Cairo Football, Ukraine is too cold, Hubble & the Galaxy, Supergiant

Protesters have clashed with security forces in Egypt's capital Cairo for a second day, amid anger over the deaths of 74 football fans on Wednesday

Dozens of people were crushed to death, suffocated or fatally stabbed after a pitch invasion by fans of the home-side, al-Masry, which had just beaten Cairo's al-Ahly, Egypt's most successful club. But did fans instigate the clashes themselves, was there a conspiracy to provoke, was there deliberate negligence by police? Or was the whole thing just a case of badly trained police mishandling football crowd violence. These are now politically charged questions. The head of the ruling military council, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi suggested the aim of the perpetrators was "to destabilise Egypt" and promised to punish them. However, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organisation whose party won the biggest bloc in recent parliamentary elections, discerned "invisible planning" behind "this unjustified massacre" in an online statement. "This has nothing to do with football," an al-Ahly fan, Magdy Mohammed Ali told the BBC. "This is all about politics, this is all about some hidden war, so many theories that my head is going to burst". The Ultras of al-Ahly put out their own statement saying: "They want to punish us and execute us for our participation in the revolution against suppression." They pledged "a new war in defence of our revolution".

The official investigation now under way into Wednesday's events, might never establish the full truth of what happened. Yet already some mistakes are clear. Television pictures showed dozens of police in black riot gear standing by as hundreds of al-Masry fans armed with knives, metal bars and stones stormed the pitch. Al-Ahly players and supporters ran to escape, heading towards the stands and exits where gates were locked. Many are criticising the police for allowing weapons into the stadium, not doing more to intervene and not deploying in sufficient numbers. Many ordinary Egyptians express frustration at the Ultras and other activists for the disruption and sense of insecurity resulting from their continued demonstrations but also with the ruling generals for failing to restore law and order. For the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the other parliamentarians who have just been elected, this crisis could prove to be their first big test.

More than 100 people have now died as a result of freezing weather in Ukraine since last Friday

Most of the 101 who died were homeless people and 64 of them were found dead on the streets, the emergencies ministry said. Hundreds of others have been treated in hospital for frostbite, hypothermia and other cold-related conditions. Temperatures plunged to below -35C in parts of eastern Europe this week. At least eight more deaths were reported in Poland on Thursday, bringing the death toll there since last week to 37. Cold weather deaths have been reported across eastern and central Europe. The authorities closed schools and colleges and set up nearly 3,000 heating and food shelters across the country. Health officials instructed hospitals not to discharge homeless patients, even after treatment, in order to save them from the cold. Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov announced that the country had burnt 1bn cu m of gas in just three days. The country's gas order from Russia for the whole of 2012 is 27bn cu m.

The Hubble space telescope has captured an image of a "barred spiral" galaxy

Most of the known spiral galaxies fall into this "barred" category - which are defined by the pronounced bar structure across their centres. The presence of this structure may be an indication of a galaxy's age. Two-thirds of nearby, younger galaxies have the bar, while only a fifth of older, more distant spirals have it. The new picture also continues the Hubble space telescope's long heritage of striking astronomical images. In the upper left of the image is a cluster showing recent star formation that is just visible to Hubble's cameras. But it is a bright source in X-ray light; astronomers believe that this IXO-5 X-ray source is actually a "binary" system comprising a star and a black hole in mutual orbit.

A huge crustacean has been found lurking 7km down in the waters off the coast of New Zealand

The creature - called a supergiant - is a type of amphipod, which are normally around 2-3cm long. But these beasts, discovered in the Kermadec Trench, were more than 10 times bigger: the largest found measured in at 34cm. Amphipods have been found living in large numbers at the very bottom of ocean trenches, deep, narrow valleys in the sea floor that can plunge down to nearly 11km. The creatures are small, but extremely active, and seem to thrive in this place where the pressure is one thousand times greater than at sea level. The name "supergiant" was first coined after large specimens were caught in the 1980s off the coast of Hawaii. They have been seen since in the Antarctic, where they grew up to 10cm, but these are now dwarfed by this latest find.