The integrity of American democracy is daily news these days. Still, voting rights have been quietly expanding for one group: those with past felony convictions. Pushback by two Nebraska officials raises questions about justice and redemption.

• Attacks in Lebanon: Israel launched airstrikes against hundreds of Hezbollah targets, killing 492 people in the country’s deadliest day in decades.
• Sri Lanka president sworn in: Marxist politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake took his oath after an election that rejected an old guard accused of leading the country into economic crisis. 
• Alleged would-be Trump assassin due in court: Prosecutors will argue to keep the man accused of hiding out with a gun near Donald Trump’s Florida golf course in jail until his trial. 
• U.S. government shutdown averted: Congressional leaders have a deal on a short-term spending bill that would fund federal agencies for about three months, pushing final decisions until after the November election. 
• U.S. violent crime drops again: FBI statistics show overall violent crime ticked down an estimated 3% in 2023 from the year before. Murders and nonnegligent manslaughter dropped nearly 12%.

Read these news briefs.

Americans are eating more seafood. But higher consumption has boosted seafood imports as domestic fisheries struggle. Change may require reinvestment in waterfronts and new views of what is edible.

A death toll is a simple way to convey to outsiders how devastating a conflict is. But the dead are not merely statistics. In eastern Congo, communities are finding ways to make sure that each life cut short by war is remembered and mourned with dignity.

Samantha Tillet switched to a flip phone, and her average screen time has dropped from 11 hours a day to just three or four. Some other college-age people are joining her in the quest for a less-tethered life.

The 1960s music scene in New York’s Greenwich Village shaped American culture. We invited a novelist and a music journalist – both with recent books about the Village – to explore the neighborhood’s vibrant legacy.   

Official ties between Japan and China keep fraying, especially after recent incursions by a Chinese aircraft carrier and military plane in Japan’s coastal zones. The incursions are another sign of Beijing’s drive for dominance in East Asia. Yet a closer look at informal ties between the two peoples reveals a less dire picture of rising tensions.

A good example is the outpouring of grief, affection, and remorse among many Chinese after a 10-year-old Japanese national was stabbed Sept. 18. The boy was walking to a school for Japanese children in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, a hub for high-tech companies. Police detained a Chinese man at the scene as the alleged assailant.

The killing, coming months after a similar attack on a Japanese family in another city, drew particular attention because of the date. Sept. 18 is the anniversary of imperial Japan’s bombing of a railroad track in northeastern China in 1931 that it then used as an excuse to invade its neighbor.

The anniversary has long been used by the ruling Chinese Communist Party to boost anti-Japanese propaganda and stoke hateful nationalism as a tool for party control. In online postings after the boy’s killing – many of them later censored – Chinese citizens blamed the official rhetoric against Japan for the attack, although the assailant’s motive remains unclear.

“We should stop history education that triggers such vengeful thoughts,” one Chinese woman in Shenzhen told the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri.

Hundreds of people have visited the entrance of the Japanese school in Shenzhen to lay flowers and leave notes of apology to the boy. In Tokyo last week, dozens of Chinese nationals showed up for a vigil after the killing. The whole incident, stated Yomiuri, “has prompted criticism among Chinese people against their own country.”

One poignant reaction came in a letter apparently written by the boy’s father and circulated briefly online before being censored. It called for no hate between Japan and China. The father vowed to continue his work at a Japanese trading company in Shenzhen as a “bridge” between the two countries, according to Nikkei news. “My only hope is for this type of tragedy to not repeat itself,” he supposedly stated.

After reading the letter, one Chinese internet user wrote, “The high level of civility that this family represents is much higher than that of the government which represents 1.4 billion people.”