Where can one find safety in war? That has been an especially agonizing question for Palestinians in Gaza, ordered to and fro by Israel for more than a year. With death everywhere, one community after another has been reduced to rubble.

• Biden apology: President Joe Biden formally apologizes to Native Americans for the U.S. government’s role in the abuse and neglect of Native children sent to federal boarding schools to assimilate them into white society.
• Menendez brothers: Erik and Lyle Menendez still have a long road to freedom, even though the Los Angeles County district attorney has recommended their life-without-parole sentence be thrown out and the brothers be resentenced and immediately eligible for parole.
• Journalists killed in Lebanon: An Israeli strike kills three journalists in south Lebanon, and the United Nations refugee agency warns that Israeli airstrikes on a border crossing with Syria are hindering refugees trying to flee the war.
• Georgia goes to polls: The South Caucasus country of Georgia will go to the polls Saturday in a parliamentary election that many citizens believe may be the most crucial vote of their lifetimes.

Read these news briefs.

Primary candidates and their supporters typically line up behind their party nominee. This year, Nikki Haley endorsed former President Donald Trump, but not all her supporters are on board. Their votes could sway a tight election. 

The gender gap in U.S. presidential politics is not new. But in this election year, the importance of projecting power has become gendered. Both candidates are wooing voters with their own brands of masculinity.

Sudan’s civil war has forced more than 11 million people to flee their homes, one of the worst displacement crises on Earth. The journey of one such family, the Natheers, shines light onto what that situation is like for the people living through it.

The Freedom Award is the National Civil Rights Museum’s signature fundraiser. A closer look at its recipients shows the relics and relevance of an age-old dream.

For the Garifuna, a journey to the island to which their descendants were exiled is as much about standing strong today as it is about remembering the past.

During this autumn season, when the very idea of America is again being tested in an election, baseball’s balm is back.

For decades, pro ball helped carry the nation through wars and economic downturns and 9/11. It has felt increasingly forgotten lately – its measured pace out of sync with the swagger and sprint of a socially wired age. Yet past and present are poised to rhyme.

For the first time since the first year of the Reagan administration, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers are in the World Series. Back then, too, Americans worried about inflation, immigration, and war. And then, as now, they found solace in what the actor Kevin Costner has described as “the primal battle between a man with a stick and a man with a rock.”

Baseball “has long been a cornerstone of national identity, transcending cultural and generational divides through its universal appeal,” wrote Patrick Gordon, executive editor of Philadelphia Baseball Review, last month. It is “a symbol of American perseverance ... of resilience and unity.”

This year’s teams have met in the World Series 11 times before, more than any other two. (For seven of those 11 series, the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, New York.) The players come from 29 states, and many emigrated from Japan, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas. They include some of the best athletes the game has ever seen, including Shohei Ohtani, the Dodger from Japan who in September became the only player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season.

When these two historic rivals take the field, they won’t be foreigners or political activists. Just ballplayers on teams testing their mettle against each other.

Baseball’s appeal lies in its unhurried storytelling. A noble battle with inherent failure unfolds in a narrative in which all that happens on the diamond finds meaning in all the moments of joy and greatness that happened there before. “Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn, reading Ezra Pound,” wrote the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

For a nation on the cusp of political change, this series offers a pause of shared delights in the gallantry and grace of a timeless sport.