• New French prime minister: President Emmanuel Macron has named centrist ally François Bayrou as prime minister after a historic parliamentary vote in which the previous government was ousted. Mr. Macron vowed to remain in office until his term ends in 2027.
• Another impeachment push in South Korea: Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung says the best way to restore order is to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol, just ahead of a planned parliamentary vote over Mr. Yoon’s short-lived imposition of martial law. 
• Iran faces blackouts: Its capital, Tehran, and outlying provinces have faced disruptive rolling power blackouts for weeks. Some suspect that cryptocurrency mining is playing a role. 
• Amazon donates to inauguration: The tech giant says it is donating $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, and the event will air on its Prime Video service.

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The magnitude of the emotions sweeping Damascus cannot be overstated, as our correspondents are witnessing. Unbridled joy is replacing years of terror and unspeakable loss. But the task of restoring order, and faith in a peaceful future, is enormous.

Solar panels in space have potential to bring power to remote locations or to areas hit by natural disaster. Private companies and others are working to refine the technology.

In the push-pull of freedom and responsibility around wildlife regulation, Florida voters joined a growing number of states preserving rights of hunters and anglers by putting those interests at the forefront of state conservation policy.

Provocative nominees. Unconventional plans. A new administration means a fresh round of work for political journalists, whose charge includes holding power to account. A Washington writer shows how adhering to facts and getting information to the public remain the fundamental job.

‘Tis the season for gorgeous art books, which will delight armchair aficionados with everything from 19th-century Japanese wood block prints to 20th-century geometric-patterned textiles.

It is a truth universally recorded that no writer since Jane Austen has been in want of an opinion about her. “Of all great writers,” observed Virginia Woolf, “she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.”

As Austen fans start a yearlong celebration of her birth on Dec. 16, 1775, society has not bored of the challenge. The novel “Pride and Prejudice” has been adapted to film at least 17 times. Oxford University launched a special course this summer called Love and Longevity: 250 Years of Jane Austen. Book clubs are planning a year of seminars in bodices and britches.

Part of Austen’s enduring appeal rests in her verbal swordplay of enamorment. As C.S. Lewis put it, she teases from human attraction a tangle of “good sense, courage, contentment, fortitude, ‘some duty neglected, some failing indulged’, impropriety, indelicacy, generous candour, blameable distrust, just humiliation, vanity, folly, ignorance, reason.” What’s not to enjoy?

Yet beneath all that runs a deeper current that springs from her childhood Bible lessons around the family hearth. “The hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me to be just what makes good comedy possible,” Lewis wrote. “‘Principles’ or ‘seriousness’ are essential to Jane Austen’s art.”

She wrote not just novels, but prayers beseeching God “to quicken our sense of Thy mercy in the redemption of the world,” as she put it. These behests, shared with family and friends, reveal a desire to express more gratitude, to be more conscious of the divine presence, and to “feel the importance of every day, and every hour as it passes, and earnestly strive to make a better use of what Thy goodness may yet bestow on us.”

That redemption, which is never far from love in her novels, may be more relevant than ever. Gen Zers are abandoning dating apps for the old-fashioned joys of chance encounters and make-it-up-as-you-go courtship. A recent study by the Springtide Research Institute found that 68% of this generation’s members consider themselves religious and 77% say they are spiritual, yet they “define spirituality as autonomous and faith unbundled ... inclusive of all faiths and practices.”

Those findings help explain why the TikTok channels of this emerging generation are abuzz with references to Austen and the many spinoffs inspired by her works. Unbundled faith, the Springtide study described, reveals a desire to ground identity in spiritual beliefs and community.

“Union of the masculine and feminine qualities constitutes completeness,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this newspaper. A writer’s greatness rests in the acts of observation and description. Like William Shakespeare long before her and Nora Ephron long after, Austen found in love a blending of the comedic with the spiritual. No wonder her works keep finding new audiences. Whenever two hearts flutter, sense and sensibility blend anew.