A nation’s need to establish deterrence as a guarantor of its security has always risked cycles of escalation with an adversary. As Israel and Iran trade blows, their competing views of the same events are sending tremors through the Middle East.

• Typhoon approaches Taiwan: Typhoon Krathon brings strong winds and torrential rainfall as it nears Taiwan, leading to the evacuation of thousands from low-lying or mountainous areas.
• Biden to survey Helene damage: President Joe Biden will survey the destruction in the Carolinas on Oct. 2 as floodwaters recede. Vice President Kamala Harris will tour neighboring Georgia.
• Ukraine withdrawal: Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from the front-line town of Vuhledar, located atop a tactically significant hill, after more than two years of battle. It is the latest urban settlement to fall to Russia.

Read these news briefs.

America has seen how a big nationwide election can come down to relatively few votes in key states. Georgia is ground zero for concerns that partisan officials are making the vote count less trustworthy. 

JD Vance used the U.S. vice presidential debate to show an empathetic side. Tim Walz called out Mr. Vance for avoiding a question on the 2020 election outcome. Both showed a level of civility now rare in national politics.

Accurate information is essential to civilians trying to survive in a war zone. And when electricity and the internet are unreliable, sometimes a simple printed newspaper is enough to give people what they need to know.

Poland was a key player in the fall of Soviet communism. This trusted elder Polish stateswoman helped create democratic practices and continues even today as a Facebook influencer.

The profound impact of good teachers, mentors, and role models is difficult to overestimate. It’s a gift that shapes our very values, character, and trajectory, and one that, as our writer discovered, lasts a lifetime. 

In the history of American vice presidential debates, no line is more engraved in public memory than Lloyd Bentsen’s 1988 smackdown of Dan Quayle for trying to draw a personal parallel to John F. Kennedy.

The encounter on Tuesday between this year’s candidates for the second-highest federal office may have set a new and more virtuous reference point. During a segment on gun violence, Gov. Tim Walz noted that his teenage son had witnessed a shooting at a community center. “Tim, first of all, I didn’t know that,” replied his opponent, Sen. JD Vance. “And I’m sorry about that. ... It is awful.”

That moment of empathy capped a turn toward civility as refreshing as it was rare in national politics these days. American democracy, notes Harvard academic David Moss, is a relentless struggle of competing ideas “made productive, ultimately, by a deep faith in – and shared commitment to” the ideal of self-governance.

In their readiness to find agreement amid their policy differences, the two political opponents – and the moderators nudging them toward clarity and decorum – showed that the tensions inherent in democracy can be resolved in deliberation elevated by reason, humility, and respect.

Those qualities, in fact, are driving a vigorous self-reflection and renewal among some journalists – particularly at the local level – at a time when their industry is contracting and public trust in public institutions and the media is low. On average, two newspapers close every week in the United States. That has a civic corollary. A 2022 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey found that 71% of Americans who distrust national news outlets also have less faith in the country’s political process.

Yet that same survey found that more than half of respondents feel local journalists care about the communities they cover. A June summit of rural media hosted by the American Press Institute (API) drafted a new “playbook” for building that trust. In July, the public radio station WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, hosted a forum to boost civic unity. It brought its listeners together to hear them out.

“Today, journalists are more intentionally activating their roles as community convener, conversation facilitator and resource connector,” write Samantha Ragland and Kevin Loker of API. That convening role, they note, requires humility, empathy, compassion, and hope. “For journalists to prioritize the people they serve, they’ll need to become experts at centering people: their voices and experiences, their relationships and connections.”

In an essay in Columbia Journalism Review, New York Times Chairman A.G. Sulzberger wrote last year that “Common facts, a shared reality, and a willingness to understand our fellow citizens across tribal lines are the most important ingredients in enabling a diverse, pluralistic society to come together to self-govern.”

Perhaps the vice presidential debate marked a turn toward calm deliberation over finger-pointing debate. As the candidates and moderators showed, when journalists coax listening over conflict, civility returns to civic discourse.