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The gun believed to have been used by Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh to take his own life was sold at the Drouot auction house in Paris.

The unnamed buyer bought the corroded 7mm caliber Lefaucheux revolver for about $182,000 dollars. The gun's trigger is pulled back, frozen in place, some think cementing the moment in which it would have dropped from Van Gogh's grasp.

International investigators have accused three Russians and one Ukrainian of taking part in the attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a passenger plane that was shot down nearly five years ago, killing all 298 people on board. They will face murder charges for their alleged involvement in the tragedy.

The plane left Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014. It crashed over eastern Ukraine, a smoldering wreckage of civilian parts in the midst of a battle between Ukrainian security forces and Russia-back separatists.

In just five years, Slack has grown to have more than 10 million users and has become a verb in the process. "I'll Slack you" is shorthand for sending a message via the workplace chat platform.

On Thursday, the company will take that popularity to the New York Stock Exchange, where its shares will be publicly listed for the first time.

The Philadelphia Police Department has pulled 72 officers off their regular duties as authorities investigate inflammatory social media posts revealed in a database that found thousands of offensive postings by current and former officers, the city's police commissioner said Wednesday.

Police officials in Philadelphia are describing the action as the largest removal of officers from the street in recent memory.

"We are equally as disgusted by many of the posts that you saw and in many cases, the rest of the nation saw," said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross.

One of the nation's best known airline pilots is speaking out on the problems with Boeing's 737 MAX jetliner. Retired Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger told a congressional subcommittee Wednesday that an automated flight control system on the 737 MAX "was fatally flawed and should never have been approved."

The recent discovery of the remains of the last slave ship to the United States is bringing hope of revival to Africatown. It's a small community in Mobile, Ala., founded by African captives brought on the schooner Clotilde, thought to have arrived sometime in 1859 or 1860.

Lorna Woods' great-great-grandfather, Charlie Lewis, was brought to Mobile on the Clotilde. Now she tells his story as a volunteer with the local history museum.

Editor's note: This story contains graphic details of the actions leading up to Jamal Khashoggi's death.

A special U.N. investigator says Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should be investigated in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi because there is "credible evidence" that he and other senior officials in the kingdom were responsible.

Updated at 7:51 p.m. ET

A new order by a federal judge in Maryland sets up a potential new block against the Trump administration's plans to add a citizenship question to forms for the upcoming 2020 census.

The latest development in the legal battle over the hotly contested question could complicate the Census Bureau's plans to finalize census questionnaires and start printing paper forms for the national head count by July 1.

Updated at 5:30 p.m. ET

The leader of NXIVM, a group that espoused a philosophy of self-improvement but was accused of recruiting, grooming and even branding an inner circle of female sex slaves, was found guilty Wednesday by a federal jury in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Keith Raniere, who was known as "Vanguard," was convicted on all charges, including sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, human trafficking and multiple counts of racketeering — including sexual exploitation of a child.

It's a sweltering morning in Beltsville, Md., and I'm face-to-face with bee doom. Mark Dykes, a "Bee Squad coordinator" at the University of Maryland, shakes a Mason jar filled with buzzing honeybees that are coated with powdered sugar. The sugar loosens the grip of tiny Varroa mites, a parasite that plagues bees; as he sifts the powder into a bowl, they poke out like hairy pebbles in snow.

The world's glaciers are melting faster than before, but it still takes decades to see changes that are happening at a glacial pace.

The Toy Story movies are about the secret lives of dolls and action figures that find their deepest fulfillment in a child's embrace. But they're really about what it means to be human: the joys of love and friendship and the pains of rejection and loss. But even more than the earlier films, Toy Story 4 feels haunted by the idea of impermanence. What happens when we outgrow something we once cherished? To put it another way: After three Toy Story movies, do we really need a fourth?

Updated at 6:30 p.m. ET

The day after former Vice President Joe Biden recalled his "civil" and productive working relationships decades ago with two longtime segregationist and racist fellow lawmakers, fellow Democrats are pouncing.

At a New York City fundraiser Tuesday night, Biden told donors he has reached across the aisle throughout his career. "I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland," Biden said, according to a pool report. "He never called me 'boy'; he always called me 'son.' "

As a group, surgeons are not well known for their bedside manner. "The stereotype of the abrasive, technically gifted ... surgeon is ubiquitous among members of the public and the medical profession," write the authors of a 2018 article in the AMA Journal of Ethics.

Updated at 5:14 p.m. ET

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks declined to answer questions related to her time in the Trump administration during her closed-door testimony on Capitol Hill Wednesday, frustrating Democrats and leading some to say they will go to court to compel her testimony.

The session lasted eight hours and included a one-hour lunch break.

Updated at 4:40 p.m. ET

The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged Wednesday but signaled it is ready to cut rates in the future if necessary to shore up a slowing U.S. economy.

The central bank's rate-setting committee said the economic outlook is still generally positive — with low unemployment and solid consumer spending. But trade tensions, a slowdown in manufacturing and sagging business investment have injected more uncertainty into the crystal ball.

Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam has apologized publicly twice for proposing a bill to allow extraditions to mainland China, and now other senior officials have followed suit.

But a week after the legislation set off massive protests, the largely youth-driven opposition movement is keeping up its demands. Protest organizers are urging Lam to permanently withdraw the bill and resign.

Updated at 3:11 p.m. ET

President Trump has thrown his latest lifeline to the ailing coal industry, significantly weakening one of former President Barack Obama's key policies to address climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency released the final version of its Affordable Clean Energy rule on Wednesday. It's supported by the coal industry, but it is not clear that it will be enough to stop more coal-fired power plants from closing.

Elizabeth Taylor's jewels sparkled, but a collection of Indian gems might outshine them.

When the group of Indian jewelry and artifacts goes on auction today in New York, it's expected to fetch more than $115 million — breaking the record set by the late Hollywood star's jewelry collection.

Zahura Sinan passes around wrapped candy to guests sitting on carpets in the family's living room in a village in northeastern Syria. It's to celebrate the first day of freedom for two Yazidi girls, liberated from the ISIS family who held them captive for two years.

For the first time in a decade Congress will hold a hearing Wednesday on the subject of reparations for the descendants of slaves in the United States, a topic that has gained traction in the run-up to the 2020 elections.

The hearing is set for June 19, also known as "Juneteenth," the day when in 1865 former enslaved people in Texas first learned that they had been emancipated two years earlier.

Leonard Pozner, whose 6-year-old son was killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has been battling against conspiracy theorists for years, and on Tuesday he scored a victory against deniers who claim that the shooting that left 20 first-graders dead never happened.

Poet, writer and musician Joy Harjo — a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation — often draws on Native American stories, languages and myths. But she says that she's not self-consciously trying to bring that material into her work. If anything, it's the other way around.

Updated at 11:04 a.m. ET

For Douglas Clark, the darkest part of working for Nike in the 1980s was watching American shoe manufacturing "evaporate" in the Northeast in a mass exodus to Asia in pursuit of cheaper labor.

"As a true Yankee — and my father was a Colonial historian — you know, it was heartbreaking," he said.

A record 70.8 million people had been forcibly displaced by war, persecution and other violence worldwide at the end of 2018, according to the latest annual Global Trends report by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Updated at 6:41 p.m. ET

Ronald Reagan's former budget director, David Stockman, calls Art Laffer "the greatest Fake Economist to ever come down the pike."

Laffer helped popularize the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves through faster economic growth.

It almost never works out in practice. But Laffer and his namesake curve remain darlings of Republican politicians.