A scientist has discovered that high-pitched sounds made by the small rodents could actually be melodious songs...

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam...

Ten years ago, lost to drugs and alcohol, Karen Little Thunder moved back to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where, she said, she saved her own life by reconnecting to her Lakota heritage, particularly the legacy of her great-great grandfather. He was Little Thunder, a Lakota leader and a contemporary of Crazy Horse, whose life spanned several decades central to the history of the tribe — from the battles it fought across the Great Plains to its resettlement on reservations...

The demise of the music industry can actually work for musicians as a moment of liberating grace. You can make a sane living in an unpredictable economy...

Welcome to our special edition of "Moving Image," a roundup of the best photos from around the world this year.

The following images tell the story of the past 365 days' most compelling events, capturing happenstance moments and monumental occurrences all over the globe.

Our picks for 2013 are:

Bookstores are not dead...

It’s possible you’ve never heard of Simon Beck, but after today, you won’t be able to forget him or his wintry works of art. Simon is an artist and is most well-known for making incredibly delicate and detailed art in the snow, just by walking over a fresh snowfall. He literally walks miles in the snow to create these pieces. And the part that blows our minds? He could spend hours upon hours creating one design, just to have it be covered by snowfall or blown away by the next day. But he still makes them...

The familiar voice on the hotel room phone did not waste words.

“What time does your clock say, exactly?” he asked.

He checked the reply against his watch and described a place to meet.

“I’ll see you there,” he said.

Edward Joseph Snowden emerged at the appointed hour, alone, blending into a light crowd of locals and tourists...

The musical genius shares his songwriting secrets, opens up his finances and ponders the future of art and the Web...

Dear fragile Norman Rockwell. He grew up in a series of cramped apartments and shabby boardinghouses in Upper Manhattan, skinny, weak-chinned, squinty, an abysmal student, inept at math, probably dyslexic, neglected by his parents, overshadowed by a handsome, athletic older brother, and for the rest of his life was uncertain of himself and modest to a fault. He enrolled in art school to become an illustrator in the footsteps of Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth, just as the Armory Show of 1913 was about to usher in the avant-garde and relegate illustration — art as storytelling — to the back pages. He was a loner, did not feel close to his parents or brother, was not a devoted father to his three sons. He was married to his work; his three wives, Irene O’Connor, Mary Barstow and Molly Punderson, learned to accommodate. His biographer reports that his love life was stark: “Nothing that can be described as a love letter survives among his papers. It seems unlikely that he ever wrote one.”...