After a harrowing year of war in Gaza and the Middle East, the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar rekindled hopes for a grand U.S.-led plan to move the region into a more peaceful era. But many obstacles, Israeli and Palestinian, remain.

• Election interference case: The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 case unseals a heavily redacted trove of documents, some 1,900 pages collected by special counsel Jack Smith’s team, that provides a glimpse into evidence prosecutors will present if the case goes to trial. 
• Mass shooting indictment: A grand jury in Georgia indicts a father and son in a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder on Sept. 4.
• Texas transgender case: The state is suing a Dallas doctor, alleging she provided hormones to more than 20 minors in violation of a ban that took effect last year. The case is one of the first instances of a state enforcing such a ban.
• North Korea sends troops to Russia: South Korea’s spy agency says North Korea has dispatched troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine.
• Texas execution halted: Robert Roberson would have become the first person in the United States put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

Read these news briefs. 

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is throwing himself – and his money – into a last-minute effort to boost the Trump campaign’s ground game. But get-out-the-vote efforts aren’t the rocket science he’s used to.

The breakdown in India-Canada ties highlights a growing trend of transnational repression by India and other nations – and could force Western allies into a difficult balancing act in Asia.

Effective deployment of the nation’s emergency resources depends on the goodwill of public officials, responders, and citizens. That goodwill is being tested now, as is the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s agility, in North Carolina.

In a society riven by division, it can take courage to reach out to people who hold different views. We asked an expert on conflict transformation for tips.

Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” has delighted children since the Victorian era. Some of his beloved characters are in larger-than-life form at this topiary exhibit in New York.

For China’s annual blowout sales event on Nov. 11, when Singles’ Day is observed, the e-commerce giant JD.com decided this year to enlist a famous female stand-up comedian, Yang Li, for its marketing campaign. After all, young single women have become a powerful force for equality in Chinese society. They are also big shoppers in what is now the world’s largest online shopping event. The date, 11/11, called “bare sticks day,” was chosen three decades ago by a group of university students as a reason for celebration. The four digits symbolize singlehood.

The selection of Yang Li did not go well. The comedian is widely known for a one-line question about men: “Why are they so mediocre but still so confident?” The uproar on social media pushed JD.com to apologize on Friday for promoting her.

But the fracas only helped highlight a grassroots movement among young women with good incomes who see marriage as too costly or cannot find men who share their values. Many are also challenging government pressure for them to become wives and mothers – and reverse China’s population decline. They are also quietly claiming a personal freedom by touting their solo consumerist lifestyles.

The women find that “a new sense of economic liberty helps to define themselves and their place in Chinese society,” wrote two scholars, Chih-Ling Liu and Robert Kozinets, in a 2020 essay in The Conversation. “Single professional Chinese women are changing how others see them not through protest or activism – but through their economic power.”

Many of the women make video blogs for the social media site Xiaohongshu (“Little Red Book”) to show off their “refined” lifestyle. They are creating an individual identity in a society where the Communist Party increasingly does not see a person’s private life as private and whose ruling Politburo has no women among its 24 members.

“These women frame singledom as freedom,” wrote Guo Jia, a researcher at the University of Sydney, for the website Sixth Tone. One study of the vloggers finds the women are narrating their “choice of living a single life as an autonomous and empowering decision.”

China’s e-commerce giants certainly know who these frequent shoppers are. And for this year’s Singles’ Day, they once again are trying anything to win them over. Even in a repressive state, freedom to define one’s identity finds a way.