Even so, "I was like, oh man, I'm going to mix them up. I'm going to forget who's who. They're going to play tricks on me. This is going to be crazy."

Friends stepped up to help with finances. "The average cost to raise one child is 17k per year," they wrote on a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $14,000. "The average cost for quadruplets is above 68k. These expenses do not include specialized treatments for preemies, which they will be. ... Ashley cannot return to work as these tiny miracles will need round-the-clock care for most of their first year."

Ness added, "I'm rearranging a lot in the house. They'll be in my room as long as they have to because, unfortunately, I don't have a room for them. And we have to get a new vehicle because we can't -- I mean, obviously you don't have an eight-passenger, nine-passenger vehicle just lying around."

"We're fortunate," she continued. "We have two vehicles, so we'll have to take two vehicles everywhere we go. But I'm like, that's the least of my worries right now. My main concern is to be able to save every little bit so we can build an addition, so the babies have a room."

One concern she doesn't have: Naming the babies. Before they were born, all four already had names waiting for them. Keeping with a family tradition that starts names with the letters CH, she decided the two girls will be Chesley and Chatham, and the two boys will be Chance and Cheston.

"My sister actually started that whole thing, and she had three children that all three of their names begin with C-H," Ness says. "So when I fell in love with [daughter] Chanel's name, I was like, 'Perfect, it's a C-H name.' We can keep that going. And then, when I found out I was having four, I'm like, 'Oh, I'm not changing it now.' It was very challenging, though, to find four names."

Fortunately, her boyfriend is already "an amazing dad," she says. But his stomach wasn't strong enough to hang around for the births this time around.

"He stayed outside in the waiting room," Ness says. "Poor thing has a very weak belly for that stuff but when he saw them after, his heart melted."

[johngriffen]

I sometimes get REALLY DEPRESSED reviewing the news these days.
It's always about a global pandemic threatening life as we know it,
protests around the world, stupid politicians, natural disasters,
or some other really bad story.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Welcome to The mobi weekly news magazine
IN OTHER NEWS
SATURDAY AUGUST 6
What is it?
Here is your chance to become an "ACE REPORTER" for our weekly news magazine.
It is your job to fine weird, funny or "good feel" stories from around the world and share them with our readers in our weekly magazine

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Just post a story that you have come across that made you smile, laugh, feel good...
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EXAMPLE POST

​Naked sunbather chases wild boar through park after it steals his laptop bag

A naked sunbather was seen chasing wild boar through a park after it stole his laptop bag.
Amusing photographs from Germany show the man running after the animal to try and claim the plastic bag back.
But the cheeky boar and its two piglets appear to be too quick for the sunbather, who can't keep up with their speedy little trotters.
As the incident unfolds, groups of friends and family sat on the grass watch on and laugh.
Heads are seen turning in surprise and amusement in the hilarious photographs.
The incident happened at Teufelssee Lake - a bathing spot in the Grunwell Forest in Berlin, Germany.

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IN OTHER NEWS