At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared in recent years, sparking federal investigation - CNN

After conquering a country in ruins and containing sectarian strife, Syria’s postrevolutionary government is facing its most serious crisis yet – at the pumps. Energy prices that have spiked because of the Iran war forced the interim government this month to raise fuel prices by 26% and diesel by 40%, sparking nationwide protests that echo others around the world. The unrest has upset a string of recent government successes, including Washington’s lifting of the last sanctions on the country in August and the official reintegration of the breakaway Kurdish northeast. The crisis has put a spotlight on the core struggle facing cash-strapped Damascus: opening up a long-closed economy while also protecting the most vulnerable Syrians, 90% of whom live under the poverty line and subsist on less than $2 per day. The recent rise in fuel and diesel prices adds to Syrians’ economic woes: a 13% hike in electricity prices this year and inflation caused by fluctuations in Syria’s currency.

If you're just a wee fish swimming around the big, scary ocean, it can help to have a bit of muscle on your side. For some fish, that's the protection offered by stinging coral. For others, it's adhering to the sandpaper skin of a deadly shark. And for one species of fish, it may be cozying up to one of the most enigmatic denizens of the deep – the giant phantom jellyfish (Stygiomedusa gigantea). During an ROV dive into mesopelagic waters off the coast of Argentina, marine researchers beheld a rare and stunning sight. They witnessed a majestic jelly languidly pulsing through the darkness, and with it, an entire entourage of juvenile rudderfish (Centrolophus niger), flitting beneath its bell and among its enormous, trailing arms. It's an interspecies relationship scientists have suspected for more than 50 years – and now, hundreds of meters below the waves off Patagonia, here it is. "Both are poorly known and rarely observed cosmopolitan mesopelagic species, representing the first documented observation of this association in the deep ocean," writes a team led by marine ecologist María Emilia Bravo of the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.