Sound waves are the new internet dresses.Credit...Ruby Washington/The New York Times Three years ago, the internet melted down over the color of a dress. Now an audio file has friends, family members and office mates questioning one another’s hearing, and their own. Is the voice saying “Yanny” or “Laurel”? The clip and an online poll were posted on Instagram, Reddit and other sites by high school

From 2008 to 2015, the proportion of emergency room and hospital encounters for suicide-related diagnoses almost tripled. About five years ago, pediatricians at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville found that more and more of their inpatient beds at the children’s hospital were occupied by children and adolescents with mental health issues, especially those who had come in because of

transcript Trump and North Korea Rebuff Bolton’s ‘Libya Model’John Bolton, the national security adviser, says the dismantling of Libya’s nuclear weapons program provides a playbook for North Korean denuclearization. The idea is provoking a lot of resistance and confusion. When North Korea threatened to back out of the nuclear summit with President Trump, they pointed the finger at one person — Jo

“Nobody thought this was going to happen,” President Trump said at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “And I appreciate Kim Jong-un for doing this and allowing them to go.”Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times WASHINGTON — The release of three American prisoners cleared away a last obstacle on Wednesday to a landmark nuclear summit meeting between President Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-u

Tokyo isn’t typically a destination for budget travelers, according to Jonathan Alder, a travel agent and Tokyo expert. “Hotels, dining out and transportation are all quite expensive in the city, but you don’t need to have deep pockets to have an upscale trip,” he said. Here are some of his best tips to enjoy a luxury Tokyo getaway for less. Visit During the Winter Mr. Alder recommended visiting T

transcript YouTube Shooting: Suspect is DeadFour people were injured in an attack by a woman at the YouTube headquarters on Tuesday, the police in San Bruno, Calif., said. “We have a report of subject with a gun. They heard seven to eight shots being fired. This will be from the YouTube building.” “The one person we have down and saying, that’s our shooter.” “We have four victims who have all been

Author Ursula Le Guin at home with her cat, Lorenzo, in 1996. The writer’s “pleasant duty,” she said, is to ply the reader’s imagination with “the best and purest nourishment that it can absorb.”Credit...Jill Krementz, All Rights Reserved Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like

The actress Catherine Deneuve, one of the authors of a letter in Le Monde that says the #MeToo movement has gone too far.Credit...Gregor Fischer/DPA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Just one day after Hollywood offered a show of support for the #MeToo movement on the Golden Globes red carpet and stage, a famous actress on the other side of the Atlantic lent her name to a public letter deno

High carbohydrate intake is associated with a higher risk of mortality, and high fat intake with a lower risk, researchers report. An international team of scientists studied diet and mortality in 135,335 people between 35 and 70 years old in 18 countries, following them for an average of more than seven years. Diet information depended on self-reports, and the scientists controlled for factors in

A television screen in Tokyo’s Akihabara district showing a report on North Korea’s ballistic missile test over northern Japan.Credit...Toru Yamanaka/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images North Korea has targeted Japan in particular by abducting many innocent Japanese citizens, including a 13-year-old girl who was abducted in 1977. Most of them have been held in North Korea since the 1970s and 1980s

A member of Japan’s military mobilizing a missile unit on Tuesday, on the outskirts of Tokyo, after North Korea’s missile launch.Credit...Issei Kato/Reuters SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea carried out one of its most provocative missile tests in recent years early Tuesday morning, hurling a ballistic missile directly over Japan that prompted the government in Tokyo to warn residents in its path t

The Breakdown puts a selection of Australia’s daily news into context. Today’s picks: • Senator Scott Ludlam resigns after learning that he has New Zealand citizenship. • A former prime minister defends President Trump. • The debate on cybersecurity and crime continues. • Analyzing an age-old feud on Australia’s roads. Senator Says Goodbye How’s this for a Friday surprise: Scott Ludlam, the longti

Jean Sammet, who brought computing into the business mainstream, at the University of Maryland in 1979 to deliver a lecture.Credit...Ben Shneiderman Jean E. Sammet, an early software engineer and a designer of COBOL, a programming language that brought computing into the business mainstream, died on May 20 in Maryland. She was 89. She lived in a retirement community in Silver Spring and died at a

Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations An honor guard outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last month. The Chinese government killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 C.I.A sources from 2010 through 2012.Credit...Wang Zhao/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WASHINGTON — The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2

FLINT, Mich. — The summer before my junior year of high school, I boarded an airplane for the first time. Three hours later I was in picture-perfect New England, where I was soon to be surrounded by a diverse and extremely accomplished group of peers. I had been awarded a generous scholarship to attend the Phillips Exeter summer semester — five weeks of classes and sports, with some optional SAT p

The building that houses the Mossack Fonseca law firm offices in Panama City.Credit...Rodrigo Arangua/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images GENEVA — An employee of the law firm at the center of the leaks of the Panama Papers, which have revealed offshore wealth held in secretive accounts worldwide, has been arrested here on charges of data theft, one of the employee’s lawyers, Romain Jordan, said on

TOKYO — The governor of Tokyo resigned on Wednesday, after he admitted using funds intended for political campaigns to pay for personal travel and entertainment, setting off a public furor. The governor, Yoichi Masuzoe, is the second leader of the Japanese capital’s metropolitan government to leave office over a financial scandal in two and a half years, an especially embarrassing development beca

President Obama spoke after a wreath-laying ceremony with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on Friday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times The following is a transcript of President Obama’s speech in Hiroshima, Japan, as recorded by The New York Times. Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash

Park Yu-ha, the professor who wrote “Comfort Women of the Empire,” in Seoul, South Korea.Credit...Jean Chung for The New York Times SEOUL, South Korea — WHEN she published her book about Korean “comfort women” in 2013, Park Yu-ha wrote that she felt “a bit fearful” of how it might be received. After all, she said, it challenged “the common knowledge” about the wartime sex slaves. But even she was