I often reflect on my very fortunate journey. I was born and raised in Benin in a poor family in one of the poorest nations on Earth. Against all odds, I was able to achieve my dream. As a little girl I would sing in front of the mirror, and today I am fortunate to travel the world singing my music in the greatest of concert halls. It makes me wonder: How did I get this far?

A couple of years ago, a Canadian journalist went to Benin to film a documentary on my life and she interviewed my 85-year-old mother. Right away my mother told the journalist: “I taught Angelique everything she needed to know to be a singer.” My first reaction was to laugh loudly, but thinking it over, I realized she was absolutely right!

Huffpost Healthy Living

It’s the world’s most used drug, and the drug that most frequently sends users to the emergency room, and yet less than 60 percent of heavy drinkers recognize that their habits put them at high risk, according to the 2014 Global Drug Survey.

Whether it’s because of alcohol’s celebratory feel or — in moderation — its health benefits or simply its ubiquity in social gatherings, many drinkers just don’t take their drinking seriously. We asked Kenneth R. Warren, Ph.D., deputy director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), to help set the record straight.

Huffpost Science

A new study offers an answer to a key question about Egypt’s ancient pyramids, which were built out of huge stone blocks more than 4,000 years ago: in the absence of modern construction equipment, how exactly were the builders of the massive structures able to move the stones across the desert to the building site?

Researchers have long known that ancient Egyptians hauled the stones on sledges. But the scientists behind the new study say that to keep the sledges from sinking into the sand, the workers saturated the sand with water before moving the sledges — to form a more solid surface.

“The water forms liquid bridges that glue the sand grains together, as in a sandcastle,” study co-author Dr. Daniel Bonn, a professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, told The Huffington Post in an email.

After years of relative inaction, German prosecutors have opened dozens of fresh investigations of men and women suspected of having served as Nazi death camp guards, racing against the clock to bring the aging suspects to justice. Not since the end of World War II have so many cases been initiated at once.

The surge of cases is being driven by a new generation of prosecutors — the “grandchildren generation,” as they are known here — who bring a less conflicted view of culpability to crimes committed during the war and who were given a legal opening with the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor death camp who spent years as an Ohio autoworker.

Huffpost Technology

Hyundai’s 2015 Genesis has a Google Glass app.

Yes, the Korean car manufacturer’s latest luxury sedan will allow Glass users to do such things as start their Genesis sedans remotely or call roadside assistance with a simple command to Glass. But as it turns out, the Genesis’ Glass app is just the tip of the car’s technological iceberg.