When we hear a sentence, or a line of poetry, our brains automatically transform the stream of sound into a sequence of syllables.

But scientists haven't been sure exactly how the brain does this.

Now, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, think they've figured it out. The key is detecting a rapid increase in volume that occurs at the beginning of a vowel sound, they report Wednesday in Science Advances.

President Trump, Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and much of officialdom was "in the loop" throughout the Ukraine affair, a key witness told Congress on Wednesday in watershed testimony.

Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, rejected the idea that he was part of any back channel or shadow effort.

He said he conferred with the State Department and the National Security Council all this year as he and other envoys worked to try to get concessions for Trump from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Nine days after Evo Morales resigned the presidency, Bolivia remains in political and social turmoil.

At least six people were killed in violence Tuesday as the military escorted fuel tankers from a gasoline plant in the high plateau city of El Alto. Supporters of Morales had blockaded the plant for five days, causing fuel and food shortages in La Paz, the administrative capital.

The home where Adolf Hitler was born will be turned into a police station, Austrian officials announced Wednesday, putting an end to a years-long debate over what to do with it.

The yellow, three-story building sits on a street in Braunau am Inn, a small medieval town on the northern border with Germany. A memorial stone sits outside with the inscription "For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism. Millions dead are a warning."

The decision to convert the building into a police station was meant as a deterrent to those who would make it a neo-Nazi shrine.

When 24-year-old Abdirizak Warsame came home from prison over the summer, his family welcomed him with his favorite foods and long talks with the siblings he hadn't seen in three years. They were reunited, grateful for a fresh start.

Outside of their house in Minneapolis, however, Abdirizak's homecoming was a different story.

Director Marielle Heller remembers tuning into Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as a kid, but it wasn't until she was an adult watching the show with her 3-year-old son that she fully appreciated the host's gentle, direct manner. Watching an episode in which Rogers finds that a pet fish has died, Heller was struck by the way he addressed the audience.

Federal prosecutors have unsealed an indictment accusing former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh of using her series of self-published children's books to commit fraud, evade federal taxes and illegally boost her own political campaigns.

The 62nd Grammy Awards nominations are here, and it appears to be Lizzo's year to lose.

The singer, songwriter, flutist and rapper was nominated across five of the night's top categories, including song of the year, record of the year, best new artist, best pop solo performance and best R&B performance.

Lil Nas X was nominated for best new artist, album of the year (for his debut record, 7), and record of the year, where his Gen Z opus "Old Town Road" is up against Post Malone, Bon Iver, Swae Lee, H.E.R., Ariana Grande, Lizzo and Billie Eilish.

A Hong Kong citizen who worked for the British Consulate-General in Hong Kong says secret police officers tortured him in mainland China, accusing him of being a spy and working to agitate pro-democracy protests.

In a lengthy Facebook post, Simon Cheng says he was beaten, put into stress positions and deprived of sleep for a roughly two-week period in August after Chinese police detained him at a train station at Hong Kong's border with the mainland.