One person has been killed and at least eight others taken to hospital in Los Angeles after being struck by lightning.

Sporadic attacks by both Israel and Palestinian militants have punctuated a lull in fighting after the quietest night in the 21-day conflict.

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Palestinians are marking the start of Eid al-Fitr but many feel "there isn't a great deal to celebrate this year", according to Martin Patience in Gaza.

BBC News gains rare access to Ambo in Ethiopia where deadly protests took place.

Students who survived South Korea's ferry disaster have described how they were told to "stay in their places" as the ship began to sink, reports Lucy Williamson from the trial of the Sewol's crew.

The United Nations Security Council has held an emergency meeting this morning to call for an immediate end to the hostilities in Gaza.

Composite image of X-ray (pink) and weak gravitational lensing (blue) of the famous Bullet Cluster of galaxies. X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/ M.Markevitch et al.; Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/ D.Clowe et al. Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.

It’s in the room with you now. It’s more subtle than the surveillance state, more transparent than air, more pervasive than light. We may not be aware of the dark matter around us (at least without the ingestion of strong hallucinogens), but it’s there nevertheless.

Although we can't see dark matter, we know a bit about how much there is and where it's located. Measurement of the cosmic microwave background shows that 80 percent of the total mass of the Universe is made of dark matter, but this can’t tell us exactly where that matter is distributed. From theoretical considerations, we expect some regions—the cosmic voids—to have little or none of the stuff, while the central regions of galaxies have high density. As with so many things involving dark matter, though, it’s hard to pin down the details.

Unlike ordinary matter, we can’t see where dark matter is by using the light it emits or absorbs. Astronomers can only map dark matter's distribution using its gravitational effects. That’s especially complicated in the denser parts of galaxies, where the chaotic stew of gas, stars, and other forms of ordinary matter can mask or mimic the presence of dark matter. Even in the galactic suburbs or intergalactic space, dark matter’s transparency to all forms of light makes it hard to locate with precision.

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A new bus service has been launched in Hong Kong for pet lovers.

Two years ago, the acronyms FISC or FISA would require a majority to frantically hit the Google search. But thanks to Edward Snowden and his leaked information regarding the NSA, the general public is now aware of the domestic-based Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's role: approving all government requests to engage in its various spying initiatives.

This weekend, Vice discovered an unusual, additional role for two FISC judges—stakeholder. According to 2013 financial disclosures obtained by the website, FISC Judge Susan Wright and FISC Judge Dennis Saylor each owned Verizon stock. Wright purchased (Scribd) $15,000 or less on October 22 and Saylor collected (Scribd) less than $1,000 from his stock in 2013. (As Vice notes, "the precise amount and value of each investment is unclear—like many government ethics disclosures, including those for federal lawmakers, investments amounts are revealed within certain ranges of value.)

There is an ethics law for federal judges that, among other things, requires judges to avoid cases where they have a financial stake or where they may act in bias. This scenario isn't quite that clear-cut. While FISC absolutely ruled on situations involving Verizon, Vice points out FISC proceedings are ex parte. Telecoms may absolutely have a stake in these FISC rulings, but they aren't an active party for the NSA requests FISC rules on.

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BBC News looks at the facts about global travel.

HBO Films

The premise of Love Child, HBO’s latest feature-length documentary, doesn’t leave much room for moral questions or shades of grey. It opens with the 2010 story of a South Korean couple who met through an online video game, had a child, then neglected it in favor of playing said game. The baby girl died three months later of malnutrition; the couple found her the morning after they’d spent 10 hours (their typical session length) at a “PC Bang” gamer café.

The aftermath of that story, especially as it’s presented in this film, is pretty cut and dry: babies good, game addiction bad. Thus, this documentary (named after the baby in question, whose name, Sarang, translates to “Love Child”) doesn’t offer many surprises in perspective. It casts a particularly negative light on the gaming world and the rapid expansion of Internet access throughout South Korea.

As a result, the film’s attempts to humanize its subjects—Kim Jae-beom and his wife Kim Yun-jeong—are uneven and hard to swallow. To the filmmakers’ credit, that choice comes off as wholly intentional. Love Child paints the couple’s story in pity and sadness as it tries to make sense of how gaming, technology, and depression combined in a story that, tragically, has become a cornerstone in conversations about its nation.

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There are reports of heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine, close to the site where Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed.

Bunch O Balloons is a new product that allows you to fill and tie dozens of water bombs at the same time and is sure to revolutionize water fights across the land.

On the face of it, it's a hose attachment with 37 pre-connected balloons that automatically tie themselves once filled with water. It looks a little like a bunch of deflated grapes. But the impact that this technological solution to a fiddly problem will have should not be underestimated: it's the water fight equivalent to the invention of the machine gun. Suddenly those who have this new munitions invention will have an enormous advantage over those who don't. The war will be one-sided, brutal, and extremely soggy.

The company behind Bunch O Balloons—Tinnus Enterprises—promises that it makes it possible to fill 100 balloons in just one minute. This compares to the six or so balloons that you could tie by hand per minute. It's devastating for your enemy.

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These are the jokes, folks...

Those of us who have played Hearthstone since the closed beta was released have stared at the same basic collection of cards, play modes, and once-a-turn hero powers for nearly a year now. These features haven't limited play too much. There are tons of viable deck combinations to create out of the game's nearly 400 cards, and the controlled randomness of the Arena mode has kept the game fresh after what must be hundreds of hours of play.

Yet the metagame (i.e. the types of decks people pick to match up against other common decks) has stagnated around two or three viable deck types (with slight variations) in which players see the same ultra-powerful cards appear again and again (if I never have to hear Leeroy Jenkins' famous war cry again, it will be too soon). At some point, even the best-designed collectible card game needs an infusion of new cards and gameplay ideas to prevent things from getting stale.

Blizzard realizes this, of course. The newly released "Curse of Naxxramas" expansion allowed the company to expand the game's card selection and add new types of gameplay to the mix. The first of five "wings" of the expansion launched earlier this week as a free update, and future wings will appear weekly for a small cost ($20 or 2,800 in-game gold for the whole thing). While it's definitely nice to get some new content in the game, I came away from that first wing a little disappointed.

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The wrecked Italian cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, has entered the port of Genoa for scrapping after a two-year salvage operation.

Dozens of deaths have been reported in Libya, amid fierce fighting in Benghazi and near the airport in the capital Tripoli.

Kristina Servant

Animals have evolved to occupy almost all corners of the Earth. To survive, no matter the weather outside, the chemical reactions that run their bodies must adjust to the temperature. This is easy for warm-blooded animals like humans, because we have the ability to maintain our body temperature.

But cold-blooded animals can’t do that. When the weather changes and the mercury swings, their cells get exposed to that change in temperature. Yet cold blooded animals survive just fine. Michael Welte, associate professor of biology at the University of Rochester, may have just discovered one way such animals compensate. His team’s findings have been published in the Journal of Cell Biology.

One key to an organism’s survival at any temperature is to ensure that proteins are being made at the right time and in the right amount. But making proteins requires chemical reactions, and those reactions are sensitive to temperature.

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More than 500 homes and about 1,200 residents have been evacuated in an area east of the California state capital Sacramento due to a wildfire.